Re: Roger Waters to perform The Wall on tour
 

If Roger wants to break down "The Wall" between himself and his audience, maybe he should charge affordable prices for his concerts during these crappy economic times.

Re: Roger Waters to perform The Wall on tour
 

Roger Waters on wheat-pasting over the Elliott Smith memorial wall: "We had no intention to cover up something precious"
May 5, 2010 | 5:30 am

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/.a/6...560b970b-600wi

Roger Waters of Pink Floyd knows the artistic potency of an image on a wall. But his recent campaign to wheat-paste an anti-war quote from President Eisenhower across American cities to promote his touring revival of the Floyd staple “The Wall” unexpectedly proved his point, after his employees pasted the quote over the storefront of Solutions speaker repair in Silver Lake. The wall has served as an impromptu fan memorial to the late singer-songwriter Elliott Smith for nearly a decade.

Smith passed away in Los Angeles in 2003, and fans have left personal messages and quoted lyrics on the wall, the backdrop to the cover art of his album “Figure 8,” ever since. But as of Monday night, fans noticed that the wall also featured Waters’ image of a soldier cradling a child with the Eisenhower quote nearby.

Though the oft-abused wall has also been a favorite target for taggers and is frequently overwhelmed by non-Smith-related writing, local reaction to Waters’ wheat pasting, including an L.A. Weekly blog post, was swift and critical. In a phone interview Tuesday evening, Waters apologized to any Smith fans who found his choice of walls callous.

“It was absolutely an accident,” Waters said. “I didn’t want to disrespect Elliott Smith’s fans, and I’ve instructed (the team) to remove the wheat paste immediately. It was a random pasting in the normal course of this, and I want to make it public that we had no intent to offend or cover up something precious.”


Waters, who said he was unfamiliar with Smith’s work until this incident, said the national wheat-paste campaign is being coordinated from his New York offices and that the street art team based there didn’t know the wall’s importance to L.A. music fans.

A multimillion-selling artist accidentally using a memorial to a beloved local singer to promote the revival tour of a classic album is unfortunately ironic. For Smith fans, it could underscore a cultural generation gap where a small independent album like “Either/Or” is as canonical to them as “The Wall” is to the mainstream.

Waters, who headlined Coachella in 2008 and brings his "Wall" tour to the Staples Center on Nov. 29, wrote a similar apology on his Facebook page Tuesday. He hoped his team wouldn’t be singled out among many others who have regrettably used the wall for non-Smith-related art or tagging.

“It’s not like this was some pristine monument and Roger Waters is the Big Bad Wolf who covered it up,” Waters said.

The pasting is made of biodegradable material, he said, and will be easily and quickly removed out of respect for Smith fans. But in hindsight, Waters felt the Eisenhower quote, about both the personal, economic and social costs of waging warfare, wasn’t too far afield from the work of Smith, a singer who articulately documented intimate emotional pain.

“That’s why I was so incensed when I read that article that said I paid someone to disrespect Elliott Smith,” Waters said. “I admit I didn’t know his music, but I’ve talked to people who do and it’s clear he was a young man who felt deeply, and any empathetic person wouldn’t have an issue with publicizing that quote.”

“I would guess, and this is only a guess,” he said, “but it’s my guess that he would have been sympathetic to that message.”

-August Brown

Photo: LA Times

Re: Roger Waters to perform The Wall on tour
 

Any rumors on what other material he will be covering?

Re: Roger Waters to perform The Wall on tour
 

Pretty sure this will be a performance of The Wall only

Re: Roger Waters to perform The Wall on tour
 

Since most of his performances tend to be about 2 hrs 40 mins, I thought he may do about an hour of other material and then do the Wall for the second set.

Re: Roger Waters to perform The Wall on tour
 

Will "When the Tigers Broke Free" be included like in the film?

Re: Roger Waters to perform The Wall on tour
 

Every band I've seen that does an entire album show, starts with the album.. then when its finished does a hits set...

Re: Roger Waters to perform The Wall on tour
 

Same here. The encore will probably feature other songs from the Floyd or even Roger Waters solo.

Re: Roger Waters to perform The Wall on tour
 

And every time it's billed as the album and selections from the group's catalog.

The Wall is a double album and when it was performed in 1980 it was all that was performed. So there you have an example where this doesn't hold true.

Re: Roger Waters to perform The Wall on tour
 

In 1980, they never even did an encore with other selections from their catalog?

Either way, times have changed. This isn't Pink Floyd, and you're paying much $$$ for the show, so you best be getting more than the full album played live. I think we can expect to see an encore.

Also, did anyone catch Waters on Jimmy Fallon last night (you can look for it on Hulu)? There might be some insight in the shows during that interview.

Re: Roger Waters to perform The Wall on tour
 

Hey I paid $13.50 for that seat. That was 4 hours work for me at Taco Bell in 1980 (minimum wage was $3.10 an hour).

Just to add a bit more doubt to you claim, the last thing that happened in the Wall show in 1980 was at the finale of the concert, the specially-constructed wall was demolished amidst sound effects and a spectacular light show, covering the stage with (what I believe were) hundreds of fabricated bricks. Not sure what they're going to use this time but it at least makes a post show encore unlikely.

Edit: I take that back, they did play Outside the wall with Acoustic intruments amid the rubble. That was the last thing that happened.

Re: Roger Waters to perform The Wall on tour
 

I remember hearing about that finale (and those legendary ticket prices!). Still, I'm tending to expect more than only the Wall played live. We'll see after the first reports of the shows...

Re: Roger Waters to perform The Wall on tour
 

That was normal ticket price in 1980. Concerts were $12-$13.50 around that time. I think that was my best year for concerts. I saw the Who 3 times (once in the 3rd row) and Springsteen 3 times as well as that Wall show. I think I saw Tom Petty that year too and he was truly in his prime. We used to see 2 or 3 shows for each tour because tickets were so affordable. Nowadays I'm lucky if I go to one concert a year.

Re: Roger Waters to perform The Wall on tour
 

I'd think it would be similar to the Berlin concert, I liked "The Tide is Turning" ending.

Re: Roger Waters to perform The Wall on tour
 

Here's the interview from Fallon last night. I had no idea about the original name of The Pink Floyd! :lol:

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Re: Roger Waters to perform The Wall on tour
 

Geez Roger Waters does one interview on network TV in his lifetime and he chooses the worst interviewer on TV. Fallon comes off sounding like a 12 year old kid nervously interviewing his idol. All he could think of to ask him was to confirm the same Pink Floyd stories about Syd Barrett that have been circulating for the past 45 years?

What an amateur.

Re: Roger Waters to perform The Wall on tour
 

When he did DSOTM, he did a greatest hits set, intermission, DSOTM, and then a few songs as the encore. I wouldn't be surprised if he did a few greatest hits, intermission, and then a second set which is the wall, no encore.

Re: Roger Waters to perform The Wall on tour
 

The Wall is twice as long as DSOTM, though.

Re: Roger Waters to perform The Wall on tour
 

Yes, yes it is. After DSOTM, there was an encore of 3 or 4 songs, a couple of fairly long ones, too. If the set prior to the intermission had a couple songs less, and no encore after The Wall, the entire concert would be the same length.

Maybe not, but I don't see anything mentioning an opening act, and I don't feel like the concert will only be an hour and 20 minutes. I hope not.

Re: Roger Waters to perform The Wall on tour
 

Yeah, that was a pretty awful interview.

Re: Roger Waters to perform The Wall on tour
 

I'm expecting more than just The Wall too. BUT! Is There Anybody Out There? is closer to 1:45 than 1:20 and I think that's a pretty good baseline, of course the physical building of the "wall" may be more streamlined than in 1980 requiring less jamming like on "The Last Few Bricks". Also Roger did say on that Fallon interview that he's expanded the material some, whatever that means.

I wouldn't be surprised to see him mix in some of the non-Wall songs within the context of the production either.

Re: Roger Waters to perform The Wall on tour
 

FYI:

I did the Live Nation presale today, and the seats were way better than the ones offered for the AMEX presale. I bit, it's done, and now it's on to the show... in November.

Re: Roger Waters to perform The Wall on tour
 

I would be VERY surprised if he did that.

Re: Roger Waters to perform The Wall on tour
 

I thought I was gonna go, but at $400 for 2 decent-but-not-great tickets before all the fees, I couldn't bring myself to pull the trigger.

Re: Roger Waters to perform The Wall on tour
 

I received an email stating I was selected for the presale, even though I had already had an email saying I wasn't. There were two sections available, first several rows on the floor, and two sections in the first row of seats on the side. Since I originally wanted the side seats, I picked those up for about $120 a piece. Wicked expensive, but the show should be worth it.