The following interview is almost unknown. It took place at Radio CLYDE in Glasgow Scotland soon after the release of Radio K.A.O.S., in 1987. It has rarely ever been heard since, and was only published once in earlier issues of The Amasing Pudding Magazine.
Thanks to Alastair McLean, our very active Scottish member in the UK who has transcribed it and has gotten permission for REG to publish it here for our members.
The interview comes from a tape supplied by Brian McColgan, and originally transcribed by Bruno McDonald. We Print it here with kind permission of Andy Mabbett former Editor in Chief of The Amazing Pudding Magazine.
Bill:
Roger:
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Roger:
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Roger:
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Roger:
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Roger:
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Roger:
Bill:
Roger:
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Roger:
Oh, there was a lyric in that song that went "and like a volcano getting ready to blow, the new generation waits by it's radio." I have this feeling that, um, I may be quite wrong about England, I don't know, even maybe about America, there is this generation that have been fed stuff, nice, easy, comfortable stuff, on the radio particularly, which was our means of escape for my generation, to the extent that their capacity to blow... their capacity to express their feelings about how they feel, or what might be a good thing to happen in the future, has been controlled. I had evidence in my own experience to support that, in that, as a young musician in the late 60's I used to look at foreign TV programs with Guy Mitchell and Johnny Halliday ...not Guy Mitchell who was the French bloke, I can't remember, but Johnny Halliday and people like that on... and we used to laugh at foreign television because it was so plastic and so clearly only about style and this and that, and not about content. Since then, we've gone through the last ten years with Duran Duran and all that nonsense, where it's only about style, and has nothing to do at all with content or feelings, or human connections. Not that I'm saying everything's been like that. Clearly there have been those bands, of which the best contemporary example is U2, working a way with their own real feelings...
Bill:
Roger:
Bill:
Roger:
Bill:
Roger:
Bill:
Roger:
But that's kind of the way I see it, and that's why all the songs that I write are very specifically about my personalÑ sometimes even slightly unconscious or subconscious feelings about human beings and our lot.
It's my pleasure to welcome Roger: Waters, how you doin?
Alright thank you.
You've got an album out which I've sat down and listened to, and I think the only word to describe it is different...
Yes.
Different. It really is 'The' concept album, isn't it?
Yeah.
Tell us a bit about it, tell us a bit about the concept behind it.
Well, it's the story of a young Welshman who's ripped from his homeland by the market forces, and about how he enlists the help of modern technology to make him feel at home again.
It reminded me of the film "War Games," - have you seen this film?
No, I've never seen it, but I know about it.
Right, well, where the guy takes on like the might of the computing world and decides... well he doesn't decide to... he accidentally starts World War Three.
That's right, yeah.
And he has to get the expert back in to stop it again. It has quite a similar situation on (like that on) your album, hasn't it?
Well, yeah there is. There is (that) at the end of the narrative, yes.
So what makes you sit down and think "Well, this is ....I've got this idea... This is the album I'm gonna make. What was it that inspired you to do it? You must have been dissatisfied with something with something or other to come up with this, I would think, to come up with that.
Um... Well, I didn't actually have a flash of an idea Ñ oh I've got a good idea, I'll write a story about a quadriplegic Welshman who gets taken in Ñ it doesn't happen like that. What happened was, when I started writing a year and a half ago, the first song that I wrote, which is actually not used on this record at all, was a song called "Get Back To Radio," and I never sit down and think Ñ I'm gonna write a song about this, or I'm gonna write a song about that. I go into a room with a piano or a guitar and a biro and a pad and go into sort of a glazed, vacant, passive state, usually after a couple of glasses of beer and sit down and just start tinkering and tinkling and hope that some feeling will emerge that will make sense as a song. The feeling that emerged on that day was a long rambling piece about my age and ...I'm 43 now... and it somehow seemed to start being about radio, and how important I thought radio had been to me as a child. Under the bedclothes listening to Radio Luxembourg at night, and getting all that American Negro music coming in, and that being the only contact that I could make with that kind of excitement, of that world over the water, you know, the communication there, and although I haven't used that particular song...
There haven't been many of them.
No, there have been very few of them. So I started to get more and more into... I then started to write more and more pieces, and the narrative actually developed from the pieces I was writing, and comes out of my experience of having been to South Wales to record the Ponterdulais Male Choir when I was doing the music for the film "The Wall."
I was wondering why he was a Welshman, I must admit?
Well, I used this choir for one of the songs, one of the extra songs for the film, "The Wall." "The Tigers Broke Free," the song was called. They sang on that, and they also sang on "Outside the Wall," a re-recording of the song "Outside the Wall," and I was very very struck by the atmosphere in this small village near Llanelli in South Wales and in general. In the pub for instance, the feeling was very impressive and, in particular in this school hall with these 100 guys aged between... I don't know... the oldest guy I guess is 75 and (the youngest is) a kid of 15, and there they all are, working together and singing, and making this wonderful noise and obviously deriving alot of pleasure out of it, and a great feeling of achievement, whilst all around them the world was crumbling because of the market forces, the (coal) pits are closing and the steel works in Port Talbot are closing and it's a very depressed area economically, and so on, and that... and yet, there were those hundred men who, by comparison with the hundred session musicians working on, in you know Abbey Road or what ever, the feeling was completely different and much more human and it seemed that they had maintained contact with the simple enjoyment of music...
Which is disappearing rapidly. (laughs)
Which is disappearing rapidly... and much more than we have managed to do in the cities, and I include myself in that, and I was very very moved by them. So maybe that's why they appeared in my consciousness.
It's interesting that you mention that you went into a... and went "I'm now going to write," with a pad and a pen and a piano and a guitar, you're not a man who wanders round and inspiration just appears to you, and you have to go away and get it down?
Well, no, it does sometimes, you know. I'm driving along on this or that or the other, but I very rarely have a pencil and paper, and I nearly always forget all of that. No, but, what I do... my writing system is to be... is to acknowledge the fact that at sometime in the next few weeks I'm gonna write something, and then to allow myself to, um, sink into a very kind of passive state where I hope that my unconscious is going to take over, and so that all the stuff that I'm really feeling, you know, back here somewhere, will be allowed to come out in... you know, and I become very very glazed over for a bit. But then, you know, I get some of it out and it's better then, and also, you know, maybe they up with it a bit, because it's a living after all.
Bill:
I noted with interest the man who worked with you on the album, Ian Ritchie. I've seen his name appearing a lot recently, (in fact, he's actually related to one of the guys at Clyde), who I thought would be the last man to do an album with you. I mean, his track record is well, he started with doing Culture Club sessions, playing various things on that...
Roger:
He never told me he'd done that... (laughs.)
Bill:
Oh yes, indeed. He's worked on the Robbie Nevil stuff, he did an album with, what, Hugh Cornwall, I think it was, of the Stranglers recently.
Roger:
Yeah.
Bill:
Why Ian Richie?
Roger:
Well, I talked to them all. Believe you me, and I'm not saying that I ended up with Ian Richie coz I was scraping the bottom of the barrel, because I think he's brilliant. I think he's a very very clever guy.
Bill:
A kinda high-tech guy, isn't he? Kinda Fair-light oriented?
Roger:
Yeah, he's high-tech, yes. He's very high-tech, which again I like because one of the decisions I made going into this record was that I wanted to make something much more hard-edged than I had made recently. "The Final Cut" and "Pros and Cons" were both very meandery kind of, you know sort, of slow segue way kind of pieces, and I wanted to make something that sounded much tougher than that, and so when I make the demos of all the songs from the record, I worked for the first time with a drum machine.
Bill:
Do you do this at home, or do you go off to a studio?
Roger:
At home. No, no. At home. I have a studio at home. In fact I made the record at home.
Bill: Right.
Roger:
And so I worked with a Linn drum for the first time, and I found that quite a good, kind of freeing experience, in a way.
Bill:
Start with a feel and work from there.
Roger:
Exactly, yeah, rather than having to start with words and melody and work back to the drum pattern later. And I spoke to loads and loads... talking of Robbie Nevil, I mean Alex Sadkin, I spoke to, and he loved the stuff and... but he and Phil Fanelli were empire building at the time.
Bill:
Booked up till 1997, anyway.
Roger:
Well, they were trying to... no they weren't booked up, they were trying to do some weird deal with um, ah... God the brain goes, ...the guy who owns RAK...
Bill:
Micky Most.
Roger:
Micky the Most, right. And some kind of big production company they were getting into. "However much we want to do it, it's a big piece and it's..." So they kind of fell by the way side, and the same... and George Martin... that was completely different...
Bill:
He would have been lovely, wouldn't he, for a project like this, George Martin?
Roger:
Well, yeah, maybe. Except I think it might have got very, very slow, you know. The great thing about Ian was that he likes to get in and do it and get out, you know. I mean, I think that was very good, because I think... I have to say, I think it's a wonderful record and I think the combination of his technological and youthful attitude towards the idea of making records, that one shouldn't really dwell on it all too long, and my experience and my conceptual notions about things has worked very well. But I just... he came up, I can't remember why his name came up, but it did, and I met him, and he listened to the demos, and he was the only, you know, he was the only person that I met who, having listened to the demos, understood what it was all about. He said he thought it was about whales... not Wales the country, but about, you know, hump-backed whales, all that kind of thing (Roger: does a whale impression). You remember that thing, "The Song of the Hump-Backed Whales"?
Bill:
Indeed (laughs).
Roger:
I thought, well, this man is obviously (inexplicably adopts a Scottish accent) intuitively in tune with this project which I immediately brought in.
Bill:
Wonderful.
Roger:
And he buys his clothes form Oxfam.
Bill:
Well, there you are then.
Roger:
Which I think is...
Bill:
What more do you want?
Roger:
Exactly.
Bill:
The other guys who worked on it are interesting too. I noticed Andy Fairweather-Low plays guitar on it.
Roger:
Yeah.
Bill:
You got Graham Broad.
Roger:
Andy Fairweather-Low is, without question the best rhythm guitar player in Europe. I don't know about America...
Bill:
Not a commonly known fact.
Roger:
Steve Croper might run close, or maybe there are more young ones who I don't know. But certainly over here, he is... not a commonly known fact.
Bill:
Indeed.
Roger:
I shouldn't be talking about it really because they will wrest him from my tender care, and I want to keep him all to myself forever, coz he is brilliant. I mean, his playing on "Sunset Strip" particularly, on this record is just magical, I think personally. You know, he's marvelous.
Bill:
A couple of other interesting names...
Roger:
And Jay, who's the other guitar player. Younger, of course, not as experienced as Andy and I, but nevertheless heart in the right place. Very good technically, and also you know, the odd bit of soul drips off from time to time, but as long as we slap his wrist...
Bill:
You brought Graham Broad in, to do the drums, who's another interesting one. He's done work with some highly commercial people in the past.
Roger:
Has he?
Bill:
Oh, Bucks Fizz, Dollar, the list is endless.
Roger:
Has he really? Well, he came entirely from Ian.
Bill:
Staggeringly good drummer.
Roger:
He's brilliant. I couldn't believe it. I sat with... I didn't sit with open mouth, because, you know, in the studio, you want to be a bit cool.
Bill:
Yeah, of course.
Roger:
You know, and I'm happy to say that when I rang him up and said "Look, why don't you come on the road?" he went "yes". So he's coming on the road with us.
Bill:
Lovely, oh great. He's a good character too, isn't he?
Roger:
Oh, he's lovely, yeah, which is very important for a live band as well.
Bill:
Mel Collins, of course, the king of the sax, is in there.
Roger:
Mad Mel.
Bill:
What can you say about Mel Collins!?
Roger:
Well, very little.
Bill:
(laughs) That hasn't already been said, of course, yeah.
Roger:
Very little. Mel is, again a very old pal and one of... a brilliant player, and one of my favorite folk, and he's coming on the road as well.
Bill:
Oh great.
Roger:
As are Katie Kissoon and Doreen Chanter, who've been on the road with me before. I think even Clare might do the odd gig, Clare Torry, which would be lovely, because she's... just magical.
Bill:
What form are these gigs going to take then? Where and when?
Roger:
I start on August the 14th in Providence, Road Island. I had intended to start in Europe, in the middle of August, and go to America on the... sort of September the 10th, but the European promoters, to a man, are totally disinterested in me and my concerts (laughs). They'd be very interested in a Pink Floyd gig, which is no great surprise to me, having tried to do "The Pros and Cons" in Europe. With the exception of Thomas Yohanssen of Stockholm, I must say, who's a good bloke and who, you know, we did some good gigs in Stockholm.
Bill:
Do you include Britain in Europe, that's disinterested?
Roger:
Well, I'm sure Harvey would do some gigs, but I think... no, actually probably in London I could do gigs, but you know you can't... you know, it's very difficult... I tend... my shows tend to be extremely expensive. I mean, I haven't made money out of a show since 1977.
Bill:
What you need is a sponsor. Get Pepsi-Cola to sponsor you.
Roger:
Yeah, well, Pepsi-Cola, again, would be much more interested if I was called Pink Floyd, than they are.
Bill:
Well, you nearly had a hit single, just dropping out of the charts as we speak.
Roger:
(laughs)
Bill:
Could have been on Top of the Pops.
Roger:
Yeah.
Bill:
In your trendy haircut.
Roger:
Yeah, yeah.
Bill:
They'd probably be interested I'd think.
Roger:
Yeah, and a funny hat, a silly hat. What I need is a silly hat. No, you can't... you know, I mean I confess to be surprised that the Powers That Be wouldn't play "Radio Waves". I was very surprised. You know, I was very surprised, which shows... which is yet another indication of the longevity of my naivetŽ, that I'm still surprised by that kind of thing. I really thought they were going to play the record. I couldn't... I'm still sort of in a way... but they've made it quite clear why they won't, you know. They... a.) They say I'm an extremely difficult person...(laughs)
Bill:
Absolutely.
Roger:
... b.) That, you know, I'm not a singles artist. Well, I'm not Mel and Kim, that's for sure. Mind you, I don't look like Mel and Kim... There's only one of me, to start with, and I'm not attractive in the same way as they are, and, ah, it's just not the kind of record they're interested in. Here, with all due respect to regional radio, if those eight or nine people at Radio One go "No, he's a very difficult man, we're not playing his record," that's it. Forget it.
Bill:
It's chips-on-the-shoulder time of the year, isn't it? There's musical logic in this... A record is good and it stands up as a record and says "Right, then that's fine." Over here "Roger Waters, hmmmm, Pink Floyd..."
Both:
"Woooh."
Bill:
"Can't be a good record, won't even bother listening to it".
Roger:
That's right.
Bill:
It must annoy you.
Roger:
Yeah...
Bill:
But, as you say, well, Britain at the end of the day, is 7% of the world record-buying market, you know, so...
Roger:
Yeah.
Bill:
I think America will do nicely.
Roger:
No, but I live here, you know, and I... and it's a bloody good record. I mean, I'm not saying the single's a particularly brilliant single, although I think it's very good. You know, it's... alot of Ian's work in it and I think he's very talented and I think it's... It certainly is not the 79th best single...
Bill:
No.
Roger:
...out this week...
Bill:
No.
Roger:
...in England. It might not be the best, but it's certainly one of the ten best, there's no question about that. It's a very very good record.
Bill:
Well, it's...
Roger:
Just coz they can't take a joke...
Bill:
(laughs) Exactly. To finish, and if, you don't want to talk about it, then fair enough, but Pink Floyd do have an album coming out on the same record label in a few weeks time. How do you feel about that?
Roger:
No, it's not scheduled. They are desperately trying to deliver a single on June the 10th to the record company, which means that it could, if everything went right, be out on... in the middle of August. But I know that Gilmour has been scouring the ends of the earth to try and find somebody to write lyrics, for the last year. Maybe he gave up in the end, and has written lyrics himself, I don't know. I know he spent a long time closeted on his own, trying to write a single, which I think is unbelievable. Personally, I think it's an incredibly stupid thing to do. Certainly something that never happened when I was running Pink Floyd. There was no question of going off and sitting in a room and trying to write a single. It was never that kind of band. In fact, I remember when "Dark Side of the Moon" came out, we would not allow "Money" to be released as a single in this country on the grounds that it was sort of... (laughs) you know, it was sort of not the right thing to do.
Bill:
Sacrilege.
Roger:
Absolutely, yeah. So the idea of them scuttling off into rooms and trying to write singles... I think that just points at what they're into, which is money!
Bill:
Well, who's gonna sing them, once they've written the single?
Roger:
Well, Dave's a very good singer, I mean, let's not... Dave's and excellent singer and he's also a very good guitar player, but it seems to me, you know... They're very upset that I won't go on and they can see that there's a golden goose here, and they want to exploit it.
Bill:
Is it a sort of Deep Purple situation, where they're saying "Well, if we get back together we can make a lot of money," here?
Roger:
Well, there's no question of getting back together, because I won't have anything to do with it, and I think Rick is involved, but he's only on a wage. He's not part of what they're calling a band. Oh yeah, definitely they're in it for the money, they're going out to make some money. Well, that's alright, that's their decision. I personally think it's despicable!
Bill:
Do you think that the statement has been made then by Pink Floyd and that should be left, and that's it?
Roger:
Oh, don't get me wrong. I mean, don't get me wrong... I've loved Pink Floyd. I feel very, very passionately hurt by what's going on now. I think it should have been allowed gracefully to remain what it was, which was a serious rock band, trying to do good work until it fell apart, and when it fell apart, it should have been left as far as I'm concerned. But, you know, the lure of the dollar is a very powerful lure.
Bill:
Will it starts to get tacky now, with them putting out an album? Will it start to get involved in legalities and all the rest of it? Presumably it must at some point.
Roger:
Yeah, there is a legal action going on at the moment.
Bill:
That's sad, because that's gonna be, you know, the Melody Maker (British music magazine) and all the rest of it will pick up on that and think it's wonderful, and they will get out the old "Dinosaurs" caption and do all the rest of it won't they?
Roger:
Well yes, they will. But I mean they were doing that anyway. You know, even before any of this happened! So what Melody Maker does doesn't concern me. It doesn't concern me very much, but I am sad to see the name of Pink Floyd sold just as a brand name, coz itÔs to a whole new generation of kids who have no idea who was in the band or anything else, so it's like, you know, if you put Beatles tickets on sale now, kids would go out and buy it. They wouldn't know John Lennon was dead, and they probably wouldn't care either. They'd think, "Oh, it's The Beatles" and they'd go and queue for days and days, or The Who, or anybody else, you know. Any of these bands that, you know, they don't know but they know the name. It's those legendary names which are unfortunately worth a great deal of money.
Bill:
Could Pink Floyd exist now? Could Pink Floyd be a band as they were, in 1987, or has the day of that sort of band gone do you think?
Roger:
Oh no, they exist, they're called U2.
Bill:
I thought you were going to say U2. That was the one which sprung to mind as I said the question, yeah.
Roger:
Yeah, or possibly even Simple Minds, or you know... Oh yes, they exist but they're bands. They're the guys who get together and they're doing the work and they're into it and so on... That's quite different. Oh no, they exist. Pink Floyd doesn't.
Bill:
But Roger Waters does of course.
Roger:
Yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah, you know, we plug on, and that's all you can do really, go on doing the work and hope people like it.
Bill:
The initial reaction from it is an excellent one, I must say.
Roger:
What, to "...K.A.O.S."?
Bill:
Indeed.
Roger:
Well, good. Good, I love it personally.
Bill:
I'm looking forward to seeing all these people on stage, I must say. Let's hope you do a date in this country.
Roger:
Oh, I think we definitely will. I'm sure we will, because Harvey, bless him, would, you know... Harvey might even be prepared to lose money...
Bill:
(laughs) Oh, now you're talking.
Roger:
...to see the thing on stage. And also, I've spoken to them and I know the Ponterdulais Male Voice Choir would come up to London to do at least one gig.
Bill:
Oh, ideal.
Roger:
And that would be great. I mean, there's something about that, you know, the...
Bill:
From the heart, isn't it?
Roger:
...that heartfelt, emotional thing, and there you are and... it would be wonderful, I think. In fact, that would... that would happen, I promise. That is a promise, that that gig will happen. Whether it's just London and the NEC...
Bill:
Oh, and Scotland, I think, too. I think you could probably fill the Scottish Exhibition Centre without...
Roger:
Is there an exhibition centre?
Bill:
Well, it's an NEC really, in Scotland.
Roger: I
s it, where's that?
Bill: I
t's in Glasgow. Where we are at Radio Clyde, so I would think that's a distinct possibility.
Roger:
Oh, right, well we'll see.
Bill:
Indeed. Well, let me wish you well and the LP and... thank you very much, thank you for talking to us today.
Roger:
Aye, Aye.
Bill:
I thought you were going to give us a bit of Scottish accent...
Roger:
Aye (laughs)
Bill:
(laughs) Roger Waters, thank you very much.
Roger:
You're welcome.
End of Interview.
Transcription by Alastair McLean. Tape supplied by Brian McColgan and originally transcribed by Bruno McDonald. With kind permission of Andy Mabbett allowing us to use the interview at this time.