How Roger Waters Used Chinese Poetry to Write “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun”

Waters’ first major lyric wasn’t about bikes or scarecrows. For “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun,” he pulled from a book of translated Chinese poetry, specifically lines from the Tang dynasty poets Li Bai and Du Fu. The “golden smile” and “silver sun” came straight from those pages, spliced into a hypnotic, almost ritualistic chant.

He was definitely distancing himself from Syd Barrett’s style. Waters later said he admired Barrett’s wordplay but felt it was too personal, too tied to Syd’s own brain. He wanted something ancient, impersonal, and mysterious—a lyric that could belong to anyone or no one. The result was a song that sounded less like a pop tune and more like a ceremony, and it set the template for the darker, more cosmic Pink Floyd that would follow.