"In the seventies, an English community in exile formed there, which behaves more English than any single member would have done, had he or she still lived in Surrey or Essex," says Waters, after our initial greetings, while he pours coffee and brandy and presents me with a 'Romeo Y Julieta Churchill' from a mahogany humidor. (Thierry, the French 'intermdiaire' has left us immediately at Rogers' request, not something that happens frequently with a star of this magnitude.) "In the hills of Hollywood there has developed a lively trade in videos from Last Night of the Proms, The Antiques Road Show and the Cup Final. I have no wish to participate in that. I don't want to become even sillier than rock and roll has already made me. But I do like to maintain a British atmosphere while I'm abroad."

Well, he has certainly succeeded in that. The Chambre Citronnier could easily serve as a library dcor in one of those BBC drama series, based on the works of Jane Austen or those of one of the Bront sisters, with Michael Gambon retreating with port and cigar to discuss the state of the Empire with other middle aged men wearing vests over their 'embonpoint.' While Claire Bloom chats with the ladies and adjusts her appearance in the ladies' room.

December 1999 marks the twentieth birthday of 'The Wall', the last masterpiece that Roger Waters made together with Pink Floyd, the band he then already saw as his own. David Gilmour, the only other candidate for leadership, had other ideas about that and in the ensuing war of succession he found the other band members, Nick Mason and Rick Wright, at his side. Pink Floyd was not Roger Waters' toy, it was bigger than the sum of its parts.

Gilmour was right about that, as even Waters is willing to acknowledge these days. "I thought the public would immediately recognise my part in Pink Floyd, but it seems that hasn't been the case. I have been reduced to an artist who happens to have played in Pink Floyd. It took me years to find peace with that, but eventually I did. Which is why it isn't hard for me now to promote 'Is There Anybody Out There?' (subtitle: The Wall Live, Pink Floyd 1980-1981 - JG). "It is only a week or two of my life, not a lot to spend on my life's work."

Not successful

'The Wall' has only a few times been performed live by Pink Floyd. In Los Angeles, New York, Dortmund and London, during 1980 and 1981, and once in 1990, on the Potsdamer Platz near the Berlin Wall, with a cast of stars gathered around Roger Waters, in front of an audience of half a million and many times more viewers around the world. 'Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live, Pink Floyd 1980-1981' is the result of an experiment with mobile 48-track recording equipment.

An experiment that the members of Pink Floyd, for once unanimously, thought of as interesting, but mostly unsuccessful. An opinion that they have had to change, equally unanimously, almost twenty years later. Waters: "Who cares about perfection when history is being written?"

The fact that The Wall has lasted this long has been a constant source of amazement, even for those who were involved in the making of it. "I had never thought I would still be talking about it after twenty years, let alone in public. It feels a little like repeat exercises as a conscript in the army: you've grown and matured, and you've become too old for that nonsense. You've got better things to do, but at the same time it's fun to go and see your old buddies again. Meaning of course the fictional characters of 'The Wall', not some ex-colleagues.

"And there is no end to it. At the moment I'm working on an adaptation for the stage. After the studio album, the live shows and the movie 'The Wall' I was left with the uneasy feeling there were still some things missing. The most important? Humour. Even when taking into account that Pink Floyd has during its existence only rarely been accused of humour, 'The Wall' is by far the most serious thing we've ever done. Not until the Berlin Wall concert in 1990 did that really occur to me, unfortunately only after I'd been showing the part of me that is most devoid of humour for two weeks. And I've never been entirely happy with the ending either. One might call it an 'open' ending, but one man's openness is another man's vagueness."

"Yes, I did think of Bertholt Brecht and Kurt Weill when I wrote 'The Wall', although I didn't really know their work very well. The trial from 'The Wall' is of course taken directly from the one in 'Aufstieg Und Fall Der Stadt Mahagonny', and that's putting it mildly. Brecht (more than Weill, who saw himself certainly in his American period as purely a professional, 'a man for all seasons') aimed to achieve changes in society through his work. I won't (can't!) go as far as that, but I like it if my music serves a practical purpose. I regularly see major sports feats on the television, performed to music of Pink Floyd. Apparently it's ideal for a certain kind of documentary. I've turned out to be the Wagner of rock and roll. Something bad about to happen? Add 'Dark Side Of The Moon' to the idyllic images and everyone knows: we're not heading for a happy ending.

"I rather like the fact that 'The Wall' is used in a lot of schools, not only to make Christmas musicals where parents can be moved to tears by their talentless children, but also in music classes. I still get at least fifty letters a week, from all over the world, asking me to help out in various capacities with a school performance. I never have the time somehow I have the idea that those amateur performances would be more work than my own stagings in the past, although that should be impossible but I do always write a reply. "Don't even start!" Haha. Seriously, I'm honoured by every piece of attention that 'The Wall' gets. I never get used to it. Can't get enough of it, either."

"Everybody seems to think that the success of 'The Wall' was only achieved with great difficulty. The reason for that is the first story in 'Hitmen' by Frederic Dannen, about the influence of the Mafia and corruption in general on the music industry. The story describes the machinations behind the sabotage of 'Another Brick In The Wall' as a hit single. Many interviewers are still indignant about it twenty years after the fact, but 'Another Brick In The Wall' is one of the biggest hits in the history of pop music, so how fatal can that so-called sabotage have been?

"I remember that an official boycott in South Africa was a lot more feared amongst Floydians. However, there as well 'Another Brick In The Wall' became bigger than most number one hits. I think in South Africa it's in the Top Seven of best-selling songs ever, after 'Light Up My Life' by Debby Boone, 'I Do It For You' by Bryan Adams, that Titanic song by Celine Dion and a couple of Beatles songs."

"Yes, the slogan 'Hey, teacher, leave the kids alone' has annoyed a great many educators. They should have listened better to the lyrics. How can a group of art students who go and make music be against education? If Pink Floyd represents anything, it is the intellectualism in pop music. By the way, in 1965 that was a recommendation at least, if you believe the British media from that era, who did their best to run us down once we became successful on a worldwide scale.

Rebel

"Yes, certainly I was a rebel at school. With a cause. The cause was: to achieve happiness. More happiness than the generation of my parents had seen in any case. It wasn't going to happen, in post-war England. The simple motto was: shut up and work. Business as before. Only, five years of war had changed the world dramatically. For a start, we weren't a superpower anymore. Rather, the map of the world, full of little British flags at the start of primary school, was at the end of it already quite a different colour.

"In secondary school you could learn all the Commonwealth countries by heart in under half an hour. And you only learned where they actually were when the first immigrants pointed them out for you on a map. I remember an exam question: 'was our overseas territory Anguilla, Asian, African or American?' And the indignant reaction of my co-pupils and me: 'how come, do we have a paper round there or something?!' Best of all I remember the atmosphere: like 'If', by Lindsay Anderson, avant la lettre. Only when Malcolm McDowell, the lead in 'If', had done 'A Clockwork Orange', I realised how dramatically Great Britain had changed in the sixties as well.

"However, not every change is an improvement. Competitive team sports have been sacrificed on the altar of equality. I hear the Dutch practice it as well, but in England it is completely normal to 'handicap' the people with the most talent. The idea is that the ordinary man doesn't come to lag behind too far, with sports, but also intellectually and artistically. It's the 'old boys network', with Oxford- and Cambridge 'blues' who help each other into jobs, in reverse but it isn't any better."

"My mother tried very carefully not to give me any more handicaps than her generation had done already. Looking back I would say she did that in the light of my father's death in the Battle of Anzio, months before I was born. Her attitude towards education, which I would later denounce in 'The Wall', consisted of: just bear it, it is the only way to get an interesting life. So she didn't mind when I quit my studies to become a musician. The only thing she hoped was that I wouldn't end up as bass player in a cocktail jazz trio in the Playboy Club in Brighton. You know, play things like 'Lullaby Of Birdland' or 'I Can't Give You Anything But Love' on automatic pilot. No, mother doesn't have any particular affection for Pink Floyd. She'd rather put on some 'real', classical music, she tells me with more than a little malice. But well, I love her and I cannot completely disagree with her to be honest."

"No, agreeing to help promote 'Is There Anybody Out There' does not imply that I communicate with David, Rick and Nick, other than through lawyers, accountants and caretaker managers. However, I do notice that the edge has gone off the conflict on their side as well. Only a few years ago David had changed all the editing I had done on the London recordings, and he was willing to wage war without even a cease-fire to get what he wanted. Or, if he couldn't, to ascertain that at least I didn't get what I wanted. But this time he left memo's on the mixing desk saying 'Job well done', in his own handwriting."

"A once-only live reunion? God how I can hate these pop reporters sometimes. Of course you want an answer, even though it makes no sense at all? Well then: one thing at a time."