"The Wall was Roger Waters's first album." So begins Dave Thompson's Thompson's Roger Waters: The Man Behind the Wall, the first full biography on this notoriously guarded personality that has eluded probing queries and papertrail dissection for the entirety of his career. As he prepares to release his first solo album in twenty-five years, buff up on your Waters know-how with the paperback edition of Thompson's incisive profile, first published in 2013.

Born in 1943 amidst the bombs and shrapnel of the Second World War, Waters abandoned a career in architecture to pursue his myriad demons through song. Over the years, imbued with an utter brilliant mind and a general tendency toward belligerence, Waters has regularly butted heads with his bandmates, fellow musicians, fans, acquaintances, family, political figures, and entire nations - but why? Leaning on original research conducted among Waters' inner circle of friends and associates, Thompson cautiously dismantles every wall Waters has erected between himself and the public a brick at a time in pursuit of an answer. As the mass of apparent contradictions stack up and the saga of this publicly isolated man unravels, Thompson arrives at a portrait of an artist every bit as nuanced and recalcitrant as his work would suggest.

By Dave Thompson

To some, he is the face behind classic Pink Floyd. To others, he is the temperament behind some of the greatest albums of the rock era. And to others still, he is one of the most original songwriters of a generation that overflows with notable talent. To all, he is an enigma: a rock star who not only eschewed stardom but also spent much of his career railing against it. But to call Roger Waters a mass of contradictions is simply taking the easy way out. He is so much more than that. Roger Waters: The Man Behind the Wall is the first full biography of the author of The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, and, of course, The Wall. It traces his life from war-torn suburbia to the multitude of wars he has fought since then - with his bandmates, with his audience, and most of all with himself. Packed with insight and exclusive interviews with friends and associates, Roger Waters: The Man Behind the Wall dismantles the wall brick by brick, revealing the man who built it in all his glory.