Peter Watts (road manager)

Life and career

Watts was born on 16 January 1946, in Bedford, the son of Jane P. G. (née Rolt) and Anthony Watts. Watts had one older brother, Michael, and one younger sister, Patricia Watts. Watts' mother, Jane, later remarried Anthony Daniells in 1989.

Watts was married to Myfanwy Roberts, an English (Welsh father, Australian mother) antiques dealer and costume and set designer, with whom he had two children, Ben (born 1967; a photographer), and Naomi (1968; an actress).

The couple divorced in 1972. After the divorce, the children were raised between grandparents and mother as Roberts built a career. The family relocated to London, and in 1982 moved to Sydney, Australia, where Edwards-Roberts became part of a burgeoning film industry.

Watts was the road manager for The Pretty Things before joining Pink Floyd as their first experienced road manager. Alongside fellow roadie Alan Styles, he appears on the rear cover of Pink Floyd's 1969 album Ummagumma, shown with the band's van and equipment laid out on a runway at Biggin Hill Airport, with the intention of replicating the "exploded" drawings of military aircraft and their payloads, which were popular at the time. On the 1973 album The Dark Side of the Moon, he contributed the repeated laughter during "Brain Damage", also heard in the album's overture, "Speak to Me". His wife Patricia 'Puddie' Watts was responsible for the line about the "geezer" who was "cruisin' for a bruisin'" used in the segue between "Money" and "Us and Them", and the words "I never said I was frightened of dying." heard near the end of "The Great Gig in the Sky".

Peter Watts left Pink Floyd in 1974 and he and Myfanwy were later reconciled.

In August 1976 he was found dead in a flat in Notting Hill, London, of an apparent heroin overdose.