Video Interview with Roger Waters on the Web From Roger Waters' official website August 1999 Transcribed by Michael Simone

This video interview was uploaded on the Roger Waters Sony website in mid August 1999.

During the interview we don't get to hear the interviewer much, nor the questions he asks. We only hear the answers Roger gives so we can only infer as to what the questions were... and in some instances Roger's answers fade out to obscurity.

In between some segments of the interview is flashed different titles of each segment. The interview takes place out of doors, and looks to have taken place in Bermuda sometime before the tour began.

At the end of the interview, we are treated to slightly new and different video's. The first What God Wants, the second, Three Wishes, and the third Another Brick in the Wall Pt. 2 from the Berlin show.

The Video of the interview is in Real Player video/audio format. Roger, relaxed, greying hair waving in the breeze, looks healthy, vibrant and rarin to go on tour and rock! After transcribing this for what seemed forever, but took literally hours, here is the interview.

Roger talks about his opera and upcoming tour

Roger: I've been working very hard on an opera that I've been writing the music for and I'm coming to the end of that now and we've had a plan, my family, to spend the Summer and the Fall in the States. And so I thought, well as long as I'm there, maybe I'll dip my toe into the water, and you know, see if I can do a few gigs in small venues to feel that magic touch again that I remember.

Roger: So I'm going to do a month, do 20 gigs, put a band together, put a bit of a show together, take some quad out, some projectors and things and see what we come up with. And you know it will be interesting because until we get into rehearsal, and I know what... and decide what the set list is, I won't really know how the dynamic of the show is going to develop. All I know is... I know from past experience that it will develop because I'm going to go: "Hey maybe..." (fades out)

Roger Waters talks about naming the tour

Roger: I'm calling the tour Roger Waters In The Flesh. Just because it kind of describes what it is. I thought of all kinds of strange things to call it, most of which sounds so pretentious. And I didn't want to call it "In Concert" or "The Works Of." or "The Last 30 Years" (laughs) Interviewer: you could have called it "The Body"... Roger: Or whatever... the body would have been quite good yea. No, there's too much. .. kind of death involved in that.

Roger Waters talks about going on tour

Roger: I know that when I step on the stage that first night... I will know that I can catch them, I will be prepared, I will have done the work because I love that work, I love putting shows together. It's a very kind of pleasurable experience. I love working with bands. And I'm happy to say that it seems that a lot of people I've worked with in bands love working with me too. So when I say I'm going on the road again do you want to come, they don't go "well I'm not sure," they go "Yes!"

Roger talks about his past

Roger: When I was a teenager I would see people playing the trumpet, in Jazz bands, you know. And I would say "I want to do that. That's what I want to do. I want to be that guy up there." ( roger pretends to play a trumpet.. makes trumpet sounds) And so you know that's what my original aspirations were about, the trumpet. This (what I'm doing now) is a mistake.

Roger Waters talks about being onstage

Roger: What happens to you when you get on stage is... I mean you can go onstage with a really bad flu or something like that, and you can feel like you couldn't walk five steps, and can hardly be able to get out of bed. But when you get on stage, that adrenal gland goes to work... and... I mean, what a wonderful drug adrenaline is, you could ... it just.... Once the adrenaline starts flowing through your veins, for the next couple of hours you can do anything really.

Roger: I know I'm not going to sing every note in tune. I know every note I play on the bass isn't going to be perfectly expressed and played in perfect time. It's not my thing. But what is going to happen is that I'm going to be there. I'm gonna really really be there. Me. Not something I'm pretending or acting, or inventing. I, the real me is going to be there. And that given a small enough venue, where you're close enough to the people, I think the audiences understand that. And that's what performing is about. You have to give the real you, the real yourself, without pretending.

Roger Waters talks about his body of work

Roger: Between the years of... I don't know... '70 or 1972 or something and... ah... '92, I wrote a hell of a lot of stuff. That's a big body of work. That's a lot of albums that I wrote and recorded. I mean I may not.... I'm sure a lot of other people have produced a much bigger body of work...

And I think I'd arrived at a point where I needed to stop a bit, and let life go by and allow stuff to happen inside me. Because, I've never... I've never written songs like; "Oh my god I haven't had an album out for... ya know, I better go write some songs and go into a room..." that doesn't happen like that for me. I live my life, I do what I do, and sometimes I get this kind of pregnant feeling where I know that there is something I need to get out, something that needs expressing. And so then maybe I'll allow it space... I'll go sit down at the piano or whatever, and allow what ever it is to clear. It's a very passive operation for me, writing songs.

Having said that... the opera was quite different. Cause I was presented with the libretto and said "right, I'm going to set this to music," and I sat down and did it. And worked kind of banking hours in order to do that, and that worked for me as well. But I think lyrics, ideas, you know, which are feelings, it's feelings, you know the feelings need to be developed to a certain power before they're ready to be expressed.

Roger talks about Pink Floyd

Roger: But in the early days of Pink Floyd, how magical it was. And it was. It was absolutely magical. And how the magic was eaten up by the numbers, consumed. By '77 when we were doing the Animals tour, playing only big stadiums, and sell out everywhere you know, and all everybody was talking about was grosses, and the numbers, and how many people there are. And you could not even hear yourself think, you could hardly hear anything, because there were so many drunk people in the stadium all shouting and screaming. And the magic was gone, it had been crushed beneath the weight of numbers!

Roger talks about The Wall

Roger: I had a notion at one time, probably a vanity, to perform The Wall in the year 2000, having done it in 1980 and 1990. And there is a possibility that that may yet come to pass in some strange way.

Roger talks about recording new music

Roger: I've actually made a commitment to do some recording next February. We're just going to record for a month and see what happens. Probably with Pat Leonard again I would think, but certainly we're going to record some songs, and you know just see what happens, see what comes out, do a month and say, 'ok lets ... what have we got, is something happening here?

But with Ca Ira happening and with so much work to do to finish that, I know I can't really do it till next year. But I've scheduled it for early next year, and I know I'm going to do that.

END OF INTERVIEW

(Now 3 new versions of Roger Waters videos are shown.

The Video of What God Wants video is shown

This is a different video than the original, different scenes and graphics flashing on the screen while the music plays, using some of the graphics from the original and some new... It fades out...

Three Wishes video is shown

This also is much different from the original... and probably uses some of the outtakes from the original and includes some of the original.

This also is an edited version and fades...

A video of Roger's Live in Berlin version of Another Brick in the Wall pt. 2 is shown...
with what's her name, oh yeah, Cindy Lauper.

The ending of the video however has a great guitar solo and then abruptly stops.

All three of these videos are incomplete and are edited or end mid song. The music is the same (only the video has been changed to protect the innocent. (yes, for our international members, that was a joke. ha ha ha... yeah right!).