A Return to the Past
Roger Waters: Live at the PNC Arts Center
August 6, 1999
by Chris Whitely
Rushing down the highway with only an hour or so before the "Roger
Waters: Live at the PNC Arts Center" concert began, listening to the
apocalyptic technopop of Radio Kaos above the noise of casual
conversation and the rushing wind, I wondered what it was going to be
like. I've been a fan of Pink Floyd since 1988, when I got a friend to
tape me A Momentary Lapse of Reason. But I had never gotten to see the
Floyd, or Roger Waters, live in concert. And this concert was my only
real chance to see Roger Waters, whose last tour (besides his appearance
at "The Wall: Live in Berlin" in 1990) was to promote Radio Kaos in
1988.
In that year, when I was in the ninth grade, I knew nothing about Roger Waters, about how in 1984 he had pronounced Pink Floyd dead--calling the band a "spent force creatively"--and gone solo. I knew nothing about how the other members of the band--guitarist David Gilmour, drummer Nick Mason, keyboardist Richard Wright--had gone behind Waters' back to resurrect Pink Floyd and go on to release an album and a tour that made millions. And I knew nothing about the bitter lawsuit between the new Floyd and Waters that ensued. But I knew that listening to the Momentary Lapse album from this "pseudo" Floyd was a relevation. Nothing I had heard from the bubblegum songs of the Top 40 came close to this music. I was entranced by the mournful guitar solos of "Sorrow", transported by the sax of "Terminal Frost", intrigued by the loneliness of "Learning To Fly".
Before I left for a new boarding school in the tenth grade, I got another friend to tape me The Dark Side of the Moon and The Final Cut. At first, these albums were more difficult to like. The ringing clocks of "Time", the shrieks of "The Great Gig in the Sky", the cash registers of "Money"-- all these things that make the album great made the album seem dated to me. And I definitely didn't understand The Final Cut, with its meandering, slow songs pierced by the occasional Waters-patented primal scream.
In a dormitory setting, with other students blasting the latest pop or rap from their stereos, playing this music seemed embarrassing. This was PRIVATE music, music that you listened to late at night with your headphones on. And that's what I did. It wasn't until a month or so later when I started to hear the songs of The Wall from the room across from me. This was another difficult album, but "Another Brick in the Wall Part II"--with its chants of "We don't need no education"--and "Comfortably Numb"--with its passionate guitar solos--were almost immediately appealing. I bought a copy and listened to it many nights in bed until I fell asleep.
My liking for the album began to go beyond the popular songs it contained. I began to get a sense of how the songs on the album were related to each other; for instance, how the guitar licks of "In the Flesh?" on side one was echoed by "The Thin Ice" and the other version of "In the Flesh" on side two. And then I began listening to the lyrics. I didn't yet have a sense about what the album was really about, but I quickly understood how much of it was about isolation. As a fourteen year old, trying to make friends at a new school, far away from home for the first time, and struggling to understand who I really was, the album spoke to me. I began to feel that the album was about me as much as it was about anything else.
And I continued to have these feelings as I listened more to Dark Side of the Moon and The Final Cut, and as I bought other Floyd albums--Wish You Were Here, Animals, Meddle.
****
My friends and I got to the concert just after the band began to play, near the end of "The Thin Ice". The seats in the arena were all full, and the lawn on the hill above the arena was packed with people. We went to the top of the hill and stood on the concrete path around the edge of the lawn to watch the show. Everything was very minimalistic: there were video screens showing the band, and a backdrop screen showing famous images and graphics from The Wall, but there were no trappings of the gigantic light show that the Gilmour-led Floyd puts on.
Waters played through The Wall songs in order--Another Brick in the Wall Part I, "The Happiest Days of Our Lives", "Another Brick in the Wall Part II", "Mother". I was a little nervous: was he going to play all of the Wall, and nothing else? Though The Wall is a great album, there's much more to Waters (and the Floyd). But after "Mother", the band launched into a medley from The Final Cut, consisting of "Get Your Filthy Hands Off of My Desert/Southampton Dock/Final Cut". And after this, Waters launched into the plaintive "Pigs on the Wing" and the vicious "Dogs" from Animals, and then "Welcome To The Machine" from Wish You Were Here , all performed excellently.
The evening was pleasant. Perfect, cool weather, good sound, a lot of old Floyd material being played. It could have kept going the way it was and I would have happily left, content that at last I had the opportunity to see my teenage idol. But then something happened. Waters began singing "Wish You Were Here", a classic Floyd staple. As he was singing the words with a freshness that made the material seem all new, I started to have that old feeling: that he was singing to ME. All the emotions that I had ever felt when listening to that song flooded back to me at once. Doubtless other people in the audience might also have felt this way, but it was a very personal connection that was reestablished between Waters and me, after I had spent so many hours alone listening to his music with my headphones on.
At the end of the song, Waters said, "This one's for Syd". An image of Syd Barrett, one of the founders and leaders of the Floyd before he dropped into an LSD-influenced lunacy, appeared up on the screen, and the band launched into "Shine On You Crazy Diamond". It is impossible to relate in words how perfectly this song was performed. There were no compromises here, no worries that the audience was going to get bored. Every note was played with conviction, the band in perfect sync. As the final verse of "Shine On" began, a small glittering diamond was brought out on stage. It rotated and shone, as blue starry lights flickered around it. Simple, but utterly beautiful.
I realized that Waters was taking back what was his, after all the pain that he had been through as he watched his old bandmates take the old Floyd material and sell it to the unknowing public without Waters, as if he had never existed. He was singing these old songs not only for the eager audience but for himself, to reclaim a part of himself that he had lost.
Though glossy photo books and fact-filled anthologies on Pink Floyd abound, Nicholas Schaffner's A Saucerful of Secrets is the only book that is really a full biography of the band. In the opening pages, Schaffner tells us that his intention is to write a balanced biography of the rise of the band and its acrimonious breakup, with attention paid to both the feelings of Gilmour and Waters. Yet Schaffner, with all of his claims of "balance", paints Waters as a selfish megalomaniac, and ultimately falls down on the side of Gilmour and company.
I finally understood Waters' comment in an interview about how "the unofficial biographies" got it all wrong. Waters was telling me, by his singing and playing up on the stage, that I had been reading propaganda. He was FOR REAL. And after years of wondering whether or not he was a genius or just some fake, I was gratified.
Waters was the heart and soul of Pink Floyd, and the driving force behind its creativity. No matter how well Gilmour can go out in front of tens of thousands in a stadium and play his guitar as the light show flashes around him, he never had or will have the artist's soul of Roger Waters.
****
After the intermission, the band started with "Breathe", and followed by "Time", an abbreviated "Great Gig in the Sky", and "Money", all from Dark Side of the Moon. At this point, the structure of the performance was obvious. With the exception of "The Final Cut" medley, the band was going back in time, album by album. Though the first three songs were excellent, with the absence of any Gilmour to play the guitar on "Money", it paled to the version that the new incarnation of Pink Floyd played on stage. OK, Gilmour, maybe you were the heart and soul of "Money".
And then it struck me, with the "back in time" structure, the "less is more" staging, and all the fabulous versions of old songs, that there was something cold and calculated to it all. Was this about showing that Waters was better than Gilmour, all just a game of one-upmanship? Or worse, playing only old Floyd, knowing that it was safe territory, just to please the crowd? I became angry, mistrusting the euphoric feelings that I had before the intermission.
Just as I had nearly given up all hope, a truck appeared on the screen and the opening notes of "Every Stranger's Eyes" from Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking were played. With several notes, Waters rescued the concert from becoming a cruel joke. Waters was returning to his solo work, to bravely show the part of him that is not popular, that is not a part of the classic Floyd that is a staple of 70s classic rock stations.
Now, Pros and Cons is perhaps the most difficult Waters album to like. With its plodding drums, its over-the-top desperation and the guitar licks stolen straight out of the Wall, the album is definitely only for a patient listener. But "Every Stranger's Eyes" is sublime. The song is Roger's best: his most personal song and yet his most universal.
"In truck stops and hamburger joints In Cadillac limousines In the company of has-beens And bent backs and sleeping forms On pavement steps In libraries and railway stations In books and banks In the pages of history In suicidal cavalry attacks I recognize...Myself in every stranger's eyes"
The way Roger sang it was with such loving attention to every word, every nuance. I thought, "If you had to go through that entire album just to write that song, it was well worth it."
Roger continued with a song from Radio Kaos, which was regrettably the forgettable "The Powers that Be", which is a technofunk rehash of "Run Like Hell". The song was performed with good humor, with Waters gently self-mocking some of the iffier lyrics. But as he launched into "What God Wants Part I" from Amused to Death, another over-the-top song also with incongruous lyrics, people began to get restless. The easy sonic pleasures of the early Floyd were just not there anymore.
Amused to Death, blessed by Jeff Beck's guitar playing, a wide array of musical styles, and much more understandable themes, is clearly Waters' best solo album. It makes a strong case about how we allow ourselves to be sucked into a consumer culture, being spoon-fed easy pleasures and entertainments to the detriment of our souls. However, its lyrics are sometimes oddly chosen, often to fit into the album's strident political stance. The song "Perfect Sense", with a woman singing "Why do I have to keep reading these technical manuals?" was laughed at by my friends in college. It could be Waters' most perfect album, maybe even better than The Wall or The Final Cut, if not for the lyrics. There are some real gems hidden in there. What better guitar solo exists than that on "What God Wants Part III"? And what song can approach the haunting mystique of "Three Wishes"?
Just as the concert once again seemed to be faltering, we were rescued yet again and taken to new heights. Waters launched into "Perfect Sense Part II", "It's A Miracle", and "Amused to Death", which are much better musically and help make sense of the earlier songs. I thought, "Thanks, Roger, for giving people a chance to understand what you are talking about."
All of Waters' songs are about context. More than any modern rock band, Waters (and yes, the rest of the Floyd) understood how to use the format of the entire album, building music and ideas upon each other, to create a unified whole. Too many albums by other bands start off strong and then falter, or are peppered with one or maybe several strong songs that are completely unrelated to each other. Even Zeppelin, who prided themselves on being an "album-only band, never releasing singles, never achieved the same kind of unity that can be found on The Dark Side of the Moon. And almost to underscore this point, the concert ended with estatic versions of "Brain Damage" and "Eclipse".
In Waters' entire body of work, both solo and with Pink Floyd, there exist numerous evils in the world around us: mind-numbing entertainment, getting old, ignorance, isolation, paranoia, madness, greedy people, violent people. Yet there also exists beauty, love, magic. Waters tells us that we MUST form opinions, that we MUST judge, in order to distinguish the good from the bad. Yet what made the concert so wonderful was that at times you didn't want to judge anything at all. You just wanted to sit back and enjoy the perfect music.
Upon the house lights going down again, and just before the encore of "Comfortably Numb" began, Waters stopped to speak to the audience. "Thank you," he said. "Thank you. Thank you for giving us a chance to create some of that magic again." No, thank you, Roger. For everything.
by Evil
Ted
Just fabulous! The song list was the
same as the previous nights. I got very lucky I was in the 5th
row. Roger looks and sounds GREAT! Not all too much in the way
of a visual show. There was a large screen behind the stage that
showed still pictures. The screen changed around 4 times a song,
Pictures of Syd during the Wish You Were Here stuff got a huge
response! A TV on the set playing an old war movie with Burt
Lancaster (someone told me the name: Two Days (somewhere?) but
I forgot), and a fake fish tank with 5 fake fish was pretty much
the stage set-up. Roger started the concert on a riser behind
and above the drums, and the two lead guitarists ended the show
there.
Whole show was 3 hrs. including a 15 minute intermission. Came on at 8:40 pm, but generally is on time, DO NOT BE LATE!!!!!!
Bottom line: This show kicked ass! Sounded great, energy was high ( some people actually were dancing for the whole show!) and security was very mellow. PNC bank does suck though, $6 beers and the whole name change thing, but the sound was top notch and Roger is delivering the goods! Do not miss this!
by Jim
Annese
I was at the Homdel NJ show and I must
say Roger can still do it, it totally blew my mind and I would
recommend it to everyone. You knew it was goin to be a great
show because when he came out and looked at the crowd you could
tell he was taking in all the energy being put out by them and
it showed in the music.
Bottom Line it was unreal
by JM - 45 yrs old
I was not expecting such a great show.
It blew me away. I saw Pink Floyd during their last tour and
yes, they did the songs great!! But Roger...he did them perfect!!
It was like sitting in your living room with CD's !! Kudos to
Roger, what a class act and consumate professional musician.
I can't say enough!!! 5 stars!!!
