The Bleeding Heart Band was the name Roger Waters gave his backing band for a brief period of his post-Pink Floyd solo career.[1]
Although Waters released The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking in 1984, and toured as a solo artist promoting that album (with an unnamed supporting band), he was still a member of Pink Floyd, and did not leave the group until late 1985.
The name of the band most likely comes from the phrase "the bleeding hearts and artists" found on the tracks "The Trial" and "Outside the Wall" on Pink Floyd's 1979 double album The Wall (an album which Waters was heavily involved in).
His first music as an ex-member of Pink Floyd was several contributions to the soundtrack to When the Wind Blows. It was for this soundtrack album that the band moniker "The Bleeding Heart Band" first appeared.
See main article: articles and List of Roger Waters band members. The original personnel, from the soundtrack to When the Wind Blows:[2]
bass guitar, acoustic guitar, vocals
guitar
guitar
keyboards, organ
piano, organ
saxophone
vocals
keyboards, vocals
The band's membership would change variously as Waters went on to record the Radio K.A.O.S. album, and then mount the tour.
When The Wall was performed in Berlin in 1990 to raise money for the charity Memorial Fund for Disaster Relief, the show featured an enormous number of international artists, as well as Roger Waters and The Bleeding Heart Band, which acted as the house band for the evening, and provided the music for the extra vocalists.
The Bleeding Heart Band also had a few extra members, such as Rick DiFonzo on guitar, and Peter Wood (reprising his role from the original Pink Floyd live performances of The Wall) on keyboards. Also present was the vocal quartet of Joe Chemay, Jim Farber, Jim Haas, and John Joyce, reprising their role from the studio album and the Pink Floyd Wall performances. Whether the four were considered official members of The Bleeding Heart Band is unknown.
For several years following his 1999–2002 In the Flesh tour, Roger Waters did not use the Bleeding Heart Band name, even though several of the members (such as Broad, Fairweather-Low, and backing vocalist Katie Kissoon) had long been part of his band. For his The Wall Live tour (2010–2013), Waters introduced them as the Bleeding Heart Band once again.