{"id":489460,"date":"2026-06-22T06:30:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T06:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/489460\/"},"modified":"2026-06-22T06:30:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T06:30:16","slug":"when-roger-waters-took-up-the-pink-floyd-mantle-once-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/489460\/","title":{"rendered":"When Roger Waters took up the Pink Floyd mantle once again"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2018 Roger Waters <\/a>commenced the UK leg of his Us + Them tour. He\u2019d earlier sparked speculation that his career was winding down \u2013 but that was before the experience of 2016\u2019s Desert Trip<\/a> series of events. With a new lease of life, the typically sharp-talking Waters, at that time 74, continued telling it like he saw it.<\/p>\n

On June 26, Roger Waters\u2019 latest live extravaganza, the Us + Them tour, rolls into Dublin for the first of two shows. There will then be six concerts across the UK, the centrepiece of which is almost certainly going to be his headlining performance at London\u2019s Hyde Park on July 6.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s the kind of massive live concert for which Waters became famous with Pink Floyd<\/a> in the late 70s, and over the last decade, few have surpassed prog\u2019s arch-conceptualist when it comes to stadium-sized events.<\/p>\n

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Following Pink Floyd\u2019s final performance at Live 8<\/a> in July 2005, Waters toured The Dark Side Of The Moon<\/a> from 2006 to 2008. In 2010 he took The Wall<\/a> out on a tour of the world\u2019s arenas, which later moved on to outdoor stadiums.<\/p>\n

And now there\u2019s his Us + Them jaunt, a kind of Pink Floyd\u2019s greatest hits, plus a few songs from last year\u2019s Is This The Life We Really Want?<\/a>, his first solo album proper for a quarter of a century.<\/p>\n

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Given that, as of 2013, The Wall Live is the highest grossing tour by a solo artist, you\u2019d have to say that Waters is doing alright. Is This The Life We Really Want? is a fine piece of work, while the continued runs around the world with the Floyd back catalogue prove that the man behind a lot of the ideas and music that emanated from Pink Floyd in the late 70s is getting things right.<\/p>\n

Roger Waters – In the Flesh? (Live) [From Roger Waters The Wall] (Digital Video) – YouTube
\n\"Roger<\/p>\n

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Perhaps even more interestingly is that, in 2010, as he launched the tour of The Wall, the now-74-year-old announced: \u201cI think I have a swan song in me and I think this will probably be it.\u201d Eight years down the line, the facts tell a somewhat different story…<\/p>\n

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\u201cVery good point,\u201d Waters says. \u201cI think the tour is because two years ago now, Paul Tollett and the people from Goldenvoice [Tollett\u2019s promotions company] asked me to do Desert Trip, which was a Coachella thing. Because I did Coachella in 2008 and they\u2019d always go, \u2018Oh, we want you to come back and blah blah blah\u2026\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cBut Coachella is all sorts of young people doing whatever it is that young people do. then he had this idea of getting a bunch of more established acts together one autumn, and that\u2019s what we did.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo basically his idea was: \u2018Let\u2019s get Pink Floyd, the Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Neil Young and The Who up. That\u2019s the six acts, and we would do it over a weekend, you know: two acts a day, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. And if the tickets go well, we\u2019ll do another weekend.\u2019<\/p>\n

What to read next<\/p>\n

Roger Waters – David Gilmour – Comfortably Numb – Live O2 Arena – The Wall (2011) – YouTube
\n\"Roger<\/p>\n

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\u201cWell, the tickets did. I think there were 500,000 ticket requests in the first few hours. And so I put a lot of work into putting that show together, and realised I had been asked to don the Pink Floyd mantle, which hadn\u2019t really happened before. And I said, \u2018Yeah, okay, I can do that,\u2019 and I did.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut having done all that work, I thought, \u2018Maybe if this new record comes out well, maybe I can put a show together that\u2019s some of what I did at Desert Trip and a few songs from the new record.\u2019 So that\u2019s what I\u2019ve done.<\/p>\n

Most people think everything has happened because somebody is right and somebody is wrong and the people who are wrong have to be put in their place<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ideas in it are kind of embodied by the song Us And Them from Dark Side Of The Moon, which is about searching within ourselves to find love and empathy for all fellow human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n

As you\u2019ve mentioned, this tour is 75 per cent old material, 25 per cent new material; but you also said it will be connected by a general theme. So what links it all together?<\/p>\n

Well, it\u2019s called Us + Them, and it\u2019s called that largely because there\u2019s a verse in the song that says: \u2018With, without, And who’ll deny it\u2019s what the fighting\u2019s all about?\u2019<\/p>\n

Pink Floyd – Us And Them (2023 Remaster) – YouTube
\n\"Pink<\/p>\n

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The answer to that question is: almost everybody will deny that with\/without is what the fighting\u2019s all about. It\u2019s a war on terror; also it\u2019s about ideology \u2013 but what is it really about?<\/p>\n

Most people think that everything has happened because somebody is right and somebody is wrong and the people who are wrong have to be put in their place, and the best way to do that is to bomb them, or invade their country, or whatever it might be.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not saying I know the truth and other people don\u2019t, but I\u2019m saying I tell the truth I believe in as directly as I can<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not what war is about. War is actually about keeping rich people rich and poor people poor. That\u2019s the function of it. There\u2019s just so much money in the economies of the Western countries. Well, the ones who make weapons, which is mainly the United States, the UK, Russia, Germany, France, Belgium \u2013 those are the main ones.<\/p>\n

So much is tied into the armament industries, in the great military industrial complexes Eisenhower warned us about. So that is the reason we\u2019re in perpetual war.<\/p>\n

Roger Waters – Us & Them (Live in Amsterdam, June, 2018) – YouTube
\n\"Roger<\/p>\n

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Do you think you\u2019d ever be able to make an album with songs that weren\u2019t connected in theme?<\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t personally. I can\u2019t write a song that isn\u2019t connected with how I feel. I think that maybe if my songs have an enduring quality to them, it\u2019s that they\u2019re truthful, that they\u2019re very heartfelt. I mean, I\u2019m not saying I know the truth and other people don\u2019t, but I\u2019m saying I tell the truth I believe in as directly as I can in the songs I write.<\/p>\n

Are any of the gigs on this tour being filmed for a future release?<\/p>\n

We\u2019re actually filming the show in Amsterdam. I don\u2019t know what we\u2019ll do with it when we\u2019ve filmed it but that\u2019s where we\u2019re going to do the filming. That\u2019s been decided now.<\/p>\n

Is there anything else Pink Floyd-related that you\u2019ve been working on?<\/p>\n

Yeah. I\u2019ve just been working with Po [designer Aubrey Powell<\/a>]. There\u2019s a reissue of Animals<\/a>, a 5.1 mix of Animals<\/a> so I\u2019ve been working… Well, I haven\u2019t been working, he\u2019s been working. He came up with some new photographs of Battersea Power Station to use as a CD cover for the new 5.1 mix. It\u2019s beautiful.<\/p>\n

Pigs (Three Different Ones) (2018 Remix) – YouTube
\n\"Pigs<\/p>\n

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