Roger Waters talks ahead of his solo appearance in Birmingham
Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters will bring his pioneering Us + Them tour to Birmingham when he headlines the city’s Arena tomorrow.
Roger co-founded prog rock superstars Pink Floyd with drummer Nick Mason, keyboardist Rick Wright and guitarist, singer, and songwriter Syd Barrett in 1965.
He initially served as the group’s bassist but following the departure of Barrett in 1968, he also became their lyricist, conceptual leader and co-lead vocalist.
His critically-acclaimed Us + Them show is playing Europe throughout the summer, having garnered rave reviews while touring North America. The setlist has been called ‘spectacular’ and the production referred to as ‘eye-popping’.
The show features songs from Pink Floyd’s greatest albums (The Dark Side of The Moon, The Wall, Animals, Wish You Were Here) plus some new songs from his new, best-selling album Is This the Life We Really Want?.
Us + Them, named after the Dark Side song, is a show that Waters describes as being about ‘how we express the idea that to love our fellow human beings is really good for us and that to build walls between us is really bad’.
It took him more than a decade to make, with his 2017 Is This The Life We Really Want? album being his first release since 2005’s Ca Ira.
He told Rolling Stone: “Years ago – around the millennium, when I started touring again in 1999–2000 – I spent a month in Nassau and got some people to come there. It was the band with [guitarist] Doyle Bramhall II, and we cut six or seven tracks. “There was one song that we recorded then that I really liked. But it was completely surreal. Judgment Day dawns black/Furnished with smoke – that was the first line. And it’s on this record. It’s called The Most Beautiful Girl in the World.
“I know people think I’m mad. Is This the Life We Really Want? – people say, ‘What does it mean?’ It means what it says.
“A perpetual state of war; your government rewriting laws taking away most of your civil liberties . . . Is this how you want to live? And if it’s not, is there anything you can do about it? Do you have any choice? Or is the train going so fast that there is no way of finding where the brake is? Or persuading anybody that maybe it should slow down a bit?”
Roger Waters brings Us + Them tour to Arena Birmingham tomorrow. Tickets are still available from www.ticketmaster.co.uk
