The whole concept of Roger Waters as an ‘ageing rocker’ completely does my head in. To be perfectly frank, the tag really doesn’t suit ole’ Roger – once so tortured, cynical and non-conformist. But alas, that is precisely what he has become. Have Waters, Mason, Wright, and Gilmour all sold out? How does singing what are essentially anti-celebrity tracks from The Wall about alienation, and the divide between performer and audience work in a context like this? I’d never had the opportunity of seeing Pink Floyd (in any form) live, let alone a few decades after their heyday, and I was desperate for Waters to stay atop the enigmatic, uber-intelligent pedestal I had placed him on for so many years.
Once the creative epicentre of Pink Floyd – perhaps the most musically inventive, groundbreaking group this world has ever seen, Waters now tours the world’s stadiums playing to a predominantly middle aged crowd, who come adorned in t-shirts from Waters’ previous world tours and plan on forking out for a couple more this time around. One suspects that the older than average crowd may well be as a result of the Rolling Stones-esque ticket prices; a shame for youngsters who don’t have a spare hunje (and the rest,) but, unlike the vast majority of stadium fillers these days, it’s fair to say the Waters juggernaut has the right to charge as they see fit.
Last night at Rod Laver Arena, Waters emerged from stage left to a venue pumped with smoke, and received a respectful, but incredibly enthusiastic standing ovation. True to form, Waters wore the professional old rocker’s uniform – a smart black suit, dressed down appropriately by a black, Bonds style t-shirt/vest. The setup was, as expected, quite massive – Pink Floyd were, after all, renowned for their smoke and laser heavy shows. The pyrotechnics were employed sparingly but more effectively than I, personally, have ever witnessed, particularly when they were used in conjunction with the superb, very Wall-era visuals (for instance, an impending on-screen explosion would be manifest in an on-stage explosion, to look as if the bomb had leapt out from the 2D,) and floating pigs and astronauts. In actual fact, every facet of this performance was just so – it was f**kng brilliant really. I had forgotten that Waters is too smart to sell out.
There were rarely less than ten performers on stage, all of whom had their respective moments to shine under the spotlight throughout the night, during which time Waters would either stand off to the side of the stage revving the responsive crowd up with fist pumps and energetic bass playing, or retreat into the darker back half of the stage. Waters was most definitely not an egomaniac at work here – the audience was being treated to a genuine band, not one man with some burnouts strumming covers. On this occasion, I imagine ‘highlight’ moments or tracks may well have been a very personal thing – when you’ve got two and a half hours or so of Pink Floyd/Waters material to choose from I suppose that’s always going to be the case. Nevertheless, for mine, Floyd classics like Set The Controls…, Shine On…(accompanied by a moving Syd Barrett montage,) encore number and crowd favourite Comfortably Numb (and yes, virtuoso guitarists Dave Kilminster and Snowy White did Gilmour’s solo justice,) and, well, the entire Dark Side Of The Moon were all beyond brilliant in every respect. Waters’ own It All Makes Perfect Sense, and new track, Leaving Beirut (the story behind which Waters explained to the crowd,) proved to be somewhat unlikely show stoppers. The latter is a genuine tour de force in how to write a measured, powerful protest song – listen to the track and you’ll appreciate the distinction between Waters, who doesn’t write anti-Bush lyrics because it has become fashionable for musicians to Bush bash in recent years, versus the many, many ill-informed artists of today who have jumped on the left-wing bandwagon on the back of a partisan television report about some kid who lost an arm.
I can guarantee that you will not see a better stadium show than this. Waters is just as he always has been – a genius of the highest order, and a man well aware of the potential for this whole nostalgia-tinged thing to become very contrived and stale. What’s more, this is the sort of music, the calibre of artist that should be filling stadiums – all class; not precocious, head-up-the-arse multi-media stars in miniskirts doing soft porn (harsh? Nah, fuck ‘em). And really, this wasn’t just Roger Waters, it was Pink Floyd, and it was bloody amazing. Hey, I even bought the t-shirt, and I plan on wearing it to his next world tour.
