Roger Waters Talks New Album, Moving Past ‘Spectacle’ for Tour
October 13, 2016
“Us + Them” will feature an entirely new audio-visual presentation of material from Waters’ long history with the Floyd. Waters also plans to debut songs from his first studio album since 1992’s Amused to Death, which he has been recording over the past year with Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich. “We’ve got some really good work in the can,” Waters reveals, looking at once hip and distinguished with his light-gray hair and beard set off by a black T-shirt and stovepipe jeans. “We did some work in London and in Los Angeles.” Waters, who is living in L.A. while he works on the record, will be back in the studio with Godrich in November.
In an exclusive, wide-ranging conversation over the noisy air conditioning in his trailer, Waters talks about the genesis of his new songs; his pride in the scope and invention of his stage shows; and about Pink Floyd’s new mega-box, The Early Years 1965-1972 – 27 discs with 130 tracks and 15 hours of video footage from their pre-Dark Side era, including the group’s very first recordings with star-crossed founding guitarist Syd Barrett. Released on November 11th, the set is a prelude to the first, major museum retrospective devoted to the group, The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Mortal Remains, which opens at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London on May 13th, 2017.
“I was really happy that Dave and Nick joined me on this,” the bassist adds, “to be finally united with them, taking this stance.”
What is the concept of the new album? Is there a storyline?
I had written a long, meandering piece that was a radio play with about a dozen songs in it. It was the story of an old Irishman who is babysitting. You don’t know this. The thing starts off with a two-minute monologue of discontent [chuckles]: “Our children and grandchildren, ceaselessly bent over their computers, blah, blah, blah, I fucking hate this, I fucking hate that.” That was the beginning of the whole thing, this disillusionment.
You eventually discover that he is babysitting. The kid wakes up. He goes in to look after the kid, and it’s his granddaughter. She is having a nightmare, and the nightmare is someone is killing all the children. He says, “No, they’re not. They haven’t killed any children since the Troubles [in Northern Ireland].” And the kid says, “Not here, Grandpa. Over there.” The grandfather promises they will go on a quest to find the answer to this question: Why are they killing all the children? It is a fundamentally important question.
So I wrote this whole thing – part magic carpet ride, part political rant, part anguish. I played this to Nigel, and he goes, “Oh, I like that little bit” – about two minutes long – ”and that bit.” And so we’ve been working. I’ve also been falling in love, deeply in love. So the record is really about love – which is what all of my records have been about, in fact. It’s pondering not just why we are killing the children. It’s also the question of how do we take these moments of love – if we are granted any in our lives – and allow that love to shine on the rest of existence, on others.
Is that the concept for the new tour as well?
The tour is called “Us and Them” because it is about reaching out, holding hands and understanding – particularly understanding the simple things I have been saying for the last 40 or 50 fucking years, which is, “Building walls is not the answer.” It is particularly appropriate now that we’ve got this lunatic who talks about nothing else, about national exceptionalism – all the things that can be used to destroy all life as we know it.
How will you integrate the older Floyd material into the new theme?
Until I have figured out the theater, I won’t know the answer to that question. The theater is all important. What do you do to make a show useful and entertaining but also philosophically engaging without being preachy and dictatorial? That’s what The Wall is. But I am 40 years older. I have other things I am interested in saying. I am no longer interested in talking about my childhood or my wife leaving me. But I still feel I
have a lot to say.
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