George
Roger Waters
(born 6 September 1943) is an English musician, singer, songwriter and
composer. He was a founder member of the progressive rock band Pink Floyd,
serving as bassist and co-lead vocalist. Following the departure of bandmate
Syd Barrett in 1968, Waters became the band's lyricist, principal songwriter
and conceptual leader. The band subsequently achieved international success in
the 1970s with the concept albums The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You
Were Here, Animals and The Wall. Although Waters' primary
instrument in Pink Floyd was the bass guitar, he also experimented with
synthesisers and tape loops and played rhythm guitar on recordings and in
concerts. Amid creative differences within the group, Waters left Pink Floyd in
1985 and began a legal battle with the remaining members over their intended
use of the group's name and material. They settled the dispute out of court in
1987, and nearly eighteen years had passed before he performed with Pink Floyd
again. The group have sold more than 250 million albums worldwide, including
74.5 million units sold in the United States as of 2012.
Waters' solo
career has included three studio albums: The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking
(1984), Radio K.A.O.S. (1987) and Amused to Death (1992). In
1986, he contributed songs and a score to the soundtrack of the animated film When
the Wind Blows based on the Raymond Briggs' book of the same name. In 1990,
he staged one of the largest and most extravagant rock concerts in history, The
Wall – Live in Berlin, with an official attendance of 200,000. In
1996, he was inducted into the US and the UK Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a
member of Pink Floyd. He has toured extensively as a solo act since 1999 and
played The Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety for his world tour of
2006–2008. In 2005, he released Ça Ira, an opera in three acts
translated from Étienne and Nadine Roda-Gils' libretto based on the French
Revolution. On 2 July 2005, he reunited with Pink Floyd bandmates Nick Mason,
Richard Wright and David Gilmour for the Live 8 global awareness event; it was
the group's first appearance with Waters in 24 years.
In 2010, he
began The Wall Live, a worldwide tour that features a complete performance of The
Wall. During this tour, at The O2 Arena in London on 12 May 2011, Gilmour
and Mason once again appeared with Waters, Gilmour performing "Comfortably
Numb", and Gilmour and Mason joining Waters for "Outside the
Wall". Waters' tour topped international concert ticket sales for the
first half of 2012, selling more than 1.4 million tickets globally.
Four times
married, he is the father of three children. In 2004, he became engaged to
actress and filmmaker Laurie Durning; the couple married in 2012.
1943-1964: Early years
George Roger
Waters was born on 6 September 1943, the younger of two boys, to Mary
(1913-2009) and Eric Fletcher Waters (1913-1944), in Great Bookham, Surrey. His father,
the son of a coal miner and Labour Party activist, was a schoolteacher, a devout Christian and a Communist Party member. In the early
years of the Second
World War,
his father was a conscientious
objector
who drove an ambulance during the Blitz.
He later changed his stance on pacifism and joined the British Army, and as an
officer of the 8th Royal
Fusiliers
died at Anzio in Italy, declared
missing or presumed dead on 18 February 1944, when Roger was five months old.
Following her husband's death, Mary, also a teacher, moved with her two sons to
Cambridge and raised them
there. His earliest memory is of the VJ Day celebrations. Mary died in 2009 at the age
of 96.
Waters
attended Morley Memorial Junior School in Cambridge and then the Cambridgeshire High
School for Boys
(now Hills
Road Sixth Form College)
with Roger
Barrett (later to be known as Syd), while his future musical partner, David Gilmour, lived nearby on the
town's Mill Road, and attended the Perse School. At 15, Waters was chairman of the Cambridge Youth Campaign for
Nuclear Disarmament
(YCND), having designed its publicity poster and participated in its
organisation. Though he was a keen sportsman and a highly regarded member of
the high school's cricket and rugby teams, his educational experience was
lacking; according to Waters, "I hated every second of it, apart from
games. The regime at school was a very oppressive one ... the same kids
who are susceptible to bullying by other kids are also susceptible to bullying
by the teachers." Whereas Waters knew Barrett and Gilmour from his
childhood in Cambridge, he met future Pink Floyd founder members Nick Mason and Richard Wright in London at the Regent Street Polytechnic (later the
University of Westminster) school of architecture. Waters enrolled there in
1962 after a series of aptitude tests indicated he was well-suited to that
field. He had initially considered a career in mechanical engineering
Subsequent personal life
In 1969,
Waters married his childhood sweetheart and "girl next door" Judy Trim, a successful
potter; featured on the gatefold sleeve of the original release of Ummagumma, but excised from
subsequent CD reissues. They had no children together and divorced in 1975. She
later remarried; and died on 9 January 2001. In 1976, he married Lady Carolyne Christie, the niece of the 3rd Marquess of Zetland. His marriage to
Christie produced a son, Harry
Waters,
a musician who has played keyboards with his father's touring band since 2006,
and a daughter, the model India Waters. Through Harry, he has grandchildren.
Christie and Waters divorced in 1992. In 1993, he married Priscilla Phillips;
their marriage ended in 2001. In 2004, he became engaged to actress and
filmmaker Laurie Durning, and the two wed on 14 January 2012
1965-1985: Pink Floyd
Formation and Barrett-led period
By September
1963, Waters and Mason began losing interest in their studies, and they had
moved into the lower flat of Stanhope Gardens, owned by Mike Leonard, a
part-time tutor at the Regent Street Polytechnic. Waters, Mason and Wright
first played music together in the autumn of 1963, in a group formed by
vocalist Keith Noble and bassist Clive Metcalfe. The group usually called
themselves Sigma 6, but they also used the name the Meggadeaths. Waters
played rhythm guitar and Mason played drums, Wright played on any keyboard he
could arrange to use, and Noble's sister Sheilagh provided an occasional vocal
accompaniment. In the early years the band performed during private functions
and rehearsed in a tearoom in the basement of Regent Street Polytechnic.
When
Metcalfe and Noble left to form their own group in September 1963, the
remaining members asked Barrett and guitar player Bob Klose to join. By January
1964, the group became known as the Abdabs, or the Screaming Abdabs. During the
autumn of 1964, the band used the names Leonard's Lodgers, Spectrum Five, and
eventually, the Tea Set. Sometime during the autumn of 1965, the Tea Set began
calling itself the Pink Floyd Sound, later, the Pink Floyd, and by early 1966,
Pink Floyd.
By early
1966 Barrett was Pink Floyd's front-man, guitarist, and songwriter. He wrote or
co-wrote all but one track of their debut LP The Piper at the Gates of Dawn,
released in August 1967. Waters contributed
the song "Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk" (his first sole writing
credit) to the album. However, by late 1967, Barrett's deteriorating mental
health and increasingly erratic behaviour, rendered him "unable or
unwilling" to continue in his capacity as Pink Floyd's singer-songwriter
and lead guitarist. Working with Barrett eventually proved too difficult, so in
early March 1968 Pink Floyd met with managers Peter Jenner and Andrew King of
Blackhill Enterprises to discuss the band's future. Barrett agreed to leave
Pink Floyd, and the band "agreed to Blackhill's entitlement in
perpetuity" with regard to "past activities". The band's new
manager Steve O'Rourke made a formal announcement about the departure of
Barrett and the arrival of David Gilmour in April 1968
Waters-led period
A live
performance of The Dark Side of the Moon
at Earls Court, shortly after
its release in 1973
(l-r) David Gilmour, Nick Mason, Dick Parry, Roger Waters
Filling the
void left by Barrett's departure in March 1968, Waters began to chart Pink
Floyd's artistic direction. He became the principal songwriter, lyricist, and
co-lead vocalist (along with Gilmour, and at times, Wright), and would remain
the band's dominant creative figure until his departure in 1985. He wrote the
lyrics to the five Pink Floyd albums preceding his own departure, starting with
The Dark Side of the Moon (1973) and ending with The Final Cut
(1983), while exerting progressively more creative control over the band and
its music. Every Waters studio album since The Dark Side of the Moon has
been a concept album. With lyrics written entirely by Waters, The Dark Side
of the Moon was one of the most commercially successful rock albums of all
time. It spent 736 straight weeks on the Billboard 200 chart until July
1988 and sold over 40 million copies worldwide. It was continuing to sell over
8,000 units every week as of 2005. According to Pink Floyd biographer Glen
Povey, Dark Side is the world's second best-selling album, and the
United States' 21st best-selling album of all time.
Waters
produced thematic ideas that became the impetus for the Pink Floyd concept
albums The Dark Side of the Moon (1973), Wish You Were Here
(1975), Animals (1977), and The Wall (1979)—written largely by
Waters—and The Final Cut (1983)—written entirely by Waters. He referred
or alluded to the cost of war and the loss of his father throughout his work,
from "Corporal Clegg" (A Saucerful of Secrets, 1968) and
"Free Four" (Obscured by Clouds, 1972) to "Us and
Them" from The Dark Side of the Moon, "When the Tigers Broke
Free", first used in the feature film, The Wall (1982), later
included with "The Fletcher Memorial Home" on The Final Cut,
an album dedicated to his father. The theme and composition of The Wall
was influenced by his upbringing in an English society depleted of men after
the Second World War.
The
double album The Wall was written almost entirely by Waters and is
largely based on his life story, and having sold over 23 million RIAA
certified units in the US as of 2010, is one of the top three best-selling
albums of all-time in America, according to RIAA. Pink Floyd hired Bob Ezrin to
co-produce the album, and cartoonist Gerald Scarfe to illustrate the album's
sleeve art. The band embarked on The Wall Tour of LA, New
York, London and Dortmund. The last band performance of The Wall was on
16 June 1981, at Earls Court London, and this was Pink Floyd's last appearance
with Waters until the band's brief reunion at 2 July 2005 Live 8 concert in
London's Hyde Park, 24 years later.
In
March 1983, the last Waters–Gilmour–Mason collaboration, The Final Cut,
was released. The album was subtitled: "A requiem for the post-war dream
by Roger Waters, performed by Pink Floyd". Waters is credited with writing
all the lyrics as well as all the music on the album. His lyrics to the album
were critical of the Conservative Party government of the day and mention Prime
Minister Margaret Thatcher by name. At the time Gilmour did not have any
material for the album, so he asked Waters to delay the recording until he could
write some songs, but Waters refused. According to Mason, after power struggles
within the band and creative arguments about the album, Gilmour's name
"disappeared" from the production credits, though he retained his
pay. Rolling Stone magazine gave the album five stars, with Kurt Loder calling it
"a superlative achievement" and "art rock's crowning
masterpiece". Loder viewed the work as "essentially a Roger Waters
solo album".
Amidst
creative differences within the group, Waters left Pink Floyd in 1985, and
began a legal battle with the remaining band members regarding their continued
use of the name and material. In December 1985 Waters "issued a statement
to EMI and CBS invoking the 'Leaving Member' clause" on his contract. In
October 1986, he initiated High Court proceedings to formally dissolve the Pink
Floyd partnership. In his submission to the High Court he called Pink Floyd a
"spent force creatively". Gilmour and Mason opposed the application
and announced their intention to continue as Pink Floyd. Waters claims to have
been forced to resign much like Wright some years earlier, and he decided to
leave Pink Floyd based on legal considerations, stating " ... because, if
I hadn't, the financial repercussions would have wiped me out completely."
In December 1987, an agreement between Waters and Pink Floyd was reached.
According to Mason:
“
|
We eventually formalised a settlement with Roger. On
Christmas Eve, 1987, ... David and Roger convened for a summit meeting
on the houseboat [the Astoria]
with Jerome Walton, David's accountant. Jerome painstakingly typed out the
bones of a settlement. Essentially—although there was far more complex
detail—the arrangement allowed Roger to be freed from his arrangement with
Steve [O'Rourke], and David and me to continue working under the name Pink
Floyd. In the end the court accepted Jerome's version as the final and
binding document and duly stamped it.
|
”
|
Waters
was released from his contractual obligation with O'Rourke, and he retained the
copyrights to The Wall concept and his trademarked inflatable pig. The
Gilmour-led Pink Floyd released two studio albums: A Momentary Lapse of Reason (1987), and
The
Division Bell (1994). As of 2006, it is estimated that Pink Floyd have
sold over 250 million albums worldwide, including 74.5 million RIAA
certified units sold in the US
1984-present: Solo career
1984-1996
Waters
performing The Wall – Live in Berlin
Germany, on 21 July 1990
Following
the release of The Final Cut, Waters embarked on a solo career that
produced three concept albums and a movie soundtrack. In 1984, he released his
first solo album, The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking, a project about a
man's dreams across one night that dealt with Waters' feelings about his failed
marriage to Judy Trim, sex, and the pros and cons of monogamy and family life
versus "the call of the wild". In the end the character, Reg, chooses
love and matrimony over promiscuity. The album featured guitarist Eric Clapton, jazz saxophonist David Sanborn, and artwork by Scarfe. Rolling Stone's
Kurt Loder described The Pros And Cons of Hitch Hiking as a
"strangely static, faintly hideous record", Rolling Stone
rated the album a "rock bottom" one star." Years later, Mike
DeGagne of Allmusic praised the album
for its, "ingenious symbolism" and "brilliant use of stream of
consciousness within a subconscious realm", rating it four out of five
stars. Waters began touring in support of the new album, aided by Clapton, a
new band, new material, and a selection of Pink Floyd favourites. Waters
débuted his tour in Stockholm on 16 June 1984. Poor
ticket sales plagued the tour, and some of the larger venues had to be
cancelled. By his own estimate, he lost £400,000 on the tour. In March 1985,
Waters went to North America to play smaller venues with the Pros and Cons Plus
Some Old Pink Floyd Stuff — North America Tour 1985. The Pros and Cons
of Hitch Hiking has been certified Gold by the RIAA.
In 1986,
Waters contributed songs and a score to the soundtrack of the animated movie When the Wind Blows, based on the Raymond Briggs book of the same name. His backing band featuring Paul Carrack was credited as The
Bleeding Heart Band. In 1987, Waters released Radio K.A.O.S., a concept album
based on a mute man named Billy from an impoverished Welsh mining town who has
the ability to physically tune into radio waves in his head. Billy first learns
to communicate with a radio DJ, and eventually to control the world's
computers. Angry at the state of the world in which he lives, he simulates a
nuclear attack. Waters followed the release with a supporting tour also in
1987.
In November
1989, the Berlin
Wall
fell, and in July 1990 Waters staged one of the largest and most elaborate rock
concerts in history, The Wall – Live in Berlin, on the vacant
terrain between Potsdamer
Platz
and the Brandenburg
Gate.
The show reported an official attendance of 200,000, though some estimates are
as much as twice that, with approximately one billion television viewers. Leonard Cheshire asked him to do the
concert to raise funds for charity. Waters' group of musicians included Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Cyndi Lauper, Bryan Adams, Scorpions, and Sinéad
O'Connor.
Waters also used an East German symphony orchestra and choir, a Soviet marching band, and a
pair of helicopters from the US 7th Airborne Command and Control Squadron. Designed by Mark
Fisher, the Wall was 25 metres tall and 170 metres long and was built
across the set. Scarfe's inflatable puppets were recreated on an enlarged
scale, and although many rock icons received invitations to the show, Gilmour,
Mason, and Wright, did not. Waters released a concert double album of the
performance which has been certified platinum by the RIAA.
In 1990,
Waters hired manager Mark Fenwick and left EMI for a worldwide deal with
Columbia. He released his third studio album, Amused to Death, in 1992. The record
is heavily influenced by the events of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and the Gulf War, and a critique of
the notion of war becoming the subject of entertainment, particularly on
television. The title was derived from the book Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. Patrick Leonard, who had also worked
on A Momentary Lapse of Reason, co-produced the album. Jeff Beck played lead guitar
on many of the album's tracks, which were recorded with an impressive cast of
musicians at ten different recording studios. It is Waters' most critically acclaimed solo
recording, garnering some comparison to his previous work with Pink Floyd.
Waters described the record as, a "stunning piece of work", ranking
the album with Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall as one of the
best of his career. The album had one hit, the song "What God Wants, Pt. 1", which
reached number 35 in the UK in September 1992 and number 5 on Billboard's
Mainstream Rock Tracks chart in the US. Amused to Death
was certified Silver by the British Phonographic Industry. Sales of Amused
to Death topped out at around one million and there was no tour in support
of the album. Waters would first perform material from it seven years later
during his In
the Flesh tour.
In 1996, Waters was inducted into the US and UK Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Pink
Floyd
1994-2004
In 1999,
after a nearly 12-year hiatus from touring, and a seven-year absence from the
music industry, Waters embarked on the In the Flesh tour, performing both solo
and Pink Floyd material. The tour was a financial success in the US and though
Waters had booked mostly smaller venues, tickets sold so well that many of the
concerts were upgraded to larger ones. The tour eventually stretched across the
world and would span three years. A concert film was released on CD and DVD,
named In
the Flesh – Live.
During the tour, he played two new songs "Flickering Flame" and
"Each Small Candle" as the final encore to many of the shows. In June
2002, he completed the tour with a performance in front of 70,000 people at the
Glastonbury
Festival of Performing Arts, playing 15 Pink Floyd songs and five songs from his
solo catalogue.
Miramax announced in
mid-2004 that a production of The Wall was to appear on Broadway with
Waters playing a prominent role in the creative direction. Reports stated that
the musical contained not only the original tracks from The Wall, but
also songs from Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here and
other Pink Floyd albums, as well as new material. On the night of 1 May 2004,
recorded extracts from the opera, including its overture, were played on the
occasion of the Welcome Europe celebrations in the
accession country of Malta. Gert Hof mixed
recorded excerpts from the opera into a continuous piece of music which was
played as an accompaniment to a large light and fireworks display over Grand Harbour in Valletta. In July 2004,
Waters released two new tracks on the Internet: "To Kill the Child",
inspired by the 2003
invasion of Iraq,
and "Leaving Beirut", "inspired by his travels in the Middle
East as a teenager". The lyrics to "Leaving Beirut" are highly
critical of former US President George W. Bush and British Prime
Minister Tony
Blair.
2005-present
Waters (far
right) performing with Pink Floyd at Live 8, 2 July 2005
In July
2005, Waters reunited with Mason, Wright, and Gilmour for what would be their
final performance together at the 2005 Live 8 concert in London's
Hyde Park, Pink Floyd's only appearance with Waters since their final
performance of The Wall at Earls Court London 24 years earlier. They
played a 23-minute set consisting of "Speak to Me/Breathe"/"Breathe
(Reprise)",
"Money", "Wish
You Were Here", and "Comfortably Numb". Waters told
the Associated
Press
that while the experience of playing with Pink Floyd again was positive, the
chances of a bona fide reunion would be "slight" considering his and
Gilmour's continuing musical and ideological differences. Though Waters had
differing ideas about which songs they should play, he "agreed to roll
over for one night only", Gilmour told the Associated Press, "The
rehearsals convinced me it wasn't something I wanted to be doing a lot of.
There have been all sorts of farewell moments in people's lives and careers
which they have then rescinded, but I think I can fairly categorically say that
there won't be a tour or an album again that I take part in. It isn't to do
with animosity or anything like that. It's just that ... I've been there, I've
done it." In November 2005, Pink Floyd were inducted into the UK
Music Hall of Fame
by Pete
Townshend
of the Who.
In September
2005, he released Ça Ira, French for "it will be
fine"; Waters added the subtitle, "There is Hope"), an opera in
three acts translated from the late Étienne
Roda-Gil's
French libretto based on the historical subject of the French Revolution. Ça
Ira was released as a double CD album, featuring baritone Bryn Terfel, soprano Ying Huang and tenor Paul
Groves.
Set during the early French Revolution, the original libretto was co-written in
French by Roda-Gil and his wife Nadine Delahaye. Waters had begun rewriting the
libretto in English in 1989, and said
about the composition: "I've always been a big fan of Beethoven's choral
music, Berlioz and Borodin ... This
is unashamedly romantic and resides in that early 19th-century tradition,
because that's where my tastes lie in classical and choral music." Waters
appeared on television to discuss the opera, but the interviews often focused
instead on his relationship with Pink Floyd, something Waters would "take
in stride", a sign Pink Floyd biographer Mark
Blake
believes to be, "a testament to his mellower old age or twenty years of
dedicated psychotherapy". Ça Ira reached number 5 on the Billboard
Classical Music Chart in the United States.
In June
2006, he commenced The Dark Side of the Moon Live tour, a two-year,
world-spanning effort that began in Europe in June and North America in
September. The first half of the show featured both Pink Floyd songs and
Waters' solo material, while the second half included a complete live
performance of the 1973 Pink Floyd album The Dark Side of the Moon, the
first time in over three decades that Waters had performed the album. The shows
ended with an encore from the third side of The Wall. He utilised
elaborate staging by concert lighting designer Marc Brickman complete with laser
lights, fog machines, flame throwers, psychedelic projections, and inflatable
floating puppets (Spaceman and Pig) controlled by a "handler" dressed
as a butcher, and a full 360-degree quadraphonic
sound
system was used. Nick Mason joined Waters for The Dark Side of the Moon
set and the encores on select 2006 tour dates. Waters continued touring in
January 2007 in Australia and New Zealand, then Asia, Europe, South America,
and back to North America in June.
In March
2007, the Waters song, "Hello (I Love You)" was featured in the
science fiction film The Last Mimzy. The song plays over
the film's end credits. He released it as a single, on CD and via download, and
described it as, "a song that captures the themes of the movie, the clash
between humanity's best and worst instincts, and how a child's innocence can
win the day". He performed at California's Coachella Festival in April 2008 and
was to be among the headlining artists performing at Live
Earth 2008
in Mumbai, India in December 2008, but that concert was cancelled in light of
the 26
November terrorist attacks in Mumbai.
In
March 2008, Roger Waters reunited with Argentine musician Gustavo Cerati in New York
to collaborate on a song to benefit the ALAS Foundation. The
session was held in the Looking
Glass Studios belonging to the minimalist composer Philip Glass. Until this
day, is unknown what happened with that recording.
e
confirmed the possibility of an upcoming solo album which "might be
called" Heartland, and has said he has numerous songs written (some
already recorded) that he intends to release when they are a complete album. In
June 2010, Waters released a cover of "We Shall Overcome", a
protest song derived from the refrain of a gospel hymn published by Charles
Albert Tindley in 1901. He performed with David Gilmour at the Hoping
Foundation Benefit Evening in July 2010. The
four-song set included: "To Know Him Is to Love Him", which was
played in early Pink Floyd sound checks, followed by "Wish You Were
Here", "Comfortably Numb", and "Another Brick in the Wall
(Part Two)".
In
September 2010, he commenced The
Wall Live
tour, an updated version of the original Pink Floyd shows, featuring a complete
performance of The Wall. According to Cole Moreton of the Daily Mail,
"The touring version of Pink Floyd's The Wall is one of the most
ambitious and complex rock shows ever ...", and it is estimated that the
tour cost £37 million to stage. Waters told the Associated Press that The Wall
Tour will likely be his last, stating: "I'm not as young as I used to be.
I'm not like B.B. King, or Muddy Waters. I'm not a great vocalist or a great
instrumentalist or whatever, but I still have the fire in my belly, and I have
something to say. I have a swan song in me and I think this will probably be
it." At The
O2 Arena
in London on 12 May 2011, Gilmour and Mason once again appeared with Waters and
Gilmour performing "Comfortably Numb", and Gilmour and Mason joining
Waters for "Outside the Wall". For the first half of 2012, Waters'
tour topped worldwide concert ticket sales having sold more than 1.4 million
tickets globally.
Waters
guested at the Love
for Levon
tribute concert in October 2012. He also performed at the Concert for Sandy Relief at Madison
Square Garden on 12 December 2012.
Activism
After the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake and subsequent tsunami disaster, Waters
performed "Wish You Were Here" with Eric
Clapton during a benefit concert on the American network NBC. He was outspoken against the Hunting Act of 2004, and performed a
concert for, and attended marches supporting, the Countryside
Alliance.
Waters explained:
I've become
disenchanted with the political and philosophical atmosphere in England. The
anti-hunting bill was enough for me to leave England. I did what I could, I did
a concert and one or two articles, but it made me feel ashamed to be English. I
was in Hyde Park for both the Countryside Alliance marches. There were hundreds
of thousands of us there. Good, honest English people. That's one of the most
divisive pieces of legislation we've ever had in Great Britain. It's not a case
of whether or not I agree with fox hunting, but I will defend to the hilt their
right to take part in it.
Waters
performing "Comfortably Numb"
during The Wall Live in Kansas City, 30
October 2010
In October
2005, he clarified: "I come back to the UK quite often. I didn't leave as
a protest against the hunting ban; I was following a child in the wake of a
divorce." After leaving Britain, he moved to Long Island in New York with his
fiancé Laurie Durning. In July 2007, he played on the American leg of the Live Earth concert, an
international multi-venue concert aimed at raising awareness about global
climate change, featuring the Trenton Youth Choir and his trademarked
inflatable pig. Waters told David Fricke why he thinks The
Wall is still relevant today:
The loss of
a father is the central prop on which [The Wall] stands. As the years go
by, children lose their fathers again and again, for nothing. You see it now
with all these fathers, good men and true, who lost their lives and limbs in
Iraq for no reason at all. I've done Bring The Boys Back Home in my encore on
recent tours. It feels more relevant and poignant to be singing that song now
than it did in 1979.
In 2007,
Waters became a spokesman for Millennium
Promise,
a non-profit organisation that helps fight extreme poverty and malaria. He wrote an opinion
piece for CNN in support of the
topic. Waters has been outspoken about Middle Eastern politics and in June
2009, he openly opposed the Israeli West Bank barrier, calling it an "obscenity" that
"should be torn down". In December 2009, Waters pledged his support
to the Gaza
Freedom March
and in March 2011, he announced that he had joined the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement
against Israel.
In a 2013
interview, Waters again spoke out about his support for BDS movement, adding
that he has "been very disillusioned with UK foreign policy really since Wilson. It was such a
political turnabout from Keir Hardie and Attlee and the principles
of British socialism." In the same interview, Waters complained his
protests against Israel were being ignored, and speculated that the American
media was “under instructions from somewhere not to report these things to the
American public, on what grounds I cannot guess."
“
|
“The situation is that the Israeli
government runs an apartheid regime in Israel, the occupied territories and
everywhere else it decides,” Waters said. “Let us not forget that they laid
waste most of Lebanon around the time I started getting involved in this
issue. They destroyed airports, hospitals, any public buildings they could.”
Equipment and instruments
|
Waters'
primary instrument in Pink Floyd was the electric bass guitar. He briefly
played a Höfner bass but replaced it
with a Rickenbacker RM-1999/4001S, until
1970 when it was stolen along with the rest of the band's equipment in New
Orleans. He began using Fender
Precision Basses
in 1968, originally alongside the Rickenbacker, and then exclusively after the
Rickenbacker was lost in 1970. First seen at a concert in Hyde Park, London in
July 1970, the black P-Bass was rarely used until April 1972 when it became his
main stage guitar and as of 2 October 2010, the basis for a Fender Artist
Signature model. Waters endorses RotoSound Jazz Bass 77
flat-wound strings. Throughout his career he has used Selmer, WEM, Hiwatt and Ashdown amplifiers but has
used Ampeg for the last few
tours, also employing delay, tremolo, chorus, stereo panning and phaser effects in his bass
playing.
Waters
experimented with the EMS
Synthi A
and VCS 3 synthesisers on Pink
Floyd pieces such as "On the Run", "Welcome
to the Machine",
and "In
the Flesh?"
He played electric and acoustic guitar on Pink Floyd tracks using Fender,
Martin, Ovation and Washburn
guitars. He played electric guitar on the Pink Floyd song "Sheep", from Animals,
and acoustic guitar on several Pink Floyd recordings, such as "Pigs on the Wing
1 & 2", also from Animals, "Southampton Dock" from The
Final Cut, and on "Mother"
from The Wall. A Binson Echorec 2 echo effect was used on his
bass-guitar lead track "One of These Days". Waters has
also played clarinet during concert performances of "Outside the Wall".
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