On a Friday night, I saw Roger Waters perform The Wall at the Oracle Arena in Oakland, CA, the city in which I live. Trying to avoid paying $27 to park my car, I waded through the clean democracy of public transportation to get there. On the train there was a dull rumble of excitement. There was a mix of solemn gray pony-tailed first fans doing deep breathing and clans of strangely mustachioed hipsters chatting in unintelligible slang punctuated by the occasional ring of "Pink Floyd". Like all music critics, your true nature is as a fan. And with Waters’ press ban at the shows, tonight I am one hundred percent fan, having doled out my ticket money just like the rest of the unwashed masses. We all shuffled together in politely long lines, white people with bad dread locks tried to sell me brownies as I wound through the parking lot. Adding an ironic bit of big brotherliness to an already suspicious work like The Wall, a disembodied robot voice instructs me to have my bag open and ready for searching as I enter the arena. Later, its saccharine audio-tone bade me to designate a sober driver and thanked me for my patronage.
I always considered The Wall to be too hard and political for my tastes, not what I considered to be “Floydie” enough. But tonight I arrived at the arena with bubbling excitement, not just for the material, but to see a real, live, rock and roll legend. A friend told me to bring my notes and get ready for the Roger Waters "lecture." Once inside, I stood in an enormously long line manned by slavish incompetents to pay ten dollars for one beer. I barely found my seat in the dark, cavernous stadium, and when I did, I was ass to nose with the man in front of me. But all the unpleasantries of arena rock melted when the lights went down.
The show started at 8:00 p.m. sharp, just as it said it would on the ticket. There is no opening act, only a launch. "Into In the Flesh" erupted; like being awakened by a bucket of water on your head. The song starts with the soft, sneering ballad of a rock & roll star to his star crossed fans beaming up at him with their space cadet glow. "So ya, thought ya, might like to, go to the show." But on stage it quickly feels like war. I surprise myself when my voice chimes in at the right time and, despite my professed disdain for The Wall, it turns out my subconscious knows every word. "Drop it on them!" Waters bellows.
During an interview with Waters included on the extra features of the film version of The Wall, he chuckles, envisioning a stage production of The Wall that includes dropping faux bombs on concert goers as they wildly applaud. But whatever disdain he had with his fans in 1980, I didn't feel it today. He has apparently made peace with our idolatry.
I was born the same year The Wall was released. So by the time I heard the record, it was already part of a holy pantheon of sacred and required listening for rock fans. I am sure I heard The Wall for the first time in a now nameless friend’s car, driving around my small suburb with nothing to do. I was initially turned off by it believing it was music for angry disaffected miscreants who hated their parents and teachers. I liked my parents and I did well in school, so this must not be for me.
Later, I was lured to Pink Floyd by the kinder and heavily radio played parts of the canon like “Wish You Were Here” and “Animals." Hooked, I began digging voraciously backwards until I hit the bands roots, unearthing early Syd Barrett ditties like "See Emily Play" "Arnold Layne" and "Bike." My pedantic adoration drove me to read the entirely of Nicholas Schaffner’s Pink Floyd biography, Saucer Full of Secrets: The Pink Floyd Odyssey. In the new age of three minute downloadable MP3s, Pink Floyd’s chronic double disks and Ummaguma drone may seem to the younger generation of rock and roll fans as cerebral, long winded and obtuse. But I have remained a great devotee of Pink Floyd’s music throughout my life, cherishing that obtuseness like one cherishes Tolkien, Rush, or particle physics.
Roger Waters wrote The Wall. When he wrote it, the other members of Pink Floyd, Nick Mason, Richard Wright and David Gilmour, were quietly living in villas outside of England, trying to avoid financial ruin at the hands of UK tax collectors. Their participation could be better classified as session musicians, as Waters' storied megalomania bullied the bored rockers to his will. The ever affable David Gilmour participated, playing appeaser, trying to imbue his musicality to the caustic, sometimes angry opera Waters was spinning.
When The Wall was released, The Floyd was already a far cry from its psychedelic roots. They weren't starving art students anymore, living in communal flats. They weren't playing to swaying zombie crowds in underground London LSD happenings. There was no Syd Barrett, the early creative force of the band having gone slowly mute was now living quietly as Roger Barrett at his mother’s home in Cambridge. By the time of The Wall, the members of Pink Floyd were disillusioned multimillionaire rock stars who were moving on to their second wives. They were on the eve of their split and no one was speaking to each other. Thus, The Wall is not truly a Pink Floyd album. It was always really just Waters. It was his story, his childhood issues, his production. The live show Waters envisioned for The Wall was an intensely personal homage to his greatest achievement. However, his grandiose visions for the show were repeatedly clipped by the financial restraints imposed by the three other ambivalent Pink Floyd partners.
On stage, in 2010, Waters stands in the light. Behind him are what appear to be ten or so semi-anonymous musicians standing in the dark. It isn't so much a band as a masked orchestra finally answering the question, "By the way, which one is Pink?" Waters believes it is him, it was always him.
At one point in the show, Waters sings a duet with himself from a film recording of "Mother" from 1975. Warmly acknowledging the narcissism of the endeavor, he wishes both of these devils luck. Old Roger takes the low harmony while long haired, headphone wearing, 1975 Roger, takes the high harmony.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCy8mHOhogE Not known for his particularly strong vocals, I wonder if he is yanking our chain and this is all prerecorded, the whole show.
As we slip onto “The Thin Ice”, I realize we are going to stay note for note, almost a perfect replica of the original two part album with certain pauses and additions. It is pitch perfect. On The Wall's 2010-2011 tour website, Waters promises one appearance by his old colleague David Gilmour. Perhaps in a detente with Mr. Gilmour or just because he doesn't want to be accused of trying to show up the storied guitar virtuoso, Waters has found someone to replicate Gilmour's sublime guitar solos as if they were lip synched, as if he were there, hiding in the shadows with the rest of the musicians.
The Wall's sound does not come from one place, at times it tips the audience backwards with an intense force firing straight from the stage. At other times, the sound is circular and surly, a great arsenal packed from arena to arena for each show, like weaponry. If the Grateful Dead created the "wall of sound,” Pink Floyd should be credited with surround sound. A propeller plane buzzes over our heads moving across the stadium like a real air assault. "Look mommy a bird, up in the sky."
I feel terror as the fictitious Pink slips into the fascist ranting of marching hammers. National symbols, religious symbols and corporate symbols fall from the cargo bay of war planes begging the question, what is the difference between a corporation and a country? I feel vindicated knowing that I loathe and am suspicious of the same things as Roger Waters. "Who out there is paranoid?" he asks us. In an instant I decide to cancel cable, tomorrow. This time I’m really going to do it. I start getting suspicious of the sound booth slash command center to the back center of the arena. Are they also engaged in puppet mastery? Is Waters laughing at us? I recall the mythical "spitting incident" in 1977 when Waters supposedly spat in the face of a fan in Montreal after the crowd refused to stop setting off firecrackers during a show. Then I am distracted, Gerald Scarfe's iconic animation from the original 1982 film production flashes up on The Wall, now acting as screen. The flower seduction, the crowd is very still, breathless and mildly uncomfortable, like 15,000 people awkwardly watching porn together. I realize I saw the same shriveled flower tattooed on a man's forearm as I waited in line for the bathroom at intermission.
As a critic I am supposed to bash Waters and his narcissism and self-indulgence. And to that task, I recognize the show’s bloat and pomp. Never a friend of the press, Waters has been a favorite target for journalists repeatedly denied access to him and his shows. Reviewers are not supposed to be adoring super-fans, they should be neutral observers, so it would be easy to stand back and bash but I refuse in this instance. Tonight, sans press pass, I am a fan. I am Kurt Loeder, the reviewer-fan that stuck by Waters, praising him all the way until the Final Cut.
At points in the show, I was moved to tears, sometimes lost in my own collegiate nostalgia that the music evoked and at moments, just in awe of the production’s artistry. Later I was angry at the show’s gross pandering to my emotions. If it was a lecture, it was a history lesson; a personal history lesson, a love song Mr. Waters wrote to himself as he lurched along the uncomfortable roller coaster ride of superstardom. It is dark and it is at times very sad. I do not endeavor to spoil the show for anyone who wishes to go see it, so I won't recount the lush images that flash on my brain days later but it is both haunting and gratifying. Waters, in his pre-Floydian life had been an architecture student and in this show we see his roots. The whole production is well drafted, a construction, an edifice. An odd feat for the right- leaning brains of rock music, Waters is diligent and grand.
When some aged rockers drag their withered bones back on tour, I get the feeling these enterprises were launched because of some financial ruin in their retirement portfolio. Some bad investment or a lingering cocaine habit prompted them to dust off the tour bus as they hobble around the country warbling off key covers of their own songs. I didn't get this feeling from Waters. I don't even get the feeling that his bones are withered. He is lean and spry and this was no attempt to refill empty coffers. At 67 he comes back to his great tome with real affection. He is an architect of art and sound, insisting his story is told by ever imaginable media, sound, film and grotesque large scale puppetry. I was left with a great feeling of hope, that this work exists and that its engineer cared enough about it to re-imagine it. In interviews, Waters speaks slowly and deliberately in his middleclass Cambridge accent as he scratches his chin and, without sarcasm, uses words like denouement, just like a professor. I was touched by the lost art of remaining focused on one thing for a long time, the poetry of staying with an idea for its duration.
But for all my own affection for the show, Waters is always daring listeners to question. So maybe I am mistaking craft and great care with vengeance and spite. After losing the Floydian legal battles with his former band mates, he is forbidden, upon threat of lawsuit, from performing certain of The Floyd's music. Pink Floyd legally separated in 1985. Waters was either forced out or left the band, depending on who you ask. Declaring the band "a spent force" in legal papers, Waters attempted to prevent the remaining members from using the name Pink Floyd for any future albums or tours. A two year legal battle ensued, the cost of which threatened to sink both parties. So in 1987, on a houseboat, Gilmour and Waters hammered out a separation agreement. And like splitting up siblings in a divorce, the now legally constituted sans Waters "Pink Floyd" retained copyright to the Pink Floyd catalogue, while Waters got The Wall, the baby that Gilmour’s new Floyd were okay with splitting. It is rumored that Waters also retained the rights to the iconic Floyd Pig that floated self propelled above our heads, having morphed over the years from its pink and plump form to occasionally menacing and tusked.
Perhaps Waters was now parading The Wall around, big and garish, out of spite; a small eff-you to the session musicians that didn't appreciate his work. Perhaps doing the show exactly the way he wanted instead of the half-hearted bargain 1980 version is just the kind of shove off he was looking for. Or perhaps it is just the only part of his almost lifetime of work with Pink Floyd that Waters can perform solo without an ensuing legal storm. Whatever the reason for the spectacle, it is great. It is not a concert, it is a full scale dramatic production perhaps finally done just the way Waters wanted.
I sat in my seat long after the lights came up. I sat ruminating until the color coded crews started to scurry about, actually breaking down and packing up The Wall for its next appearance on its ninety-four date pilgrimage. I lingered around long enough to see them load it into the four semi-tractor trailers waiting in the enormous arena lot. I wonder if all of these worker bees are on tour with the show. I would have paid twice the hefty sum I doled out to see what I had just seen, and based on the number of people employed in moving around all its required machinations, it is possible that we concert goers were just covering Mr. Waters’ costs in taking the old girl back out on the road. Perhaps with everything going on in the world today, wars that we don’t call wars, rampant unchecked technology and generalized economic disaster, Mr. Waters’ old socialist tendencies sent him back on tour with a rock and roll public service announcement.
Back on the train, I am giddy, some tired old musical ignition having been turned over once again. I want to write, my notes scribbled in the dark seem spoken in tongues. My reaction is to try and put things in order. What did this all mean? What was Waters trying to say? Was he even talking to us? None of my fellow concert goers on the train could answer the question.
Boiled down to its sturdy bones, ultimately The Wall is a cautionary tale for the ages. The moral of the story? Perhaps it is: Beware of the man, find out who is paying, be careful of your business bedfellows. Or perhaps, no matter how hard you try, you cannot hide from judgment. Or maybe it is just simply, Be suspicious. Be kind.
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