The Rejected Pink Floyd Concept That Became Roger Waters' First Solo Album

In 1977, after the Animals tour, Roger Waters started developing a new concept album about a middle-aged man’s anxieties and fantasies unfolding during one night’s dream. He pitched the idea to Pink Floyd during early The Wall sessions in 1978, presenting two demo tapes: one became The Wall, the other became The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking. The band unanimously chose The Wall, leaving Waters’s hitchhiker concept on the shelf.

After The Wall and the bitter The Final Cut (essentially a Waters solo album in all but name), Waters left Pink Floyd in 1985. He immediately revisited his rejected dream narrative, fleshing it out with a band that included Eric Clapton on guitar, Andy Newmark on drums, and Michael Kamen on arrangements. Released in 1984, The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking became Waters’s official solo debut, though its narrative of a man named Reg—complete with a threatening hitchhiker and a subplot about marital infidelity—was already fully formed years earlier.

The album’s music leaned into Waters’s theatrical storytelling, with Clapton’s fluid leads contrasting the stark, emotional monologues. Critics were divided, but fans recognized it as the missing link between The Wall and Waters’s later solo work—a project that had to wait nearly a decade to escape Pink Floyd’s shadow.