REG was contacted by long time Waters fan Scott Frank,
whom I had met before the Milwaukee 1999 tour
opener. Scott informed me that he was in possession of an almost unknown video interview of Roger Waters done by Capitol Records. Roger did the interview in 1999 for the upcoming release of "Is There Anybody Out There?," the live CD version of The Wall.
Scott bought the video from someone at Capitol who stated that "Is There Anybody Out There?" was originally to have been released on Capitol Records, but was eventually released Columbia records instead. Roger Waters had been interviewed for the release of the CD during the time that it was a Capitol Records project. However, when the project was switched to Columbia, the interview was shelved. The digital tape masters are still owned by Capitol, but Mr. Frank bought a VHS 'working original' from the Capitol employee.
Scott stated, "...at the time, I assumed that many copies were probably circulating around. But, I haven't seen anything written anywhere about the thing, haven't seen any copies on eBay, and haven't seen it on any trading lists. So, maybe it's a little more scarce than I thought."
W/O stands for Working Original. The Tape case is labeled: 'Master ID # 210467. Client 92560. (Dubbs Duplicating the Masters).' The tape case is dated; 'Master Received Jan. 28, 1999.'
"The video has a time...counter over the top of the picture for the entire 30 minute duration. The video shoot is of Roger's head ... almost too close for comfort. He talks about The Wall concerts, The Wall film, The Berlin Wall gig, and the official live release. It's pretty candid & interesting ... although there really isn't anything of a revelational nature."
Scott sent REG a CD of the video, and I spent 5 days transcribing it for our members. So now without further ado, for the first time in print, is a transcription of the 'lost in the vaults' Capitol interview with Roger Waters.
The label on the tape states:
Capitol Records
Roger Waters Interview
Length 30:00
VHS NTSC Master
11/16/99
W/O# 948907 
Capitol:
We're rocking...? Excellent... So, 20 years on how does it sound to you now?
Roger:
Well, of course I haven't actually listened to the live stuff... well, I listened to a few tracks... because it's in the process of being mixed. James Guthrie's mixing it at the moment... in his hovel... where ever he lives... I know the name of it... it's in California... Lake... Lake Tahoe... ah from what I've heard, it sounds alright.
Capitol:
How is it different from the (original) recording... the album?
Roger:
Ah... I'm very much looking forward to finding that out... when I hear the rest of it. But the bits that I've heard, there was a... The first half of the show had to be elongated in order to give the chaps time to finish building the wall. So there's a sort of strange medley of a recapitulation of certain themes from the first half of the piece, towards the end, just before Goodbye Cruel World. And I confess I'd forgotten that entirely. It came as something of a surprise when I listened to the mix.
Capitol:
How is it... I mean... how many times did you actually in concert do The Wall after the whole trek? Roger: I haven't the faintest idea. I could guess. I would say... um... 24... maybe. We did a week in LA, a week in Nassau Coliseum in New York, a week in Earls Court, a Week in Dortman. That's already 28, so I'm already above... or maybe we did 6 nights in each... and then we went back in 81 at Earls Court and did a few more days... because by that point we were making a movie. And in the original plan for the movie... it was planned that there would be some live footage... when Michael Serisan was the director. And that footage still exists. In 70... we did 3 songs in 70 millimeter. Capitol: Was that in Earls Court live? Will that be part of the show... Roger: I'm sure it will be... get used, yeah... you know... it's in a chest under my bed. Well not literally, figuratively you understand. |
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Capitol:
Hang on... Why did you pick Earls Court to shoot the film in?
Roger:
Oh, it's just a venue that we were very used to working in in London. Ah... and the show was designed to fit in that kind of an arena. It might in retrospect have been more fun to do it somewhere more interesting.
Capitol:
Was it terribly difficult... to bring something like that to the stage? Obviously you stayed in one place for a week because it such a big deal... I mean you couldn't just pick up and move.
Roger:
Yeah there were considerable... I remember going to Culver City when we were... before the first shows... where Mark and Jonathan... Mark Fisher and Jonathan Park were testing out the kind of Wall building equipment for the first time. And there was a big sound stage in Culver City... and going in through the doors... you couldn't hear yourself think... this horrendous noise, like screeching grinding metal tearing noise. And it was the noise of the lifts carrying the platforms for the guys to build the wall on... going up and down. And when they were first erected they made this horrendous... I mean it would have been impossible to do the gig. They just... sent them up and down 24 hours a day for four or five days... just greasing and greasing and greasing and greasing, wearing them in until they stopped making the noise. But it was a bit of a worry to start.
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Capitol:
The center piece of the stage... could you describe that? The wall... the help... Roger: Well it was the live show. And we built the Wall in... to the sides, and that was fixed and solid. And then over on stage left, at the extremity of the solid bit, was the anchorage for the Messer Schmitt, the model Messer Schmitt that was about a 20 foot wingspan that came flying in at some point from. That had to be anchored solidly because it had explosives and stuff. But then from there on, in the central portion of the stage was I think 3 separate... no maybe that's Berlin... maybe on the original one there's just one huge span of lift... that went up... however far it had to go up. So men could get onto it... with the cardboard bricks, and it would go up and they'd put them on, and it would go down again... so... And that was the biggest thing mechanically. But if you really wanted to know more about that, you'd have to ask Jonathan... or Mark, because they built it. Capitol: So this was quite advanced... I mean this... this what you were doing on stage was quite a bit more than anything that had been done before? Roger: ...or since. |
Capitol:
Really?
Roger:
Well I think so, yeah. Well, maybe not in terms of tonnage, you know... but I think most of the sets since, have been fairly static. But of course the Stones copied all of the inflatables. When I say copied... they didn't.... they just started to use Mark... Mark and Jonathan, and then Mark on his own... I think... cause they've split up now... Mark and Jonathan. For some of the... I remember Jagger coming to see the show at Nassau Coliseum and you could see his eyes popping out of his head... he was going... 'I want one... I want one...' or '...how's that done... whatever it is, I want some.' And scurrying around back stage going 'who designed that...' you know... in front of me... and finally he must have discovered who the chaps were who built it, and employed them for a number of tours.
Capitol:
Was the sound of the show as important as the stage... the choice of board?
Roger:
It was... it was... I have to say. You need a proper PA and cord and all of that... But even in those old days, they were quite good at building PA's. Not as good as they are now... I mean I've just been on the road this Summer and the PA's... the Clair Brothers PA that I used in the States was unbelievable. It's much more focused. They've worked out to... you know... how to shine one bit... at these blokes here and another at them so... you get a smart... and you get as clean and as loud a sound with much less equipment.
Capitol:
Too bad you didn't have that back then?
Roger:
It would have been... good.
Capitol:
Ok, The Wall... actual... where did the idea of the story come from?
Roger:
Well, there's two ideas. One... the idea of building a wall across the stage with a rock and roll band on this side, and the audience on the other, came to me in a flash of angst in the Olympic Stadium in Montreal at the end of the Animals tour in 1977, where we were playing only football stadiums. And I had become... um... disenchanted with that arrangement, in that it had nothing to do with anything anymore except numbers. You know... numbers of dollars and numbers of people. So um... and I famously kind of flipped on stage at a certain point, and spat at some poor youth who was trying to scrabble up the front of the stage. And... after that show, in a state of some depression, I thought... this is crazy... what am I doing here... you know... how have I been reduced to this... or allowed myself to be reduced to this? And it was that night, or the following day that I suddenly thought... hey maybe we could do a show where I expressed this sense of alienation that I had by constructing a... and then I started doing some drawings... you know... stuffed a cigarette packet sitting in the bottom of my dugout, in the time honored fashion. And the rest is history.The story of the piece then, which developed... cause I don't have to start thinking... well where is this wall from? It can't just be about that. It can't just be about my disenchantment with the scale of the... you know... of the gigs that we were doing. It must be about something else. So I started to think about personal walls, and how we try to protect ourselves... from pain and all of that, so the rest of the story was mainly autobiographical... um... you know... with a few dollops of Syd Barrett and Led Zeppelin thrown in... I suppose. Led Zeppelin... being... you know... the smashing of rooms and all that sort of childish nonsense. Yeah... all of that fun... and games.
Capitol:
The School Master... was that a representation of yours? How you felt about school as well? Roger: Yeah, it's kind of a Gestalt image made up of a number of School Masters that I encountered in my Grammar School. I don't know... how... schools have changed to some extent since then. But they were ah... very much... at the time they were concerned about University entrance and kind of scoring points at that level. And they felt that the best way to do that was to... you know... beat or shame, or in any way they could cajole infants into achieving good A level results. And in my case, and in the case of a number of my ah... peers... it was pretty counterproductive, and we became a little bit rebellious... I think I would have to say. And a lot them did try to employ that shaming techniques... especially when we were young... young enough to... not just tell them to fuck off... you know... um... and it was unpleasant. Capitol: In the imagery of Pinks dilemma, and holding onto his mental state... does it represent a physical... his physical problems? I mean was it really that bad... touring... did you find it really... you know um... claustrophobic... and I mean there must be moments when you did enjoy doing it? Roger: Touring? |
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Capitol:
Yeah.
Roger:
No... touring really is a doddle... you know it's... I always... smile... when they say... oh you know... it must be so hard touring, and the terrible pressure and... but there isn't any... you know. But by comparison, having to get up and go to work in a factory... it's no pressure at all. You know... by and large, if the bands reasonably successful, somebody bangs on the door at noon and says... you know... "leave in half an hour chaps"... you know... and then you get in a limousine and go and get on a private airplane... you know... and someone in a tight skirt sells you a can of Parison and... you know... and Highland Spring... until you arrive in the next town where you go and have a... play a set of tennis or something... and then off to the sound check... and ah... making sure everything's alright. And of course, by and large it is, because you're usually working with professional people who take their jobs very seriously, and get everything together. So you do a bit of a sound check, and then have something to eat, and then do a gig for a couple of hours... and that's where it starts getting hard... is what happens after the gig. And it is true that because you've turned on the adrenaline tap, you do tend to be flying at eleven o'clock when you come off stage. But...um
Capitol:
And what do you do with that then?
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Roger:
Well you know... a lot of the chaps would party then for the rest of the night. And then it's into the whole... all the addictions come out... you know... and um... and that's what screws people up... or that used to screw people up, is that they'd stay up all night you know... snorting coke and fucking and all those things... that debilitate you in the end. And so, that's why they come back off the road looking shagged out... cause they are... you know (laughs). But the actual job... is a doddle... it really is... and terrific fun as well. Up to a point... |
Capitol:
Senselessly
Roger:
Yeah... you know... senselessly... mindlessly... hopelessly... yeah... (raises his hands in the air and makes uuuuhhhhhh cheering noises)... you know... and they all do this thing where they go.... Huu huu huu huu (rotates and pumps his fist in the air and laughs)... you know... oh my God... please go home... you know... and let us get on with it. Happily... these days... they're in a small enough minority... and I think I've developed to the point where I can just kind of block them out... you know. I used to feel it necessary to try and stop them... (waves forward) oh it's hopeless.
Capitol:
Impossible.
Roger:
Yeah it's like a knat standing in front of a steamroller going...(pushes his open palm forward) Stop. It doesn't work.
Capitol:
Pink's dilemma is still relevant today isn't it? It's an ongoing...
Roger:
Well, the thing about turning into a fascist swine... you know... I think if you allow yourself... if you allow your... If we all have some natural human decency... if you allow that to be crushed beneath the weight of the numbers of people and money, and so that what becomes important to you is the numbers rather than the connection, then the chances are that you will regress into some less attractive form of life, than you were originally. And one might be that picture that we drew with Geldorf, or me actually in the first shows... this kind of ranting demagogue, intent on joining in with the inherent sadomasochism that is implicit in all this... Huu huu huu huu (rotates and pumps his fist in the air)... you know all this kind of monkey stuff that they do. In fact one of the scenes that I wrote in the original idea for the movie was actually of an audience being bombed... you know... and as the bombs fall and their blown to bits... the closer they are to the epicenter of the destruction, the more they like it... the more they cheer. You know, I love this idea of a bloke with only one arm because it's been blown off... cheering with the other one (laughs)... like YEAH... I'm part of the show. Yeah it's very Pythonesque... but it's a... was kind of the feeling that I had. In a way, the more uncomfortable they could make it for themselves... the better they liked it.
Capitol:
Did you work closely with Allan Parker on the movie? Roger: Yeah, we did...we then.... I mean, all of that really got pushed to one side when he came on board because he was very clear, the vision that he brought to it was that it should be... not have any footage of rock and roll bands playing and so on... and certainly not us... but that it should be a much more straight forward... kind of attempt at a... a straight forward narrative. I nearly said linear, obviously it's not linear, but it is a straight forward piece of story telling... or that's what it developed into. And that's kind of what he brought to the project. And the way it worked was that he and Gerry Scarfe and I, we'd all go around to Scarfe's house and sit in a room... and... you know... and they would ah... well Parker mainly, would kind of drill me about my life, and as I sat there recounting anecdotes from my youth, he'd go... "ooh that would be a good scene" and we'd sort of jot things down. Capitol: Was it good for you to get that out of your system or... Roger: Yeah, I think so... yeah I think it was both cathartic and therapeutic to a certain extent, working on that one piece. |
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Capitol:
...your father dying in the war... and all...
Roger:
... all of that stuff.
Capitol:
Okey doke... ah... how did... the Wall... I mean the performance... how did it differ from other Pink Floyd shows?
Roger:
Um... it was more coherent, I think would be the best way to describe it. I'd been working towards that show for the previous several shows. The one before was Animals, which had a lot of stuff going on, because that was the first one where we'd used inflatables and things. So there was lots of... kind of Pigs flying about and you know... and inflatables popping open. We had a kind of a family of a Mother and a Father and 2.4 children... there was this inflatable child kind of cut through the middle like that (makes like a knife slicing through him), and a frig (refrigerator) that bursts open, and a Cadillac and... just to fill up space in the air... and that was where the Pig appeared for the first time. I remember we used to fill it with propane and explode it and all that stuff. But it was... they were more... that was more a question of creating tableau's to illustrate various songs within the context of the piece... Animals. And we would do... in that show we would do... Animals would be the second half of the show... and the first half of the show would be Wish You Were Here. Because that was a habit that we got into doing. You'd do the new album and then the one before that and nothing else. Which was quite uncompromising, and rather good I thought. That's what you see. You get these two pieces and that's all you get.
So Animals had a lot of stuff. I mean it had some wonderful stuff... Wolf Scott, this pyrotechnician... he made these things... that we only used a couple of times... they were fantastic... he made firework sheep... for Sheep... for the song Sheep. And they were fired out of mortars... about like six inch mortars... in big tubes like this (holds his hands up and down apart about a yard or meter)... and there were banks of nine of them I think, and ah... and what happens is... they went (makes a sound like TOOOOOMB) and they would shoot this thing... a thousand feet up into the air and it would go (PoookCCCH)... but what was left then, was a kind of five foot long kind of tissue paper sheep... .so it was a parachute in the shape of a sheep, and with weights in it's feet. And if you fired nine of them off... which we did in kind of salvo's... you'd get these nine sheep floating down from a thousand feet up... depending on which way the wind blows... and they were stunning. They were absolutely wonderful. When I'd stand on stage... (looks up in awe mouth open and points) look... look... aren't they wonderful! But, then when it came to The Wall, it was no longer just kind of isolated tableau. I mean there's a certain structure in the Animals show, but compared with The Wall... nothing. This really had a... was really thought out and had a beginning and a middle and an end... when the whole thing fell down and a... and was pretty coherent. Capitol:
In The Wall shows... just the Wall completed in it's entirety... it was theater also...Roger:
Oh it was theater, yeah. It was proper theater. And we ran a lot of projection... you know Gerry did all that animation to project on the face of the wall in the second half, and then the wall was pierced in certain ways to provide at least some entertainment in the second half of the show. Cause most of the second half of the show... the band played like that... you know with the wall three feet in front of them... us...Capitol:
Where were... what were you doing at this point?Roger:
Well I was actually kind of dodging around most of the time... it was the rest of them kind of locked in cages at the back... apart from the bit where Dave goes up on the top... and he played the solo of Comfortably Numb from sort of the top of the wall. But most of the time... they were stuck in these cages... you had to have cages cause the concrete bricks... not concrete... cardboard, were quite heavy and at the end... some of them inevitably fell backwards... and so they were all in these kind of you know... steel cages to protect them from the carnage at the end of the show. Umm... but the hotel room would flap out from the front of the wall and so I would sing 'Nobody Home' and 'Don't Leave Me Now' I think, from there, and there was a lot of dashing about and... just like real theater.
Capitol: What was it like for you... as far as the songs go... during the show... what part of the program did you enjoy the most?Roger:
Um... I don't know... I thought it was all great... to be honest with you! I liked the stuff in the hotel room. I used to do 'Nobody Home' in there, and it had a false perspective... with a hole in the back with the Tropicana Motel sign. The Tropicana being the famous old motel in Los Angeles. And there were some other moments that... you know... were very dramatic. Dave's solo in Comfortably Numb, where he was back lit by a very powerful light... so he was kind of... just this blank white wall (stretches his arms and hands to visualize the scene) with this small figure here, with these lights shining up... that was pretty spectacular. And of course when it fell down at the end. Watching the faces in the audience in the first three rows was quite... you know... cause they were terrified... the bricks... cause it looked like it was going to get them... and sometimes it did. (laughs)... you know.. I mean we never killed anybody but... you know. And we moved on... by the time I did it in Berlin... we'd moved on from cardboard to poly...styrene and it was a lot safer, cause these cardboard bricks were quite heavy.Capitol:
It's the second largest selling Pink Floyd album in history... it's a fact... I mean what more can you say.Roger:
Is it... yeah. It sold more than Dark Side of the Moon in fact in North America. But world wide, I'm sure you're right... I'm sure your figures are more up to date than mine.Capitol:
Abba's Greatest hits has been 300 weeks on Billboard. Is there danger of it succeeding Dark Side of the Moon?Roger:
Um... no I don't think it can. Because the only reason Dark Side of the Moon isn't still there is because they changed the rules. So ten years after it comes out, they take it off the chart now. So nothing can be on the chart that long. There were all these catalog albums in the charts, and they thought... this isn't what this chart's for, these things are selling anyway. This chart is to sell product... we don't want it cluttered up with all this old crap.
Capitol:
That's not fair... cause if you get more people with more record buying money... all over the world with more promotions... they're gonna buy more record sales... I mean it's a shame.Roger:
Yeah... but see... they didn't change the rule until after Dark Side of the Moon had broken all the records or whatever... so... I don't know how many weeks it was on the charts...Capitol:
Seven hundred and something...Roger:
Seven... whatever, it was like 15 years, 16 years or something... so nothing can ever do that again, because once they hit ten years... they'll be taken off automatically. So the whole thing's a joke... you know. It doesn't mean anything. I suppose they could do... if they got really interested in kind of you know the WC belt or something... you could say... look... you could make a formula about the number of weeks it was on the Billboard chart, and the number of weeks it's on this other chart... which is... you know there's another chart... isn't there... it's called... Catalog chart, or the Classic chart... it's all still in there yeah.Capitol:
Would you do it again... another Wall show? A Berlin Show.Roger:
Well, it's funny you should ask that, because I had been asked to do it next Summer. And I've said no. Um, I was asked to do it in North America, and there was a lot of talk of doing it somewhere out in the wilds... on July the fourth weekend, and creating some sort of mass pilgrimage so that people could all come in... you know... pitch their tents and have a great wondrous gathering of like minded spirits. And um... the culmination of this weekend would be a performance of The Wall in the year 2000, as there'd been one in 1980 and 1990. And ah... I said ohh... no... I don't want to do that. And they said... of course it would be free... we would do it free... and at that point I thought... oh, well maybe that's not such a bad idea. It made me think... maybe I could... and we started to talk about it... until I started to understand what "free" meant. Nothing's free. So I said... this free business... who's going to pay for it? Cause I KNOW... it's very expensive. Berlin show cost about 6 million dollars to put on... you know... for that one performance. And so um... of course I discovered who was going to pay for it. And who was going to pay... you could name any name... it doesn't matter... But you could say... Coca Cola... it was going to be paid for by corporate America. So... oh... how nice of them... but... what do they out of it... you know... cause nothing's for nothing. So I started to discover that the way they were going to distribute the tickets was by promotions. So you... you know... buy ten cans of Coke, and you get a ticket to the show... or a similar kind of thing. And I went... oooh... hold it right there... I don't want to hear any more about this... you know.
Capitol: That's the opposite... that's exactly the opposite of what the whole thing was supposed to be about.Roger:
Yeah... it's like a clever way of... you know... the suits... kind of suborning all of that potential positive energy... and delivering it to themselves. It's exactly what I noticed... with no disrespect intended to Sheryl Crow, whose work I admire... I have to say... but that whole thing that happened in Central Park last week... it was actually for... what was it... an American Express Card was it... or something like that? So, here was something like... purporting to be ah... you know... rock and roll in all its kind of rebelliousness and freedom... and actually it's a big advert for American Express. Um... I don't know... this taking over of Rock and Roll by corp... by large corporations is a bit of a worrying trend in my view. A lot of shows you'll see... you see big bands going out on the road and you'll find that Volks Wagon is written on all the tickets... or that or that or something...Capitol:
Pink Floyd?Roger:
Well, among others. Because they've been seduced by the numbers and you know... and get... scrape up every dollar from wherever they can get...Capitol:
How do you feel about the other guys now?Roger:
Well, I don't feel much about them one way or the other... Now... I'm happy to say. You know when we um... parted company in the mid and late '80s, I went through quite a galling time for a while. But um... I am content with my lot.Capitol:
Good.
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