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Roger Waters  

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Roger Waters (born September 6, 1944) is a world-renowned, seminal British musician who rose to recognition as the conceptual leader of the progressive rock outfit Pink Floyd, hailing from Great Bookham, Surrey, England.

Born in Great Bookham, Surrey, Roger Waters’ father was a conscientious objector for the early part of WW2, however later changed this stance and was killed in action at Aprilia when Roger was five months old. Following his fathers death, Roger moved with his mother to Cambridge, which is where he met future band mates Syd Barrett and David Gilmour. Upon subsequently enrolling at Regent Street Polytechnic, Waters met Pink Floyd founding members Nick Mason and Richard Wright. The three members went on to play music together for the first time in the autumn of 1963, dubbing themselves Stigma 6 and occasionally the Meggadeaths.

By 1966 the moniker Pink Floyd had been settled on with a lineup consisting of Roger Waters, Syd Barrett, Nick Mason, and Richard Wright. Together Pink Floyd would prove to be one of the most influential, open-minded and ultimately successful rock bands of all time. In 1968 Barrett left the group and was replaced by David Gilmour, as a result Waters took the band’s conceptual reigns and began honing the distinctive Punk Floyd sound. This included the second best-selling record of all time “The Dark Side of the Moon” (1973), “Wish You Were Here” (1975), “Animals” (1977), “The Wall” (1979), and “The Final Cut” (1983), culminating in over 250 million copies sold worldwide.

Waters departed Pink Floyd in 1985 and following a legal dispute regarding the rights to the name and material, the musician began crafting solo material. The esteemed singer-songwriter’s debut solo album, “The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking”, arrived in 1984, featuring Eric Clapton and David Sanborn. Following the release and disappointing supporting tour, Waters scored the soundtrack to the animated film “When the Wind Blows” in 1986, after which he released his second full-length album “Radio K.A.O.S.”. Issued in 1987, the record is a concept album based on a Welsh mute who can physically tune his mind into radio waves, and earned more popular reviews than its predecessor.

In November 1989, the world’s most polarising symbol, the Berlin Wall, fell. In 1990 Waters staged arguably the largest and most impressive rock concert in history, The Wall Live. Playing to in excess of 200,000 people, alongside fellow musicians Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Cyndi Lauper, and the Scorpions, a double live album “The Wall - Live in Berlin” was subsequently released to platinum sales. After a move to Columbia Records, Waters released his third studio album, “Amused to Death”, in 1992. Drawing greater comparisons to his Pink Floyd output, the record was his best-received to date, spawning the single “What God Wants, Pt. 1”.

In 1999 the extolled musician began touring again after a seven-year hiatus, playing a combination of solo and Pink Floyd material. The tour proved a huge success, constantly expanding to play larger venues and more dates, including a final show at 2002’s Glastonbury Festival. Following a reunion with Mason, Wright, and Gilmour in 2005 for Live 8 in London’s Hyde Park, Waters released the operatic album “Ça Ira”, based on the French Revolution. In 2010 Waters’ The Wall Live tour began, which by 2013 became the highest-grossing tour by a solo artist of all time.

Live reviews

Roger Waters: Us + Them

This was one of the most spectacular concert experiences of my life, and I have seen hundreds of shows. I was blown away a few years ago by Roger's The Wall tour and really did not know what to expect from Us + Them.

When I saw the tour was kicking off close to my home I immediately got online to buy a ticket, took the day off from work, and drove to Kansas City to see the opening show of the tour. It was unbelievable and exceeded my expectations. I thought it would just be a singular concert limited to Roger's new album, "Is This the Life We Really Want?", which would have been just fine with me, but it was so much more. If you loved or even just liked The Wall tour you will be equally impressed by Us + Them. I do not make that comparison lightly. The Wall is the gold standard of rock shows in my opinion.

There was so much going on as far as music, videos, and props it is hard to believe that any one person could possibly take it all in. The images were so vivid and carefully constructed it was almost impossible to keep from being overwhelmed by the impact on the audience.

As with much of Pink Floyd music there was a multitude of political statements, mostly critical of Trump and the shameful things going on in the United States today.

The music was a mixture of Roger's solo and Pink Floyd tunes, borrowing heavily from Darkside of the Moon, The Wall, and Animals. You don't have to be a Pink Floyd fan or a Roger Waters fan to love this show. It comes easily if you go by nothing more than spectacle. If you are a Pink Floyd fan you will look at the music in a whole new way. If that's even possible over all these years.

I highly recommend this show to anyone who loves rock 'n' roll, statement theatre, and high production values. The use of stadium sized HD video screens, and the pig and moon drones, followed by the laser pyramid at the end..., you have no idea what you are in for.

The Sprint Center was filled to near capacity with absolutely thrilled fans. There was no barring of video or photography, and there is no way that any one person could take all of the imagery in.

I think if you review setlist.com and look at YouTube videos of the show it will make you want to see the show more and not feel like you've already seen it. Video and photographs do not do justice to everything that was going on nor do they capture the scope and scale.

While watching, I thought of all my friends and family who would enjoy the show, and wish they could've been there with me to experience the sheer joy of this production.

I must also point out how genuinely appreciative and blown away Roger was by the positive response from the audience during his stage interactions. He was clearly pleased with his creation and it's effect on everyone present. As usual he delivers his message in a spot-on manner and clearly connects with what people are feeling in the age of Trump. It is impossible to comment on all the messages and imagery employed during Roger's commentary. Suffice to say that Roger is a master wordsmith and musician and proves it again with Us + Them. He is truly a treasure to be savored. I cannot wait to see him again. His polish, professionalism, and production values blow 99% of other rock acts completely out of the water. What an experience! I highly recommend this show.

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I saw the man, (the "legend"!), on his 2010 "The Wall" tour, at the Staples Center here in Los Angeles. I also went to see the "Pros and Cons.." & "Radio Kaos" tours, years back. I expected a lot from "Roger Waters' - The Wall", I have to admit; for I'd read & heard reviews, & knew that Roger was quite proud of the show. I've listened to the original "The Wall" album maybe a thousand or more times since it came out in 1980,(no exaggeration, either), for I truly do love the album. I know it word for word, & note for note. What I got to witness at this concert, though, even exceeded my expectations! It was far and away the best rock concert I've ever experienced 'in my life' - & I say this, after going to maybe 70 major rock concerts over the last 40 years. The sound was amazing, the visuals were mind-boggling, & Roger still sings and plays so incredibly well. Outside of his music, I see Mr. Waters (the man) as a pretty awesome person, too. A creative genius, a true humanitarian who 'cares' about others, & I very much relate to his political views. Just,.. if there is any 'one person' that I consider a "hero" of mine, I suppose it would have to be Roger Waters. In concert, there just is no better, (well, except for maybe Led Zeppelin)LoL; so, in a word, "GO!" (You won't be sorry.)

Roger Waters is an English musician, singer, songwriter and composer best known as the bassist and vocalist with Pink Floyd. However, as a solo artist, he still puts on great concerts. Waters has had a solo career for about thirty years and has come to recent prominence with his anti-war sentiment. During the United States invasion of Iraq led to two new tracks on the Internet: "To Kill the Child", inspired by the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and "Leaving Beirut", an anti-war song inspired by his travels in the Middle East.

Waters puts on a good show that is pretty simple in nature. The focus is on him on the stage as he generally is in skinny tattered jeans and a grungy t-shirt with just him, his guitar, and a microphone. He is still an amazing performer and fills the room with his powerful voice and lyrics. I've seen him play a stadium and he still managed to wow the whole place and it was impossible to stay seated. I wasn't the only one - everyone was standing up and singing along. The epic guitar riffs backed up by drums, keys and a light show and set that was just as epic, making it one scorcher of a concert.

You would be hard pressed to find another show that captures an amazing sound, displays some of the most cutting-edge theatrics, and packs a more powerful message all in one show.

If you are a fan of Pink Floyd, DO NOT MISS THIS SHOW!!! If you are a casual fan, I suspect you would still enjoy this show immensely, though anyone who is an actual fan of the band/Roger knows he wears his political views on his sleeves. If you are completely oblivious to this you are either not a huge fan, or just don't care about politics anyway. It would be like me going to see Ted Nugent and expecting him to say something I wouldn't find repellent- that would be on me.

So, to summarize, if you love the work of Pink Floyd & specifically much of what Roger wrote, plus you are either left-leaning politically (or couldn't be bothered), them go. Otherwise, stay home so actual fans don't have to hear inane chit-chat behind us while trying to enjoy the show.

The music was excellent.

Every Pink Floyd song was spot on.

The sound system sounded great even in the cheap seats. The show was nearly, if not completely sold out and I saw no empty seats. The crowd was well behaved while security was thorough they were not obnoxious.

The only negative was the overbearing Anti-Trump rhetoric with a continuous "F" Trump message splashed across the big screen during many songs. The obligatory flying pig even had Anti-Trump slogans! It was sad that musical performances and artist feel they need to push a political agenda! I felt the whole time this was displayed that if identical slurs had been made against our previous President, the media would have a melt down! CNN, ABC, CBS, MSNBC would have been proud!

WOW! That is all one can truly say about this performance! The theatrics were incredible, the band was top-notch, and Waters himself, hasn't lost a thing, and obviously was deeply moved-by, and appreciative-of his fans. I was pleased to see a sold-out arena for the evening, composed of all age-groups and backgrounds. Personally, my favorite portion, or aspect, of the experience was the political critiques being cast through the imagery and music, with a nice-touch of synchronized youth from the Philadelphia area during 'Another Brick Part 2'. Very dark and thought provoking, as Floyd has been for me through my life. Please return next year! I can-not wait to see The Wall! Thank you for your work to assist in raising awareness! RESIST.

The show was spectacular a real treat for the ears and eyes, I have seen Pink Floyd live (1980, The Wall) David Gilmour live (2016, Royal Albert Hall) and now Roger Waters. All were superb.

What was amazing was the near 10 minute standing ovation near the end of the show - even Roger was somewhat taken aback.

A big age range was in the audience I saw one woman must be near 80 right down to kids around the 10 year old mark.

Sitting beside me was a girl around the 20 mark, who clearly knew all the lyrics and had never seen any Pink Floyd stuff done live before - she was in tears for about half the show, she enjoyed it that much.

Excellent show, pass it on to Roger and his superb band.

Most recent time I have seen Roger Waters was in Birmingham as part of the Us & Them tour. I expected something spectacular and it certainly was visually amazing, and musically excellent with some very good musicians and singers aswell. There was quite a lot of politics, most of which was very relevant, and the audience was very supportive.

If you are expecting more from Roger Waters than merely going through Pink Floyd songs then I definitely recommend seeing him. This show was excellent and definitely not boring - in fact on the 3 occasions I have seen him he has held my interest throughout.

Absolutely stunning! Roger once again managed to completely blow my mind. It was not the show I was expecting but in fact it surpassed my expectations - just the right balance of Floyd with his new material although I would have welcomed a track or two from his first three albums.

I discovered new meaning in all of the Floyd material which is a true testament to the magnitude of their greatness. Was wonderful hearing Roger call out Trump, Putin, et al but also hold the audience accountable - he owned us in the best way possible.

Worth every penny!

All I can say is AWESOME!!! Just what I expected! I can't get one of the new songs he played out of my head and I dreamed about it that night. VERY powerful! David Kilminster played all the Pink Floyd stuff spot on!!! The singers Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig helped make it an amazing show as well but all the people on stage did! Out show was in Vancouver and he got local kids up and singing for "Another Brick in the Wall" which also was spot on. Loved and agreed with all his comments to the audience.

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Roger Waters, The ‘Wall’ Tour: The Billboard Cover Story

The 'Wall' Tour has emerged as one of the grandest spectacles - and biggest moneymakers - in all of rock'n'roll. Here, Roger Waters opens up about what playing these 33-year-old songs has taught him a…

By Ray Waddell

Ray Waddell

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In stark contrast to the wildly successful tour he began in September 2010, Roger Waters today is a man who has transcended walls, or boundaries of any type. Calling on a travel day before the June 19 Nashville show of The Wall Live, Waters is, as ever, a compelling conversationalist who clearly ­enjoys the discourse, and there are no walls between subjects, either. Waters moves easily and without ­obstruction, showing equal passion for the Large Hadron Collider, neurophysiology, the existence of God and, of course, rock’n’roll. He laughs easily and often, his voice “as strong as it’s ever been.” Waters has clearly overcome the demons that once tormented him and were manifested in Pink, the confused protagonist of “The Wall,” the landmark 1979 album by British prog-rock group Pink Floyd that was the beginning of the end for that beloved band, but has never left Waters’ consciousness.

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David Gilmour

Robbie Wyckoff

The next night in Nashville, Waters owns the expansive stage and leads his exemplary band and vocalists through a highly charged, totally captivating performance. Confident, charismatic and even happy, Waters is in complete control, whether he’s in the role of the tortured Pink or the machine-gun-wielding Fascist, frontman or bassist. He and his band manage to not be overwhelmed by the often mind-blowing array of production elements, including the “wall” built during the show, and the entire presentation offers the interweaving of the sonic and the visual at a level that few rock tours have ever achieved. The audience was completely engaged throughout.

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“The Wall” – an enduring, dark rock masterpiece that deals broadly with personal ­alienation juxtaposed against a backdrop of war and government corruption – has been presented in many formats, first as the album (co-produced by Bob Ezrin ) and its ­subsequent ­”nightmare” tour, then as the 1982 film “Pink Floyd: The Wall” starring Bob Geldof, then as a benefit at the Berlin Wall in 1990 and most recently on this ambitious and ­technically stunning tour that began in September 2010. In the interim, the meaning of The Wall has shifted, at least for Waters, from his personal experience to a more global message of peace and, perhaps more than anything, the gift of empathy.

This is conceptual, high art for rock’n’roll, yet it sells the hell out of tickets. Even when the concert industry went in the tank in 2010, Waters and U2’s Vertigo tour were among the few that emerged unscathed, and the Wall tour has only gained momentum as it heads to what looks like its own wall at the Plains of Abraham in Quebec City on July 21.

More than 150 shows in, Waters shows no signs of weariness and, nearly 20 years since his last record of original material, even seems ready to record a new album. Billboard talked to Waters about all of this and much more.

Throughout your career you’ve been an artist who looks forward and explores. So what is it about The Wall that was worth such attention and reassessment, particularly on this level?

All those years ago when I wrote this piece, I thought it was about me, and about feelings that I had about my Dad being killed at Anzio [in Italy during World War II], how much I missed him, and the fact that I’d made some really poor choices in relationships with women – all of that crap. Which it was.

But in the intervening 33 years, I’ve realized that because of the theatrical construction of the “wall” – which was an idea that I had back in ’77 because of my disaffection with big audiences and stadiums and all that – the power of the metaphor lends the story a much more universal vision and appeal. So I’ve come to realize it’s not about me – it’s about anybody that has suffered the loss of a loved one in some kind of conflict, whether it be war or something else. It’s about the problems we all face with errant authority, or all the difficulties we all have in relationships with one another, whether they’re sexual relationships or political/international relationships.

That excited me about revisiting the piece, and in this most recent incarnation of it making a version that would work in stadiums and ballparks and football stadiums, which is ironic, because my starting point was my disaffection with that situation. But I’ve come to realize that not only does it work in big spaces, its appeal is such that people in big spaces feel intimately connected with the message. I’m sorry, this is a long and complex answer, but it’s a good question.

In the second act, I sing “Vera” walking down steps at the bottom of the stage, and in the last verse of “Vera,” I’m just behind the curtain of the stage, and I actually step out and sing the last verse – “Vera, Vera, what has become of you?” – and nobody’s looking at me, they’re all looking at the screen: a young girl in a classroom meeting her father who’s just come back from Iraq or Afghanistan or somewhere. And as I sing the words, “Does anybody else feel the way I do?” I see lots of lips in the audience moving, and I know that it’s not just anybody else that feels the way I do. They all feel the way I do. It’s just the reality of living a life where those feelings get expression and can affect governments and foreign policy. There is a wall between us and the realizing of our dream of peace, and that is what the show is currently about.

Pink isn’t a character that’s ever particularly happy, and I presume you were struggling with certain things when you wrote that character –

– but now you seem like a happy guy. So do you still relate to Pink?

I feel much less of a victim now. I’ve taken control of my life. I’m capable now, 30 years older and a little bit wiser, of resolving a lot of the issues that I wasn’t capable of resolving at the time.

You’ve said that the loss of a father is the “central prop” on which “The Wall” stands. That angle of it, as I know, doesn’t go away. You live with it.

You live with it. But if it’s in any sense a gift – and I may get a bit wobbly here, because it means a lot to me – the gift is it encourages us to empathize with others.

I don’t know if you know or not, but we have 20 vets we give tickets to every night, and they come backstage at halftime, so I spend most of my 25-minute break with them. I sign photographs, and we talk a bit, but we never talk politics, because that would be entirely counterproductive. But somehow they get that, whatever our politics might be, that I empathize with their situation. I don’t invite them backstage because I applaud American foreign policy or because I’m jingoistic. I invite them backstage because I feel that to some extent I understand not only their plight – a lot of them have been wounded physically, very badly, but also been mentally scarred – but also that their families suffer, and they suffer in the same way that I suffered as a kid.

There was one guy about 70 or 80 shows ago, he was an older guy, a Vietnam guy, he stood back and he didn’t want a photograph or an autograph, but I noticed him and he just watched me. And when I was leaving the room, he just sort of stopped me, so I paused for a minute, I was just about to go back onstage. He looked me in the eye and he said to me, “Your father would be proud of you.” And I was fucked. I couldn’t speak. It was such a weird, emotional moment. I kind of swallowed a couple of times, and then I went on and we did “Hey You” and we carried on with the second half. Because, as you know, “the show must go on.” But it was deeply moving, and it made a sort of family connection.

Touring with such a mega-production, artful as it is, represents what you said were the initial circumstances that inspired it. It’s clear the irony of that isn’t lost on you.

No, the irony is not lost on me. But I feel I’ve transcended the problems of the wall between me and the audience, so the piece is rock’n’roll theater at the highest level, and it expresses the existence of all the other walls that I’ve talked about: the walls of media, the walls of government, the walls of religion, the walls of all kinds of extremism, and all those walls that exist between human beings. It very powerfully tells the message.

The song on “Dark Side of the Moon,” to which Rick [Wright] wrote beautiful music and I wrote the song on top of it, “Us and Them,” it’s a very simple song but it expresses how I feel about the disconnect between “us and them” very eloquently. My position is that there is no “us and them.” The difference between “us and them” is an accident of birth, it’s geographical. So whether we are a radical Muslim or a crazed right-wing Christian extremist somewhere in the Midwest depends entirely on where we were born and what our parents taught us.

That’s assuming that you don’t think there’s a huge plan, which I don’t believe in, which I’m sure you already know. If there was a plan, in my view, if God had figured all this out and done all this, he would not be creating Muslim extremists in Saudi Arabia and born-again extremists in Kansas. This would not be the sign of his handiwork. It’s the differential between all these extreme positions that leads me to suppose that there is no guiding hand.

Obviously technology improved a lot since the last time you staged “The Wall,” and you’ve surely learned much about what the current capabilities are on the “Dark Side of the Moon” tour in 2006-07. But is there anything that you visualized that ultimately you couldn’t pull off?

In this show, no. I can conceptualize things, but it’s all my technical people, like Sean Evans who is the designer, or Richard Turner who does the projections. I won’t go on mentioning names because they’re all very talented people and there are very many of them. So when I say to them, “Can this be done?,” they go [long intake of breath], “Yeah, maybe.” And then we try and do it, and we succeed and we fail. But, by and large, there’s somebody on my team that knows the answer to any question I can ask them. I have the most amazing team that anybody can imagine. I hate to sound boastful. Not that we’re exclusive, but we’re a very close family, me and everybody on the road with me.

It’s not cheap what you’re staging, and it necessitates a certain ticket price, but you could probably charge double, especially on the high end. Is keeping pricing conservative important to you?

Well, it used to be. I confess on this tour it hasn’t been, because it was a huge risk to take. For many years I used to say, “I’m not charging anyone more than $50 or $60. That’s enough!” And I had teams and teams of people lining up to scream at me, “Are you fucking insane? You’re just giving money to the scalpers!” This show, I know the tickets are really expensive and [I wish] there was a way around it, with me still making a decent amount, because I don’t want to work for nothing. What’s interesting about this is there’s no way that it could have worked without us going back indoors as well. Outdoors, it’s a model that fails, because of the expenses. Anybody that goes to one of the outdoor shows is getting an amazing deal, because the outdoor shows are so expensive that there’s no way I could do a tour of only ballparks and football stadiums.

There are 12 performers including you, and this is a real rock’n’roll band at this point.

Yeah, and we’re a good band. They’re all great, all of them. With some of the grumpy commentators, very often the reviews will say, “Oh, it took four people to replace Dave Gilmour .” No, it didn’t. From when we did the shows before, I now have one extra body onstage. There were always two bass players, there was me and Andy Bown. There were always two keyboard players, Pete Woods and Rick Wright . There were always two guitar players, Snowy White and David Gilmour. The only thing that’s been added is one extra vocalist, because Dave Kilminster, the extra guitar player, can’t sing Dave’s vocal parts, so I got Robbie in to sing Dave’s parts. So there’s only one body there that wasn’t there before. This is the same lineup exactly as ’79 and ’80, with one added set of pipes, and what a beautiful set of pipes Robbie Wyckoff has.

What did you learn early on about how the show would play out?

I can remember it like it was yesterday – I was making a lot of mistakes when we went to Toronto for the first gig back in September 2010. From that Canadian audience, it’s been the same everywhere we’ve been all over the world. People just get it. I started work with Sean Evans; Andy Jennison, my editor; and me in November 2009. We went into an editing suite in New York, and I said, “The first thing we do is put a blackboard on the wall and write down the names of all the songs with blank spaces underneath them, and we will figure out the show.” And we did. It took about 10 months – really backbreaking but very satisfying work trying to figure out how to get to the first gig. Chris Kansy and all the carpenters who have been with me since then, they were in a little arena in Wilkes-Barre [Pa.] for eight weeks figuring out how to build the wall, and Richard Turner and his team figuring out how to actually, technically make it work. And it didn’t happen by accident. They’re all very talented and accomplished people, and that’s what makes it satisfying for us in the circus family.

Billboard is in many ways about the intersection of art and commerce –

– and this tour works so well on both ends of it. It’s arguably the highest level of art ever staged for an arena rock show, and it’s also one of the most successful tours ever in terms of gross, a top 10 moneymaker. Is that the balance you seek, to achieve high art and make it work as a business in the process?

Listen, if you do that, and if that’s what I’ve done, then I’ve lucked out big time, because you can’t plan that. I can’t plan to do anything except do the best that I can, and if the success happens, then I’ve lucked out. That’s a good thing. But if I see in my audience when I sing, “Does anybody else in here feel the way I do?,” and I see the response, empathizing with others in the way that the best part of me does, well, then, I’m very happy to be communicating those thoughts and feelings with others, and that’s extraordinarily lucky as well. This tour may gross a lot of money – whatever money I get I tend to spend on the next project or whatever – but I get an enormous reward from the work itself.

Has your backstage rider changed from the 1980 tour?

I’ve no idea what my rider says. I wouldn’t dream of looking at it. Occasionally I might say, “What’s all this shit doing in my room? I don’t need any of this crap,” if it’s 10 bottles of wine or something like that. If I have some guests, we might need a bottle of wine after the show, but I don’t need this crap, take it away.

What about in 1980?

I can’t remember! I have no idea. I remember doing the shows – they were a nightmare. Everybody would tell you exactly the same. I remember Earls Court [in London]. We had separate [trailers] as dressing rooms – the four of us, we had one each – and they were circled like pioneers in covered wagons, and all the doors faced outward. Isn’t that great? There was so little community by then.

And that’s not to knock any of us. We just weren’t together anymore, that was all. David, Rick and Nick [Mason] and I were no longer together, so we faced outward. We did the work, and the work wasn’t bad. I still own all the film of those shows, which I’ve been editing a bit and I might even release it at some point. Or when I do the Blu-ray or theatrical release of this thing I might give away the 1980 shows as a side issue. I’m not sure what I’ll do.

We’d finished as a group then. There was nothing creative going on at all. What we were doing on that tour was we were performing this thing that I’d largely written. Dave contributed to it a little bit, and so did [co-producer] Bob Ezrin, to “The Trial.” But mainly it was something I’d written that the four of us were performing, because we hadn’t quite arrived at the point where we were brave enough to not be together anymore. And we eventually arrived there.

There’s nothing wrong with any of that. There’s no guilt or shame involved in any of it. It’s an organic thing. We eventually, a few years later, arrived at a place where we realized, “Wow, this is not healthy anymore. We shouldn’t be doing this.” So I find it so weird that there are still fans out there. I’ve seen them all over my tour Facebook page: “Oh, if only you’d get back together with Dave and Nick and have a Pink Floyd tour.” Are you fucking insane? How dumb is it that they would even consider that? There’s never been any question of that since 1982. Never! Not for a single second.

It’s love. They love those albums.

Fine. I love the albums, too. I think the work we did was really, really good. And they may well be better than anything I’ve done since, or any of us have done. That doesn’t matter. That’s not what’s important. The important thing is we did them and we were done. And that’s not to say I belittle the thing we did at Live 8 [in 2005], where the four of us got back together onstage and played for Geldof for the charity in Hyde Park. That was absolutely magical. I adored it. But I could never do a tour or consider it as anything other than, “Let’s get together for one day and play a few songs that everybody remembers and it will be great.” And it was great. I’m so glad we managed it before Rick died [in 2008]. It was very moving for me. I loved it.

Are you writing?

I am writing, and I think that my writing is finally going to bear fruit. I’ve been writing all along, but I haven’t made a record since 1992 – 20 years. I wrote a song on the road over the last couple of months, and just before we left South America I spent lunch with all the backing vocalists and I played them the song. They learned it and loved it, and we sat and sang it for about an hour-and-a-half. I think it may be the catalyst for at least one more record. I’m very enthusiastic about the idea of making a record based around this idea in this song.

Does this song have a name?

[long pause] It might have. I’m not sure we’d want to publish it at the moment. Everything that I’ve said to you in this interview is what it’s about. Maybe with specific reference to whether or not there’s a “guiding hand.” And I’m not saying I’m making a neo-atheist record. I’m not. I’m making a record about my concerns about empathy, but certainly within the context of religious extremism.

That’s interesting. Why not just be a bass player in a rock’n’roll band?

[laughs] You know, funny enough, playing bass in a rock’n’roll band is not a bad gig. For years and years I never really considered myself in those terms, because I was always more interested in ideas and writing and thinking and visual aspects. G.E. Smith, bless him, who I’ve only known for a few years but who’s on the road with me now, the other day he said to me, “You’re a fucking great bass player.” I thought, “Wow, I love that.” Eric [Clapton] said that to me about 20 years ago, so I’ve got two now. But it’s taken me a long time to accept that I have a bit of a talent for that as well. But anybody that does that, whether they do it professionally or whatever the instrument, I would encourage them to always play instruments with other people. Because to play in a group is just so satisfying.••••

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Roger Waters: The Wall

Details one of the most elaborately staged theatrical productions in music history as Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters performs the band's critically acclaimed album The Wall in its entirety... Read all Details one of the most elaborately staged theatrical productions in music history as Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters performs the band's critically acclaimed album The Wall in its entirety. Details one of the most elaborately staged theatrical productions in music history as Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters performs the band's critically acclaimed album The Wall in its entirety.

• Roger Waters
• Dave Kilminster
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• Trivia Roger Waters told that the greatest audience was in the concert of Istanbul. However, this concert was not filmed for this movie, because the decision of which concerts will be filmed is made before gigs occurring.
• Goofs At the final war memorial, Roger sits down with his bag beside him. He then moves to sit on a different memorial with his horn leaving his bag behind. In the new location, one camera angle incorrectly shows a bag beside him while another shows no bag.

Roger Waters : On the tour, I invite about 20 wounded veterans to the show each night. There was one guy. And he just nodded, and then he put his hand out, and I grabbed his hand like that to shake his hand, and he wouldn't let go of my hand. So I thought: "Okay, he obviously wants to say something." And he stood there and looked at me straight in the eyes. Very kind of weird, piercing look. And then he said..."Your father would be proud of you." And it was a very weird moment. I just... I just sort of turned to jelly, really. And I felt myself welling up. I'll never forget him.

• Connections References Pink Floyd: The Wall (1982)

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• September 29, 2015 (United States)
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Roger Waters Performing The Wall | 12/3/2010

Article contributed by robert | published on wednesday, december 8, 2010.

It was a night to remember in Oakland, December 3, 2010, the night Roger Waters was slated to play Pink Floyd’s historic album The Wall in its entirety. The Oracle Arena in Oakland was packed to maximum capacity, with standing room only. Fans around me were telling old stories of seeing Roger Waters on the original Wall tour that went so over-budget the Pink Floyd had to call it quits after only a few select shows. A recent article in Rolling Stone pointed out that Waters and the band members were also at each other’s throats and could not stand the sight of each other, which made canceling the gigs all the more necessary. “The shows lost money at every date — tickets were around $12 — and the band was falling apart. They were getting to the point where they couldn't stand the sight of each other," says Mark Fisher , the architect who built both the 1980 and the 2010 versions of the tour (and also worked on the "spaceship" stage for U2's 360U Tour). "It was all too convenient that they got to declare that the whole thing was a turkey and way too expensive and walk away from it on those grounds," reported Rolling Stone .

The show began promptly at 8 pm with Waters stomping onstage wearing all black, and with his silvery hair, large six-foot-three frame, and pale English/Welsh demeanor creating a dominating stage presence. He asked the crowd a question as the music of “In the Flesh” pounded its intro, “So you thought you might like to go to the show Tell me is something alluding you such as: Is this not what you expected to see? If you want to find out what’s behind these cold eyes, you’ll just have to crawl your way through this disguise.” The crowd went completely wild during this segment cheers were so loud you could hear them over the loudspeakers. It almost felt like a Pink Floyd reunion. The fans did not seem to harbor any of their usual Waters contempt, as they did for a long time after Roger attempted to sue Floyd’s vocalist/guitarist David Gilmour , his former best friend and writing contributor during Pink Floyd’s peak years, over the rights to the name Pink Floyd . Waters wanted to win the rights in order to break Floyd up for good, while Gilmour wished to continue the band without Waters in the picture but keeping the original members drummer Nick Mason and keyboardist Richard Wright . Maybe the audience mood was enthusiastic because Waters lost the lawsuit and now seems to have temporarily buried the hatchet with Gilmour . Although with the death of Richard Wright in 2008 a Pink Floyd reunion seems rather unlikely.

Waters nailed through the rest of the first set with ease. As he said in a recent Rolling Stone interview, he considers The Wall to be the defining work of his career and was determined to make it the best show he could with his on stage theatrics. The show included the construction of a real 36-foot-high wall that would stand until the end of the show when it would be knocked down. Giant puppets emerged from behind the wall at the Oracle as “Another Brick in the Wall Part 1,” was played, and the incredible digital lighting animation went crazy as schoolgirls dressed in full outfits came out with nuns following them waving little sticks and barking orders. After the song Waters said it represented his life in the British school system, where instead of encouraging him to do whatever he wanted in pursuing his goals, the teachers he had told him he was incapable and would never achieve the things he desired. Waters also dedicated the song “Mother” to his mother, who was a strong presence in his life, especially when he never really knew his Father, who was killed during World War II.

The first set hit its peak around the time of “Young Lust,” as lace dancers came onstage and the original animation of Gerald Scarfe -for The Wall film (1980) that was released at the same time as the album-was available for viewing on the stage’s wall screen. By this point Waters and his band were no longer visible as they were behind the actual wall playing music.

It was not until after “Goodbye Cruel World” and intermission that Waters was visible again. The song was “Hey You,” and despite not being the original singer on most of the track (that was David Gilmour), Waters captured it quite well. Singing with deep passion, “Hey you out there beyond the wall, breaking bottles in the hall can you help me, hey you don’t tell me there is no hope at all. United we stand. Divided we fall.”

The second set highlights were “Comfortably Numb,” which featured the lead guitarist being hoisted above the wall into the rafters on a mechanical stairwell. The solo he played was blistering and reminiscent of David Gilmour’s gem from The Wall album. Waters meanwhile was at the bottom of the wall clawing at it in a crazy maniacal manner as if he was the character Pink in the movie. I sat in my seat and wondered if some of it was theatrics, or was this the real Roger Waters , now an old man but still in the same place trying to crawl his way out of the deepest trenches of the wall, “Comfortably Numb” in the process.

Waters received some of his biggest applause of the night after “Comfortably Numb,” and the show continued with “The Show Must Go On,” a short, mesmerizing passage on the album about the loss of innocence with rock stardom. “Take me down,” Waters pleaded with the crowd “I didn’t mean for them to take my soul, am I too old, is it too late. Where has the feeling gone? Will I remember this song?” This song merged into “In the Flesh Part II,” where the lights shone on people and Waters shouted, “Are there any queers in the house tonight? That one does not look right get him against the wall! Against the wall! And that one is Jewish! And that one is a cool! And that one is smoking a joint! And another with spots! If I’d have my way I’d have you shot!”

Next up came “Run Like Hell,” which set The Oracle ablaze again. Waters snarled into the microphone with his heavy British accent, “This is for all the paranoid people in Oakland.” The song is all about feeling that people are after you, and the only solution for escape is to constantly be on the run like a fugitive.

The heavy animation of “The Trial” brought life to the theatrics of Gerald Scarfe , with his little characters shouting prolific lyrics at each other that symbolize everything about The Wall : “You little shit you’re in it now, I hope they throw away the key. You should have talked to me more often then you did. But no, you had to your own way. Have you broken any homes up lately? Crazy over the rainbow, I’m crazy. Bars in the window. There must have been a door there in the wall.”

The set closed with “Outside The Wall,” as Waters sang the final words in a soft but bitter British intonation, “The bleeding hearts and artists make their stand. And when they’ve given you their all. Some stagger and tether, after all it’s not easy. Banging your head against a wall.” With that Roger Waters thanked everyone in Oakland for attending the show and paying their respects to the historic album The Wall, which after over 30 million albums sold, and crossing over to mainstream, is likely never to be forgotten. At the end of the show Waters pointed out that he is not the man who wrote The Wall . “The man who wrote The Wall , might have been me, but that man no longer exists inside me. That man was bitter, spiteful, and full of hate. I look back on it now and I understand where I was coming from, but with age I have become more of a calm person.”

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Roger Waters The Wall Tour Profile

RESURRECTING THE ALBUM WITH A LIVE TWIST

By Sarah Benzuly

Roger Waters (far right) performing with the rest of “The Wall” band

Photos: Steve Jennings

It’s been 30 years since Roger Waters penned Pink Floyd’s mind-blowing album The Wall . Fast-forward to today, and the same political issues, fear and stress on global matters that formed the basis of that album are still quite relevant—and Waters demonstrates this in his jaw-dropping, two-hour (with half-hour intermission) show. The double-disc album—played in its entirety on this tour—concentrates on the walls people build around themselves for survival. While this may seem like a purely philosophical topic, Waters also brings it into physical reality: By the time the first-half of his performance is complete, a 36-foot wall made of cardboard boxes has been erected onstage. Of course, the wall comes crashing down at the end of the second-half. As each box is put into its place, the audience’s view of the band and Waters is slowly blurred out. Each box also displays occasionally chaotic video images, some of which include pictures of armed forces casualties, snippets from the original The Wall video, and B-52 bombers dropping crosses, stars of David, Islamic crescents and logos of Shell Oil and Mercedes Benz.

It’s a visually stunning experience with top-notch sound, helped out by the incredible backing band: guitarists Dave Kilminster, G.E. Smith and Snowy White; background vocalists Mark Lennon, Michael Lennon, Kipp Lennon and Jon Joyce; keyboardists Harry Waters—Waters’ son—and Jon Carin; drummer Graham Broad; and, of course, Waters on bass. Taking care of David Gilmour’s vocal parts is second lead singer Robbie Wyckoff.

FOH engineer/tour manager Trip Khalaf (right) with crew chief/system engineer Robert Wiebel

Tour manager/front-of-house engineer Trip Khalaf has been mixing for Waters since 1999, watching the artist become more comfortable in the limelight. “In 1999, he hadn’t done a show in 10 years and nobody knew what to do with it,” Khalaf recalls. “It was odd because Pink Floyd always tried to avoid the spotlight, so no one really knew who was in the band, except for the real diehards. It has been interesting watching it grow to what it is now.”

ANALOG RULES AT FOH For this run of 94 dates, Khalaf is manning three boards: a Midas XL4 to handle the stereo P.A. (more on that later), another XL4 to cover the band and the end of the second-half, and a Yamaha PM5D for surrounds and effects. “For the analog side of it, it’s because of the number of inputs,” Khalaf says. “There are two bands, really. The front XL4 does all of the main stage—which is behind the wall—and the one on the left [another XL4] does all of the surrogate band, the forestage.” Inside the effects rack are Lexicon 480s and PCM91s, TC Electronic D-Twos, an H3000, a Helicon vocal double, Aphex gates on drums, Crane Song STC8 on basses, TLA100s on vocals and dbx 900 on background vocals. Why XL4s? Khalaf replies: “Because I’m tired of pretending that digital audio sounds as good as analog. It doesn’t. This record was made when people cared deeply about sound quality. These days, that is not as important as the size of the video screen on your console. If it comes at me analog, it will stay analog.”

Those surround speakers are Clair R4s clustered in three configurations—left, right and rear—that handle the playback and sound effects, provided by playback engineer Mike McKnight. “They’re there so that there’s something happening for everybody,” says crew chief/system engineer Robert Wiebel. “We’ve had quite good luck with them; they sound good.” Adds Khalaf, “The Yamaha takes care of all the surround stuff, which comes from a hard disk operator [Mike McKnight]. We tried carrying around live pigeons to make pigeon noises but it didn’t work, so we put them on hard disk. [Laughs] It also gives me the opportunity because all of the effects are digital anyway; I just bring them back into the Yamaha and leave them all there. All of the surround effects need to be controlled all the time, mostly because the height of those surround clusters varies from building to building. I have the VCAs linked between the two XL4s so that I can more or less control that left-hand board from the main board.

Monitor tech/RF tech Kevin Kapler

“I actually have snapshots in the analog board using the VCAs and the mutes,” he continues. “But you have to turn up the guitar solos and maybe the drummer’s laying out a little bit. It’s mixing the show; things aren’t always the same every night. I always change my approach a little bit. ‘Okay, I mixed it this way last night and it was pretty good, but let’s feature this a little bit and pull it out.’ It’s a constant rethink where you are and reacting to different buildings. I’m trying to maintain the balance of the chaos that is with mixing any band. This one’s a bit less chaotic than most; actually, not that chaotic—they’re a great band.”

The forward-thrusting P.A. is a prototype Clair i5D. Explains Khalaf, who has been a senior engineer at Clair for the past 37 years: “We’re the guinea pig. I like it a lot; it’s a bit more coherent. The original i4 was one 18, four 10s and a couple of horns. There’s two philosophies to this. You can either put a lot of low end into the air, which really pisses off lighting designers, or you stack a bunch of sub-lows on the floor and beat the people in the first 10 rows half to death. Clair’s philosophy has always been to put as much of the low end in the air as you can and use the sub-lows simply as an add-on to move a bit of the air and couple more effectively with the floor. Putting all that stuff into one box gave us the opportunity to smooth out a lot of the anomalies with the original cabinets. The problem with it is that it’s big. We were a bit worried about it when we first started, but we found it’s smaller than a staging dolly, so no one really cared. I wouldn’t want to push one of those across a field in Montenegro…actually, keep me out of Montenegro.” In addition, there are eight i5s for side coverage, 12 B218 subs under the stage and eight FF2s as front-fills. All of this is powered by Crown analog amps.

ALL DIGITAL ON THE MONITOR FRONT Whereas FOH is a mostly-analog affair, monitor world maintains a purely digital approach. Monitor engineer Robin Fox mans a DiGiCo SD7, working with around 60 inputs for all 16 ear mixes (on JH Audio in-ears) and the 42 12AM Series 2 wedges; monitor amps are Lab.gruppen 20ks. Monitor tech/RF tech Kevin Kapler says that they are scanning for about 42 operating channels of wireless, though he calculates for about 54. Kapler uses a TTi handheld analyzer with an A04 8200 scanner. For the Sennheiser 2000 Series transmitters, he uses a Pro Wireless IE5 program to coordinate the frequencies, citing that the beauty of this system is that he can sync it.

Included in his wireless roundup are the mic models, which include a Shure U4D (though both Waters and Wyckoff will also sing through a hard-wired 58) and wireless Shure mics for background vocals. “We’ve got about a half-dozen wireless just for the acoustic instruments,” Kapler adds. “This includes all the wireless for the end of the show, where the musicians will come out with an accordion, ukulele, et cetera.”

While Waters is very involved in the sound of his show (they record a DVD each night that he’ll review for any tweaks; in fact, Khalaf says they haven’t nailed down the arrangements quite yet), the artist and FOH engineer have a great working relationship that allows Waters to do what he does best and to give Khalaf the air to mix the show as he sees fit. “He’s absolutely involved, but the great thing about being a front-of-house engineer in the final analysis is that the artist has no idea what you’re doing out there; they just have to trust you,” Khalaf says. “He lets me do what I want to do. This is one of the last great traditional rock ’n’ roll tours. I sometimes wonder if I’ll ever be able to do something this rewarding again.”

Sarah Benzuly is

’s managing editor.

February 1, 2011

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• The Best of Pink Floyd  ( 5 )
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• The Wall Live  ( 223 )
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Average setlist for tour: The Wall Live

• In the Flesh? ( Pink Floyd  song) Play Video
• The Thin Ice ( Pink Floyd  song) Play Video
• Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1 ( Pink Floyd  song) Play Video
• The Happiest Days of Our Lives ( Pink Floyd  song) Play Video
• Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2 ( Pink Floyd  song) Play Video
• The Ballad of Jean Charles de Menezes Play Video
• Mother ( Pink Floyd  song) Play Video
• Goodbye Blue Sky ( Pink Floyd  song) Play Video
• Empty Spaces ( Pink Floyd  song) Play Video
• What Shall We Do Now? ( Pink Floyd  song) Play Video
• Young Lust ( Pink Floyd  song) Play Video
• One of My Turns ( Pink Floyd  song) Play Video
• Don't Leave Me Now ( Pink Floyd  song) Play Video
• Another Brick in the Wall, Part 3 ( Pink Floyd  song) Play Video
• The Last Few Bricks ( Pink Floyd  song) Play Video
• Goodbye Cruel World ( Pink Floyd  song) Play Video
• Hey You ( Pink Floyd  song) Play Video
• Is There Anybody Out There? ( Pink Floyd  song) Play Video
• Nobody Home ( Pink Floyd  song) Play Video
• Vera ( Pink Floyd  song) Play Video
• Bring the Boys Back Home ( Pink Floyd  song) Play Video
• Comfortably Numb ( Pink Floyd  song) Play Video
• The Show Must Go On ( Pink Floyd  song) Play Video
• In the Flesh ( Pink Floyd  song) Play Video
• Run Like Hell ( Pink Floyd  song) Play Video
• Waiting for the Worms ( Pink Floyd  song) Play Video
• Stop ( Pink Floyd  song) Play Video
• The Trial ( Pink Floyd  song) Play Video
• Outside the Wall ( Pink Floyd  song) Play Video

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How Roger Waters rebuilt The Wall

$15 million, 424 bricks, 56 dates: How Roger Waters took Pink Floyd's The Wall and turned it into the greatest show on Earth

Is there anybody out there?

Yes. Hundreds of people, actually, milling around outside the Atlantico Pavilion in Lisbon. They’re here for the second European date of the biggest and most expensively staged tour of the year: Roger Waters ’ revival of The Wall , more than three decades after its original staging.

Tonight’s show is a sell-out, like most of the 50-plus dates on this leg. By the time tour finishes, around a million people will have watched an 11-metre high, 70-metre wide wall being built between them and the man they’ve come to see. The band on stage will continue to play a 32-year old album behind that wall until the end of the show, when the whole edifice will come tumbling down. A similar number of people have a already seen the show in North America last autumn. Now, as then, no one is likely to complain about not being able to see the band during the show.

The Wall is a legend in the annals of live rock music , partly because it was such a alien concept and partly because Pink Floyd , the band led by Waters at that time, performed the show just 29 times, in four cities – LA, New York, London and Dusseldorf – in 1980 and 1981. It would be the last time Waters and Pink Floyd played together until they reunited for Live 8 in 2005.

Pink Floyd never showed any interest in performing The Wall after Waters departed and guitarist David Gilmour took the helm. Waters embarked on a solo career, although he was tempted into staging a grandiose Wall in 1990 in Berlin with an all-star cast to celebrate the fall of another even more famous wall.

His career stalled soon afterwards, although it was revived at the turn of the millennium with the In The Flesh world tour and has prospered since. But there was no indication that he was planning to revisit The Wall . As he says: “It was incredibly difficult to stage back in 1980 and we lost a lot of money doing it.”

Then in April last year Waters announced that he was taking The Wall on a world tour.

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“Well, I did a tour a couple of years back where I did the whole of Dark Side Of The Moon ,” he explains now. “I had been reluctant to take that piece and re-do it. But it worked well. So when I’d recovered from that I thought maybe I had one more in me. My fiancé said that maybe I should do The Wall . I said I couldn’t. But it wouldn’t go away…”

Mark Fisher is mildly exasperated. As the stage designer for both the original The Wall tour and this 21st-century update, he’s heard all the talk of this new show being the sort of thing they could only dream about 30 years ago.

“It’s the same bloody wall,” he says with a sigh. “Identical. It’s frustrating that people think we’re doing something that we could not have done in 1980. The engineering behind the building of the wall – the platforms that the men go up and down on to build the wall, the stabilising masts that go up inside the wall to stop it falling over, and the cardboard bricks themselves – are exactly what I designed back in 1980. The only things that are different are connected with how they are controlled. [In 1980] I sat behind the stage with a bank of switches and moved things up and down. Now we have a computer that does the same thing and a man that watches the computer.”

As a young architecture student, the original The Wall production was Fisher’s first major design for a rock show. It was the springboard for a career as a self-styled ‘event architect’ that has seen him become the in-house stage designer on globetrotting stadium tours by The Rolling Stones and U2, as well as the opening and closing ceremonies at the Beijing Olympics.

So when Waters started thinking of bringing back The Wall , Fisher was his first call. “He told me that it would be much easier to do now than then,” says Waters. “Technology had come a long way, and people spend a lot more money on tickets than they used to. He thought I could make the figures work, and maybe even come out of it with some gravy. So I thought, okay, let’s do it.”

Inside the empty arena the actual wall is still an imposing site – even part-built and unlit – jutting out from the upper tiers of each side and tapering down to the stage. It’s not just the height, it’s also the width: three-quarters the length of a football pitch. Behind and beneath the wall is a scaffolding warren jammed with motors, hydraulic pumps, lifts, platforms and passageways. Each piece has a diagram stuck on to show exactly where it fits. And then there are the piles of ‘bricks’ that arrived flat-packed and are assembled and waiting to be laid. (They tried making them out of plastic, but plastic cracks. So it was back to cardboard and white paint.)

The projectors have been focused, the band have sound-checked. Now there’s just an echoing, quiet calm. Everything that needed to be checked has been checked. At what used to be known as the sound desk and is now the production control centre, a couple of guys are tapping on keyboards while rows of screens flicker on standby…

The calm is broken when the venue’s doors open and groups of people run to the front of the stage and take up prime position. Unlike the American shows, the European shows are freestanding on the arena floor wherever possible. This means there’s no room for the dishevelled tramp who would wander up and down the aisles at American concerts, pushing a supermarket trolley and brandishing a placard saying ‘No thought control’, before being ushered out by a burly security guy just before the show began.

In the centre of the floor a skeleton staff are minding the control centre. Banks of screens flicker on standby, waiting to be activated. The stage is similarly quiet; there are no roadies making last-minute equipment checks or tapping microphones. Everything that needed to be checked was done earlier. The only untoward item is a tailor’s dummy placed centre stage. The PA is playing a succession of Bob Dylan songs. This is the calm before the choreographed multi-media barrage is unleashed.

The Wall famously started with a gob. During the last show of Pink Floyd’s Animals tour at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium, Waters spat at a fan who was yelling drunkenly for the band to play Careful With That Axe Eugene . Afterwards Waters was so appalled by his behaviour that he sketched out the idea of a show with the band playing behind a wall to express his own feeling of alienation from the audience. He reminded the audience of the incident when the Wall tour reached Montreal’s Bell Centre last October.

“When I wrote it, it was mainly about me, a little bit about Syd Barrett, but by and large it’s about fear,” he says. “It’s about a frightened person. Fear makes you defensive, and when you’re defensive you start building defences and that could be seen as a wall.”

It has always been assumed that the original production of The Wall , which included a crashing Stuka dive bomber and giant inflatable puppets to reinforce Waters’s bleak tale of alienation, paranoia, power and war was too complex to be toured. This is another thing that irks Mark Fisher.

“The only thing that stopped it being toured in 1980 was the cost,” he says. “And it wasn’t that the show was that expensive, it was that tickets were cheap. The top price ticket at Earls Court was £8. At the O2 in May people are paying £65 to £85. That completely changes the economics of putting a touring show together.”

Fisher maintains that the ticket price reflects what the show is worth. “It allows you to spend a lot more on the hardware and the crew. We’ve spent the best part of $15 million [£9.4 million] putting this show on the road. Back in 1980 we spent about $2 million at most.”

Tour director Andrew Zweck is another veteran of the original Wall shows. He confirms that this is the biggest show Waters has put together. “There are 24 trucks parked outside,” he says backstage, with the air of someone who has spent decades keeping a close eye on the bigger picture. “There are 116 people on the road, which is more than double what we’ve had before. And that includes 14 carpenters who are just brick builders. The economics of it mean that we can now move the show overnight. The crew will be out of here by about three in the morning, and they’ll start work again around six or seven.”

While the wall itself has barely changed, other elements of the show have been greatly enhanced. The biggest advance has come with the projection. In 1980, three 35mm projectors struggled to beam Gerald Scarfe’s inimitable animations onto the wall in focus and without too much overlap. Now there are 15 HD-quality projectors pointed at the wall, with a bit-mapping grid that means that as soon as a brick is positioned on the wall it immediately becomes part of the projection. It’s a far cry from some of the early-80s shows that Mark Fisher remembers as “a mad race between the drug-crazed road crew and the band to see who could get to the intermission first”.

As Video Content Director, Sean Evans is in charge of projections. A youthful-looking, heavily tattooed American, he grew up listening to The Wall (“I know it inside-out”). Evans, Waters and editor Andy Jennison spent weeks working on ideas for the projections in an editing room.

“It was like being back at art college,” says Evans. “Right from the start Roger said: ‘I don’t want to do this as it was. I have no interest in not making this political. We have to modernise it and we have to bring a message.’”

Waters says the new show has developed from the story of one frightened man hiding behind the wall, to a more expansive look at the way nations and ideologies are divided from each other. “We are controlled by the powers that be who tell us we need to guard against the evil ones who are over there and different from us and who we must be frightened of,” he explains.

Part of the message included broadening the original album’s references to encompass other wars and acts of violence since then.

“Roger put a notice on his website asking for people to send in pictures and details of family members, civilian or military, killed in wars or terrorist acts,” says Evans. “We worked on it for months, and the first time I saw it with an audience even I welled up. During the intermission we put them all up on the wall. One night I saw a guy who’d obviously just seen a friend or relative on the wall, and he was just standing there sobbing.”

The wider message of The Wall is clear from the outset when, instead of a ‘surrogate’ Pink Floyd taking the stage and fooling the audience (the opening gambit of the original show), the PA booms out the dialogue from Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus where the Romans try to coerce the slaves into revealing the rebel leader, only to be met by a growing chorus of “I am Spartacus”.

That’s the cue for the heavy opening chords of In The Flesh? as Waters walks on and dons the long leather coat that has materialised on the tailor’s dummy. The song culminates in a bombast of old technology – lights, smoke, fireworks, and the dive-bombing plane crashing in flames – that softens you up for the barrage of images to come.

Gerald Scarfe’s remade inflatable puppets make their mark. The sylph-like wife now has a ghastly green allure (and a startling pudenda for those who are startled by that kind of thing), while the mother now cuts more of a beady, surveillance character as she scans the audience, which is reinforced by an equally inquisitive CCTV on the circular screen. Only the teacher has failed to move with the times. He may have a new jacket but he’s decidedly old-fashioned – it’s been a long time since canes were routinely swished in the classroom.

Getting Scarfe’s original animations to hold up against the new animations was another time-consuming task for Sean Evans and his team. “His stuff is legendary, you can’t mess with it. Fortunately Roger had the original film, so we were able to restore it from the best possible source, but it still took a lot of work to make it look good against the other stuff we were doing. Some of it, like the flower sequence, was actually made for the circular screen, so we extended the stems across the wall so it looked as if the flowers were coming from somewhere.”

Some of Scarfe’s other animations, such as the marching hammers, have been re-animated to fill the entire wall with a vivid brightness that borders on intimidating. Others, including the stems of the flowers, have been rendered in 3D. The projectors also make the whole edifice sway and buckle alarmingly. There are moments when you wonder if the animated trickery will upstage the climax of the show, when the wall comes crashing down.

“We’ve paced the effects so it all builds up to that point,” says Evans. “We thought about whether to add any effects to the wall as it falls. But actually it looks pretty spectacular from wherever you are in the arena, with all the smoke billowing out and stuff. But if you’re in the first five rows it feels like it’s gonna hit you. I’ve been in the pit a couple of times with a camera and gotten brained a couple of times. Those things are heavier than they look.”

Which is why, in these days of ludicrous litigation over the mildest inconvenience, a Health & Safety officer has been added to the tour payroll.

But what about the music? Waters’s current band includes guitarists Snowy White, Dave Kilminster and GE Smith, drummer Graham Broad, keyboard player John Carin and, on piano and Hammond organ, Waters’s son Harry.

Snowy White first played with Pink Floyd on their Animals tour in 1977, and he was part of the ‘surrogate’ band for the 1980 Wall shows. He has been a member of Waters’s band since 1999. And he’s happy to shed the non-committal omerta that hangs over most professional session musicians.

“This show is choreographed down to the second, because it wouldn’t work otherwise,” he explains. “The original was pretty tied down, too. People ask me if it’s boring playing exactly the same thing every night. And I thought it would be, but really it’s not. There’s a lotto think about while you’re on stage, and you’re trying to get it that little bit sweeter every night.”

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It was White who found Dave Kilminster, who takes on the ‘poisoned chalice’ of replicating David Gilmour’s epic guitar solo on Comfortably Numb . “Roger wants it just the way it is on record, and that’s a young man’s job,” White says. “I’m happy to let Dave get up on top of the wall.”

A large proportion of the Lisbon audience is surprisingly young (“They’ve been introduced to The Wall by their parents, who may in turn have been introduced to it by their parents,” says White). It’s something that makes the team behind it proud, although ultimately job satisfaction is almost as important as the cheque. Mark Fisher took particular pleasure in watching the US leg of The Wall running neck-and-neck with Lady Gaga in terms of revenue. “Roger is unambiguously about alienation, discrimination, anti-war. The audiences have been picking up on that. You’d be hard put to know what the fuck Lady Gaga is about.”

In fact Waters’s tour would eventually outstrip Gaga’s in terms of the money it made. “We were second only to Bon Jovi, who were playing stadiums,” says Andrew Zwick. “We were offered stadiums but Roger turned them down, even though it meant we needed to play another 16 dates in America to meet the business plan. That was fine by me, too.”

Another recurring theme among the technical and creative crews is Waters’s continual attention to detail. Changes are still being made at the start of the European tour. Costumes have been altered, and the furniture in the hotel room that appears out of the wall in the second half of the show has been changed.

“That’s Roger’s trademark,” says Zweck. “He’s never satisfied. He wants to be involved in everything, every note, every image, the choreography. His fingerprints are all over The Wall .”

They were all over the original show, and the album, for that matter. It’s not as if Waters needed to reclaim The Wall , but the recognition after so long in the shadow of the band he quit must be gratifying. Mark Fisher can still remember the ignominy of Waters’s Radio KAOS tour playing to less than 500 people at Wembley Arena in 1987, and the following year Pink Floyd packed out the stadium next door.

While the original The Wall album will always be associated with Pink Floyd, it’s Waters who is clearly identified with the extraordinary success of the Wall tour. Significantly, he reasserts his authority over Comfortably Numb and Run Like Hell , the two songs with which Pink Floyd climaxed their sets in the 80s and 90s. Indeed David Gilmour’s appearance on top of the wall during Comfortably Numb was for many the high point of the original Wall production. But Waters sings the lyrics with real passion and despair and, as the guitar solo comes in, smashes his hand against the wall, which shatters, sending a collective gasp through the audience. It’s yet another gobsmacking moment.

And Waters turns the largely instrumental Run Like Hell into a dictator’s rally with waving flags, strutting feet and crossed-fist salutes. By the end of the song it’s difficult to believe that Waters didn’t orchestrate the Libyan uprising as a publicity stunt for the tour.

Almost as startling is Waters’s crowd-friendly demeanour, smiling, even making eye contact with fans down the front whenever he removes the long leather coat that he wears for his dictator’s role in the show. It’s a far cry from the remote, uncommunicative figure he cut for so long, not least in the original Wall shows.

“I’m completely different, and feel completely different about being on stage now than I did then,” he admits. “In the last 30 years I’ve come round to embracing the possibilities of that connection with the audience. Now I milk it mercilessly, just because it’s fun and it feels good. Whereas back then I was so fearful that when I was on stage I was the same as I was at a party – standing in a corner, not looking at anybody, smoking cigarettes and more or less saying: ‘Don’t come anywhere near me.’ Thank goodness I’ve grown up a bit since then. I like being on stage and enjoy the feeling of warmth – what’s not to like?”

This feature originally appeared in Classic Rock 158 .

Hugh Fielder has been writing about music for 47 years. Actually 58 if you include the essay he wrote about the Rolling Stones in exchange for taking time off school to see them at the Ipswich Gaumont in 1964. He was news editor of Sounds magazine from 1975 to 1992 and editor of Tower Records Top magazine from 1992 to 2001. Since then he has been freelance. He has interviewed the great, the good and the not so good and written books about some of them. His favourite possession is a piece of columnar basalt he brought back from Iceland.

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Roger Waters’ ‘The Wall’ Tour Documentary Premieres in Toronto

• By Daniel Kreps

Daniel Kreps

Roger Waters  celebrated his 71st birthday September 6th at the Toronto International Film Festival by attending the world premiere of his new documentary Roger Waters : The Wall . TIFF was the perfect venue for the former Pink Floyd  bassist to debut his film since The Wall Live tour actually began its run at Toronto’s Air Canada Centre on September 15, 2010, so Roger Waters: The Wall ‘s TIFF premiere was like coming full circle. Also, what better way to follow “Bill Murray Day”  than with a film that explores Waters’ epic tour from behind “the Wall.”

Longtime Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich is credited with “Sound” in Roger Waters: The Wall , along with veteran sound mixer Adam Scrivener. The documentary runs for 133 minutes – 12 minutes longer than the classic double-LP  itself – and was co-directed by Waters and Sean Evans, who was The Wall Tour’s creative director. Roger Waters: The Wall was filmed in three cities on two continents. So far, no release date has been announced for the documentary, but there will be two more Toronto screenings. Waters also revealed that his tour documentary could double as “an anti-war, protest film.” 

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Following the premiere, and after an impromptu serenade of “Happy Birthday” by the crowd, Waters conducted a Q&A session with audience members and was asked why Pink Floyd ‘s The Wall is so enduring. “I think people are sick and tired of being told that the most important thing in their life is commerce and the new this and the new that,” Waters said according to the Toronto Sun . “I think people are probably ready to go now, ‘Well, all of that rhetoric lead us to lob bombs over the top of the wall, that divides society ecologically, economically, philosophically and politically, from all our fellow human beings. And we no longer want to be told by our political leaders that they are scum and that we are great.’ So that I believe that it may be we’re no longer interested in the ‘us and them’ form of political philosophy that we’ve been fed on for the last couple of 1,000 years and that we may be ready to move into a new place.” All that, plus “Comfortably Numb” is awesome.

“I can’t top that tour,” Waters told Rolling Stone last November . “First of all, you have to accept the fact that I’m not going to live forever… You just have to accept that when you do something as enormous as that tour. The hardest thing in the world is thinking of something to do, so going and doing it is a reward in itself.”

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‘roger waters the wall’: toronto review.

Concert footage from the recent live tour of ‘The Wall’ is mixed with material showing a more personal journey taken by Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters in this documentary

By Leslie Felperin

Leslie Felperin

Contributing Film Critic

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The documentary Roger Waters The Wall seamlessly stitches together footage from several different 2013 performances of the live stadium show in which ex- Pink Floyd member Roger Waters and his band played music from the 1979 album The Wall . Interspersed footage shows Waters taking a road trip across Europe to visit war memorials and graves personally significant to him. The film’s title may lack an apostrophe after the “s” in “Waters,” but there’s no mistaking to whom all of this belongs.

As a film, it provides a useful service to fans and Wall -curious viewers who haven’t been able to attend the spectacular show — a jaw-dropping extravaganza involving light projections and massive puppets, during which a huge wall is constructed onstage and demolished over the course of an evening. But even for admirers of the music, the whole thing comes across as one big ego trip for its co-director/screenwriter/composer/star/performer, a man famously zealous about asserting rights over his intellectual property against his former bandmates. Given the music’s huge fan base, there’s no doubt the package will bank better-than-average revenue for a rock doc from theatrical distribution and ancillary sales.   

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The material from the original double-LP concept album, almost entirely written by Waters, has already been commemorated on film twice. First came the 1982 movie Pink Floyd The Wall (another grammarian-infuriating, apostrophe-free title) directed by Alan Parker with animations by Gerald Scarfe and Bob Geldof as the protagonist Pink, a barmy confection that’s become a cult classic. Then, in 1990, Waters and co-director Ken O’Neill made a concert-doc, The Wall: Live in Berlin , featuring an amazing all-star supporting cast of musicians, from Cyndi Lauper to Van Morrison , covering the songs from the album on a site where the recently dismantled Berlin Wall once stood.

By all accounts, the most recent iteration of the 2010-2013 Wall Live stage show used even more elaborate stagecraft than earlier versions, deploying state-of-the-art equipment to turn the wall built throughout the performance into a huge screen on which footage from the Parker film, archive material and new animations are projected, while ginormous inflatable puppets based on Scarfe’s designs and fireworks make pop-up appearances throughout. As is standard practice now at stadium concerts, cameramen onstage film the musicians at closer quarters for the projections, and these seem to match up to cutaways in the film. It’s conspicuous how often the close-ups feature Waters’ mug but very seldom the faces of anyone else from the band. Once in a while, there will be a zoom-in on the fingers of ace guitarists Dave Kilminster , Snowy White , or  G.E. Smith  during a solo, for instance, but even then it feels begrudging.

Like the lyrics of the record itself, a self-serving, often misogynist album  à clef based on Waters’ own biography and issues, the film is really all about him: his pain over the WWII death of the father he never knew, his paranoia, his bad marriage, his talent (he duets with projected, 1980 footage of himself at one point) and, above all, his grandiose feelings of empathy for victims of war. One new montage shows snapshots of people killed in conflicts from the seven continents of the world, presumably to make the headline-grabbing point that war is bad. Elsewhere, one animation shows war planes dropping crosses, Stars of David, and hammers-and-sickles, along with Chevron and Mercedes-Benz logos (clearly, the latter companies weren’t tour sponsors). There’s a sense that this woolly, liberal anti-war rhetoric is, however sincere, partly there to distract from the misogyny, misanthropy, and sodden self-pity of the original lyrics.

Unfortunately, there are no such distracting if pleasantly bombastic pyrotechnics in the road-trip interludes. This stuff is all just Waters, shown tooling about the countryside in his vintage Bentley, hanging out with his children (who look uncomfortable), playing mournful tunes at cemeteries, or (clearly only half) listening to film director Peter Medak discuss his own war-torn childhood in Hungary. It’s excruciatingly self-indulgent material that someone should have persuaded Rogers to leave on the cutting-room floor, especially given the film runs a numbing 133 minutes. Perhaps it might have been interesting, if running time wasn’t an issue, to have interviewed people like Sean Evans, both the film’s co-director and the tour’s creative director, about the challenges inherent in putting on such a spectacular — or maybe even some of the other musicians. But no, none of that. Sharing credit is not Waters’ gig.

Production companies: A Rue 21 Productions presentation

Cast:  Roger Waters, Dave Kilminster, Snowy White, GE Smith, Jon Carin, Harry Waters, Graham Broad, Robbie Wyckoff, Jon Joyce, Pat Lennon, Mark Lennon, Kipp Lennon, India Waters, Jack Waters, Willa Rawlinson, Peter Medak

Directors/Screenwriters: Roger Waters, Sean Evans

Producers: Roger Waters, Clare Spencer

Executive producer: Mark Fenwick

Director of photography: Brett Turnbull

Editor: Katharine McQuerrey

Music: Roger Waters

Sales: Mister Smith Entertainment

No rating, 133 minutes

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David Gilmour says talking about Roger Waters is “boring”

"It’s something I’ll talk about one day"

David Gilmour has said that he finds it “boring” talking about former Pink Floyd bandmate Roger Waters .

The musicians have been on frosty terms for a decades now, with Gilmour most recently attacking Waters with claims of anti-semitism earlier this year.

Now, in a new interview with Rolling Stone , Gilmour was asked about where things currently stand between the pair, with the publication noting how in 2010 they played a charity show together , before he made an appearance at Waters’ ‘The Wall’ tour in 2011 – yet now they are not on speaking terms.

“Well, it’s something I’ll talk about one day, but I’m not going to talk about that right now. It’s boring. It’s over,” the guitarist replied.

“As I said before, he left our pop group when I was in my 30s, and I’m a pretty old chap now, and the relevance of it is not there. I don’t really know his work since. So I don’t have anything to say on the topic.”

Relations between the pair have been particularly tense in the public eye over the last year, after Gilmour’s wife Polly Samson shared a tweet in which she accused Waters of being “anti-Semitic to [his] rotten core” .

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She continued: “Also a Putin apologist and a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching, misogynistic, sick-with-envy, megalomaniac. Enough of your nonsense.”

Gilmour re-shared Samson’s tweet, adding that “every word [is] demonstrably true”.

Rolling Stone told the guitarist that they both “must known it was going to create an uproar” when they sent the tweets.

“People talk about the battle, but to me it’s a one-way thing that’s been going on since he left with different levels of intensity, and Polly felt she had to say her piece,” Gilmour replied. “I agreed with her piece and said so. Again, that’s all. I don’t really have anything extra to add to this, any other lights to shine on that.”

Every word demonstrably true https://t.co/KWk4I3bMTN — David Gilmour (@davidgilmour) February 6, 2023

Shortly before Gilmour’s post, Waters issued a statement in which he called Samson’s comments “incendiary and wildly inaccurate” and said he “refutes [them] entirely”. He added that he is currently “taking advice as to his position” regarding the claims.

Their comments came after Waters was interviewed by German newspaper Berliner Zeitung , in which he discussed his views on Israel and the Russian-Ukraine war.

According to a translated version of the interview on Waters’ site , the musician was at one point asked if he still believed – as he had previously said – that the state of Israel was comparable to Nazi Germany. “Yes, of course,” he replied. “The Israelis are committing genocide. Just like Great Britain did during our colonial period.”

Waters also discussed his views  further in a 2022 interview with  Rolling Stone , describing Israel as “a supremacist, settler colonialist project that operates a system of apartheid” for its continued occupation of Palestine.

He insisted he was “absolutely not antisemitic”, and argued that “saying Israel does not have a right to exist as an apartheid state, any more than South Africa did or anywhere else would, is not antisemitic”.

Last year, Gilmour also promoted a documentary on Roger Waters’ alleged anti-Semitism .

Meanwhile, the guitarist is set to release a new album on September 6 titled ‘Luck and Strange’, his first album of new material in nine years .

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• Roger Waters

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