Review of Roger Waters' The Pros and Cons Of Hitch Hiking

Released 1984

"I nailed ducks to the wall; kept my heart in dark ruins. I built bungalows all over the hills. Dunroamin, duncarin, dunlivin Took my girl to the country, to sleep out under the moon Next thing she's going crazy".

I had owned The Final Cut for no more than three or four months before The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking was released. Compelled by the prospect of another chapter of tortured brilliance, I bought his first solo album proper (his Music from The Body with Ron Geesin, as I later learned, was made for the bargain bucket) on the day of release.

I have since seen this album listed close to the top of worst album covers of all time type polls. It really is irredeemably awful and quite surprising given the care and attention afforded to Pink Floyd album art. The other big negative is the dreadful song titles. Admittedly, the concept - a real time recounting of a dream or sequence of dreams - almost justifies it, but titles such as 4.37am (Arabs with Knives and West German Skies) all presented parenthetically struck me as unnecessarily daft.

As I was staying with my girlfriend the night I purchased the album from (another sadly defunct record shop in) Redruth, and she was of the Greenham Common, knitting her own yogurt brigade, she took umbrage at the 'degrading' photograph of the naked 'lady' hitch hiker on the cover, meaning I was not allowed to use her turntable that evening without incurring the risk of a serious strop, and the almost certain subsequent denial of certain privileges.

I crept downstairs in the early hours the following day, set on committing the cardinal sin of using her mothers ancient turntable. Spotting a set of headphones, I gleefully rejoiced that I could indulge my selfishness without disrupting the rest of the household.

As the gap between the releases of The Final Cut and this album was relatively short, and as the former album was, at the end of the day, a Roger Waters solo album in all but name, it seemed not unreasonable to expect more of the same. This time, Eric Clapton was in accompaniment along with a robust set of supporting players. I was never a big fan of Eric Clapton post Blind Faith, although as an undoubted master of his art whose style was markedly different to David Gilmour, this was an intriguing prospect.

There were several obvious parallels between this album and The Final Cut; each album had, in effect, an prologue, the main 'story', a commercial penultimate track which was issued as a single and an epilogue, the song structure of both of these epilogues was remarkably similar; both are vehicles first and foremost for the vocal, and both use sound-effects as integrally as any of the instruments. However, one feature which was wholly absent from The Final Cut, was a sense of humour, which I was surprised to find here. Admittedly it's application was usually of the warped schadenfreude affected variety, but it was there.

The album starts with a ticking clock, an explosion and the anguished cry from Roger, (no change there then) a female voice telling him that he's been dreaming, before Mr Clapton begins the slide guitar motif which varies very little for the rest of the album. Roger commences to provide a commentary of his dream about picking up female hitch hikers. The tone is hushed, liberally spiced with sexual innuendo and deliberately makes about as much sense as a dream. Female background vocals (including Cherry Vanilla?) serve to take the edge off of the pained Waters lead. It's all impeccably played, masterfully executed, and, as I'd already come to expect, magnificently produced; another perfect headphones album, but as it passed quite seamlessly from track to track, I couldn't see where it was going. Tales about nightmares are a long way removed from the themes of the three Pink Floyd albums I already owned. This was trivial and pointless as opposed to deep and meaningful, I suppose. This puzzled me.

Being dream-like, it leapt from scene to scene apparently at random, which was understandable, but because of this it had little focus.

The thinness of the music on The Final Cut reflected the funereal tone of the concept as a whole; lush orchestration wouldn't have worked. Here again, whilst often lyrically brilliant, the music itself has little imagination and, to use a non-technical term, was just too 'samey' throughout.

This was such a conundrum. My eighteen year old self was completely in awe of Roger Waters articulation and ability to conceptualise so effectively. but was frustrated by the lack of 'oomph' in the instrumentation.

Side two, for the most part, was a large improvement. The slide guitar motif continues, but there is a bit more depth in evidence. The entire arrangement for Go Fishing was beautifully realised; humour, tortured vocals, social comment, a liberal dosing of woman hating, a lilting keyboard theme, AA Milne's Winnie The Pooh being read to children whilst inhaling pot, and a great saxophone solo. What more could you want? The same can said of the title track; very well realised, ticking most of the necessary boxes.

Although throughout most of the second side I found myself enjoying the wordsmithing, admiring the cleverness of the segues between songs and the astonishing bitterness exuded by Roger, there are large meandering holes where a tune should reside.

A perplexing album this; flashes of sublime greatness interspersed with moments of utter uninspired drab ordinariness. I really wanted to love this as much The Final Cut. Unfortunately it ultimately left me wanting a great deal more.