586 lines
30 KiB
Plaintext
586 lines
30 KiB
Plaintext
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Sound Bites - short bits and pieces of interviews
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: Here's another excerpt. This one pertaining to Roger's leaving the
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: band. It is reprinted (without permission) from Rolling Stone issue
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: #513, dated November 19, 1987.
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..."We never assumed that it was defunct," says Gilmour. "But the
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growing tide or rumors and Roger's vocal output combined made it almost
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like an avalanche. We couldn't keep issuing press statements saying,
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'No, we haven't split up'. It wasn't worth the bother. Our assumption
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- my assumption, anyway - was that we would do another record."
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According to Gilmour and Mason, Waters officially announced his
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leaving in a letter to the Floyd's record companies, Columbia in
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America, EMI in the UK, in December 1985. "We had had discussions,"
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Mason says. "We sort of knew something was up." Gilmour and Mason say
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that Waters thought his exit would mean the de facto end of the group.
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"We'd been having these meetings in which Roger said, 'I'm not working
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with you guys again,'"Gilmour says. "He'd say to me, 'Are you going to
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carry on?' And I'd say, quite honestly, 'I don't know. But when we're
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good and ready, I'll tell everyone what the plan is. And we'll get on
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with it.' I think partly his letter was to gear us up into doing
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something."
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"Because he believed very strongly that we wouldn't do it," says
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Mason.
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"Or couldn't do it," Gilmour says. "I remember meetings in which he
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said, 'You'll never fucking do it.' That's precisely what was said.
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Exactly that term." He laughs wryly. "Except slightly harder."
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-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
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: This is an exceprt from an interview with Dave. It was on the "In The
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: Studio" radio program where they choose an album and talk with the
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: people who made it.
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It's a bit of a joke. We started off once, and we put all the tracks
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down without any noise reduction on them, but using these things called
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keypexes (sp?) which are noise gates which would turn the tracks on when
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we were using them and off when we weren't using them. Just cut out the
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hiss between the moments, you know. And like the Dolby system, which is
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a general noise reduction system which is in operation all the time.
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And then -- this is a period of very heavy technical advancements
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rapidly happening. During that period of time the Dolby system became
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quite wide spread, and they got them in at Abbey Road, and we actually
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had all the tapes copied. All the master tapes were copied onto --
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sixteen track non-Dolby onto sixteen track Dolby. So all the masters
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are second generation from the word go. It's amazing what you can do
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with sound. Technically speaking, every rule in the book was broken on
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that. And people think it's a kind of an audiorile record. Wonderfull
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(chuckle). And it shouldn't really be that way (interviewer laughs).
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-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
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: Roger Waters, Musician Magazine, May 1992
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Something is triggered off in each of us when we listen to certain songs,
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a feeling so intangible that it might only whisper, yet is recognized. Roger
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Waters explained how he thinks music does this: "As an audience, we look at
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the painting or hear the music and recognize truth of some kind that affects
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us deeply. It explains our universe to us in some way that is reassuring.
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It is that which makes me feel there may well be something to be in tune with."
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Roger's description of his school illustrates how the traditional educational
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process seems designed to squash creativeness, a theme that he later explored
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artistically in The Wall. "My father was killed in the war when I was three
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months old, and I was brought up in Cambridge, England, by my mother, who's
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a school teacher. She didn't encourage my creativity. She claims to be tone
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deaf, whatever that means, and has no interest in music and art or anything
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like that. She's only interested in politics. I didn't really have a happy
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childhood. I loathed school, particularly after I went to grammer school.
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Apart from games, which I loved, I loathed every single second of it. Maybe
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toward the end when I was a teenager, going to school was just an 'us and
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them' confrontation between me and a few friends who formed a rather violent
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and revolutionary clique. That was alright, and I enjoyed the violence of
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smashing up the school property. The grammer school mentality at that time
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had very much lagged behind the way young people's minds were working in the
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late '50's, and it took them a long time to catch up. In a way, grammer
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schools were still being run on pre-war lines, where you bloody well did
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as you were told and kept your mouth shut, and we weren't prepared for any
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of that. It erupted into a very organized clandestine property violence
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against the school, with bombs, though nobody ever got hurt. I remember one
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night about 10 of us went out, because we had decided that one guy - the man
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in charge of gardening - needed a lesson. He had one particular tree of Golden
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Delicious apples that was his pride and joy, which he would protect at all
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costs. We went into the orchard with stepladders and ate every single apple
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on the tree without removing any. So the next morning was just wonderful;
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we were terribly tired but filled with a real sense of achievement.
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"Syd Barrett [the cofounder of Pink Floyd with Roger] - who was a couple of
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years younger - and I became friends in Cambridge. We both had similar
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interests - rock 'n' roll, danger and sex and drugs, probably in that order.
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I had a motor bike before I left home, and we used to go on mad rides out into
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the country. We would have races at night, incredibly dangerous, which we
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survived somehow. Those days - 1959 to 1960 - were heady times. There was a
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lot of flirtation with Allen Ginsberg and the beat generation of the American
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poets. Because Cambridge was a university town, there was a very strong
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pseudo-intellectual but beat vibe. It was just when the depression of the
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postwar was beginning to wear off and we were beginning to go into some
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kind of economic upgrade. And just at the beginning of the '60's there was a
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real flirtation with prewar romanticism, which I got involved with in a way,
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and it was that feeling that pushed me toward being in a band. I used to go
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with friends on journeys around Europe and the Middle East, which in those
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days was a reasonably safe place. How much all that experience had to do with
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my eventually starting to write, I've no idea.
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"The encoragement to play my guitar came from a man who was head of my first
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year at architecture school at Regent Street Polytechnic, in London. He
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encouraged me to bring the guitar into the classroom. If I wanted to sit
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in the corner and play guitar during periods that were set aside for design
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work and architecture, he thought that was perfectly alright. It was my
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first feeling of encouragement. Earlier, I had made one or two feeble attempts
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to learn to play the guitar whan I was around 14 but gave up because it was
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to difficult. It hurt my finger, and I found it much to hard. I couldn't
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handle it. At the Polytechnic I got involved with people who played in bands,
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although I couldn't play very well. I sang a little and played the harmonica
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and guitar a bit. Syd and I had always vowed that when he came up to art
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school, which he inevitably would do being a very good painter, he and I
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would start a band in London. In fact, I was already in a band, so he joined
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that."
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-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
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: Roger showed up on MTV News At Nite yesterday, with a
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: interview that lasted 3-4 minutes.
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: This is what he said about Pink Floyd:
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People do what they do.
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I left and there's a band there still called pink Floyd.
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People must make of it what they will.
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It's not of my busiens anymore, you know.
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Gilmour and Mason own the name pink Floyd, that's it, finished!
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It's nothing to do with me.
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I have no control over it, I have no control over back
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catalogue, I have nothing to do with any of it.
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I'm out of it.., OK?
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And it happened several years ago, and I was jolly angry
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and gloomy about it at the time, and I'm now over it and I'm
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getting on with my own work.
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You know, let's talk about something else.
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[ Smiling when saying this ]
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-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
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: There is also Waters "interview" in the latest Q magazine (November '92)
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: It seems it's the same that was on MTV.
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: Here are some nice quotes :-)
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"I wrote The Wall as an attack on stadium rock - and there's is Pink
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Floyd making money out of it by playing it in stadiums! Pathetic. They
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spoiled my creations."
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"Well, anyway, I am one of the best five writers to come out of
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English music since the War."
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"Radio One won't play my single because they know it's no good. They
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know it's not as good as Erasure or Janet fucking Jackson."
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[He also said that Lloyd Webber used music of Echoes in the beginning
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of Phantom Of The Opera.]
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"Bastard. [...] But I think that life's too long to bother with suing
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Andrew fucking Lloyd Webber."
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[Waters was asked which writers could possibly rank above him]
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"John Lennon. [...] Er, I can't think of anybody else [...] Freddy
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Mercury maybe...."
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-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
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: --- Included from Dave Gilmour interview, Q Magazine, August 1990 ---
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HAVE YOU COMMUNICATED IN THE LAST THREE YEARS OTHER THAN
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THROUGH LAWYERS?
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Oh yes. We've met and talked. He has now stopped coming to the meetings we
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have to hold - we are still in business together and we have to have board
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meetings to make various decisions, but now he usually sends a proxy along.
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The last time I spoke to him was when we signed our agreement (in 1987),
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which stopped all lawsuits at that time and settled the fact that we had the
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name in perpetuity. He got some rights and bits and pieces, particularly to do
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with The Wall. There were one or two areas of the agreement that weren't
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clear and he subsequently entered two or three lawsuits against us, which he
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has now dropped.
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-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
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: Extracts from an article about The Wall in Berlin, taken from
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: Q Magazine, #48, September 90.
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: I have only typed in what Waters says, the rest is just a description
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: of the show and things like that.
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: Interviewer Phil Sutcliffe
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...AND PIGS WILL FLY!
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"If this concert is to celebrate anything, it's that the Berlin Wall
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coming dow can be seen as an liberating of the human spirit," Waters
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tells Q during rehearsals.
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So it is not in any sense a "Top that!" addressed to Dave Gilmour and
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Nick Mason, now legally established owners of his old band's name
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and, hence, proprietors of an fabulously successful Pink Floyd
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comeback in the late '80s?
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"No it's not Top that! But it certainly will be most gratifying
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that a few more people in the world will understand that The Wall is
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'my' work and always have been. There must be an element of that.
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Though after hearing them at Knebworth I don't think I should worry.
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They just haven't got the faintest idea of what any of it's about.
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But then they never did. Still most of the audience for this show
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will probably think it's Pink Floyd anyway. The attachment to the
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brand name is limpet-like. It's something I live with."
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...The 100-piece Soviet army band took no more than a word in the ear
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of the right chap. Four tanks, though, were just not on. Nor,
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finally, were the pair of WW2 bombers buzzing the site, proposed by
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Waters.
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Even Cheshire had balked at that one. "He said, You can't do that"
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Waters recalls. "I said, "But that's what this is all about! Anyway,
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we had an argument. I think he felt bad about it because he still has
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things to deal with, knowing he'd been up there dropping bombs on the
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poor bastards."
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The bomber proved unobtainable anyway but for Waters, other
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satisfactions were readily to hand. "When I came to listen to the
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album again after 10 years, I thought, Christ, I hope I like it still,"
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he says. " Then I put it on in the car and it was, This isn't half
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bad. I'm extremely proud of it. I'm proud of the fact that I get
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letters from schoolteachers who use Another Brick as the basis of
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class discussion.
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And there's a book about psychotherapy in which the author mentions
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The Wall and says how extraordinary it is that an Englishman should
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write in this way. When I read that in an academic tome about child
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psychology I did feel a warm thrill that somebody had taken it so
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seriously.
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I get letters about The Wall too - I'm not saying the mailbag's
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bursting with them - but from people it meant a lot to, helped them
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free their feelings. It's given comfort. So the pay-off from having
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expressed myself before my peers and torn down my wall, if only to
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limited extent, the pay-off is... good."
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-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
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When the band reached NZ on "that" world tour, Dave and Nick and Rick
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were interviewed briefly for television. One of the questions asked was
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very similar to the above, along the lines of "How do you feel about
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performing without Roger Waters".
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Dave's answer (paraphrased - this was some time ago):
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"Well, we're only doing three songs that he sang on and I'm singing
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those, and bass players are ten-a-penny really."
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-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
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Stolen from the 08Jan83 Goldmine:
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Gilmour:
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"The whole side three bit with the orchestra all got shortened
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radically. Other songs -- `Run Like Hell,' was chopped to bits,
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really. Whole chunks. One was concentrating then on vinyl. It
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wouldn't matter so much today, but with vinyl, there was a finite limit
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of about 21 minutes a side. Every extra minute, you lost a db, one db
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of level when it's being played on the radio. Not so much here, where
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they compress the shit out of it, but also [the] signal-to-noise level
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gets worse and over 25 minutes you're beginning to suffer quite
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distinctly. So, our objective was to get it short enough to be able to
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get it onto two albums, and some things suffered for that."
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-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
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Here is what roger waters said of "not now john"
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"john" is a british word much like "jack" or "buddy" in the states.
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INTERVIEWER: "not now john" is about over ambitions & drive for money and
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winning...blind ambitions to best the "wily japanese" and to conqueor
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the russian bear"
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ROGER:yes, but never mind the russian bear, what about the other members
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of the human race?...wait until they start trying to compete, and that's
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most of us. There are lots more of them than there are of us. There are
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more of the third world than there are of the old and new worlds. And as
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soon as they get TVs, they're going to get well up-tight. In fact,
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they may well say, "You've had your go, we want our go now."
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it's that kind of 'more.'
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INTERVIEWER: Would you say that the personality/persona of the singer
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in "not now john" has the same mentality or character as in "have a
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cigar?"...We're all put together as a team.
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ROGER: Well, yes. You've done your homework!
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-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
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Rolling Stone, July-ish 1990:
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RS: I understand that PolyGram Records, which is releasing a live album of
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the event, has put a lot of pressure on you to employ special guest stars
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in the show. It strikes me that 'The Wall' is less suited to a parade of
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guests than, say, 'Tommy'.
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RW: Well, I thought Tommy was reduced *dramatically* by the inclusion of
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Billy Idol and Patti LaBelle and Phil Collins. I find the ubiquitous
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nature of Phil Collins's presence in my life irritating anyway - but
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having said that, the kid is a child actor and he was very good, though I
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did feel it was kind of overkill to wear two different costumes. But
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Billy Idol and Patti LaBelle were an absolute nightmare. They were fucking
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*aweful*. But I am using as much outside help as I can get, particularly
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for "Bring the Boys Back Home". I want to get soldiers from opposed
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ideologies onstage together to create a piece of music theater, which is
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symbolic of what Leonard Cheshire and the Memorial Fund are trying to
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achieve. Which is international cooperation in the face of national
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disatsters.
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On the other members of Floyd being absent:
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RS: It's ironic that you're singing about cooperation and breaking down
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walls, and yet you're not including the people with whom you recorded
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"The Wall" originally.
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RW: Yeah. I wouldn't be able to focus on the piece, or the day, or what
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it was about, or its aims, or whatever, if either Dave Gilmour or Nick
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Mason were there. If I was to get involvied with them, it would have to
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be done at Big Sur and it would take six months. Having said that, I
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absolutely acknowledge that some of the work involved in The Wall is Dave's.
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But the fact that he cares as little as he does for the feelings that
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are in the piece, I think, makes it impossible for me to invite him to
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be there. You know, he has been out in stadiums playing my piece, in
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exact opposition to my emotions and ideas and philosophies and whatever,
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for his own profit. And I can't forgive him for that.
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[ ed note--"Big Sur" is a "new age" sort of rehabilitation/retreat center
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in California. Waters here is suggesting that any kind of "reunion" of Floyd
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would invlove lots and lots of therapy, group discussions, getting to know
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one another, and probably more than a small amount of tranquilizers.]
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-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
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In an interview with Karl Dallas, in _Bricks In The Wall_,
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"DALLAS: The cross-cutting in the movie, with the Anzio landings, don't
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you think that's a little far fetched?
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"WATERS: Not really, no. I don't. Because there seems to me to be
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something ... well, it's strange, because it's not a direct parallel.
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Clearly, the motivation behind people jumping off DUKWs and running up
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beaches in Anzio is that they've been bloody well ordered to do it, you
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know. And they thought, and they were probably thinking, they were
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fighting a war that needed to be fought.
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"Whereas the motivation for the kind of involvement inrock shows that I'm
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pointing at is masochism. It's something I don't understand. I do not
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understand that thing of people going to rock shows and apparently the
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more painful it is the better they like it."
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Regarding the final scene:
|
||
|
"WATERS: [...] That final image, if it's saying anything at all, it's
|
||
|
suggesting that when we're born, we don't like Molotov cocktails, and
|
||
|
that we learn to like them as we grow older. We learn to want to burn
|
||
|
stuff and break things. ...
|
||
|
[Later, after being asked if that's sentimentalizing childhood]
|
||
|
"WATERS: [...] Children don't ... well, actually children DO like Molotov
|
||
|
cocktails, of course, they do. They love Molotov cocktails. I don't
|
||
|
know why I said that. It's clearly nonsense. They like guns and
|
||
|
fireworks and bangs and ... but they don't like killing. Well, most of
|
||
|
the children I know don't, anyway. [...] Killing is very worrying I think
|
||
|
to children, and it's something that we get hardened to as we grow
|
||
|
older. Some of us get more hardened to it that others."
|
||
|
|
||
|
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
|
||
|
|
||
|
Dave Gilmour on "Midweek" - UK Radio 4
|
||
|
|
||
|
Dave confirmed that he and Nick and Rick were currently "jamming in the
|
||
|
studio" and "preparing [to start] the new album". He didn't mention a
|
||
|
release date. Concerning the break-up with Roger, he defined the point
|
||
|
of no return as during the filming of "The Wall", basically saying that
|
||
|
Roger's ego had got too much to handle. Also, apparently, at one point
|
||
|
(he didn't say when) he was advised by the police not to go to the
|
||
|
studio and to stay at home because the FBI had informed them that a
|
||
|
crazed fan was on his way over with a hand gun!
|
||
|
|
||
|
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
|
||
|
|
||
|
MTV News at Nite Nov 24, 1992
|
||
|
|
||
|
[A short bit about Pink Floyd with interviews with Gilmour and Waters.]
|
||
|
|
||
|
Gilmour, about Waters leaving (paraphrased):
|
||
|
|
||
|
"We lost something and we gained something....
|
||
|
You always have some regrets about losing
|
||
|
a talent.., don't you?"
|
||
|
|
||
|
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
|
||
|
|
||
|
David Gilmour in the February 1993 Guitar World.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
WHAT ABOUT YOUR SOLO ON COMFORTABLY NUMB? DID THAT TAKE A LONG TIME TO
|
||
|
DEVELOP?
|
||
|
|
||
|
No. I just went out into the studio and banged out five or six solos. From
|
||
|
there I just followed my usual procedure, which is to listen back to each solo
|
||
|
and mark out bar lines, saying which bits are good. In other words, I make a
|
||
|
chart, putting ticks and crosses on different bars as I count through: 2 ticks
|
||
|
if its really good, 1 tick if its good and a cross if its no go. Then I just
|
||
|
follow the chart, whipping one fader up, then another fader, jumping from
|
||
|
phrase to phrase and trying to make a really nice solo all the way through.
|
||
|
That's the way we did it on "Comfortably Numb". It wasn't that difficult. But
|
||
|
sometimes you find yourself jumping from one note to another in an impossible
|
||
|
way. Then you have to go to another place and find a transition that sounds
|
||
|
more natural.
|
||
|
|
||
|
WHEN YOU DO A COMP LIKE THAT, ARE YOU CONCERNED THAT YOU'LL WIND UP WITH A RESULT THAT'S PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO PLAY?
|
||
|
|
||
|
Not if it sounds alright. I'm perfectly happy to puzzle the hell out of people
|
||
|
who try to work out how its done.
|
||
|
|
||
|
(important part here!)
|
||
|
|
||
|
FOR LIVE SHOWS, DO YOU THEN HAVE TO GO AND LEARN TO PLAY THE SOLOS FROM THE
|
||
|
RECORD?
|
||
|
|
||
|
No. I NEVER PLAY LIVE SOLOS EXACTLY THE SAME WAY THEY APPEARED ON RECORD. I
|
||
|
tend to start with the same thing that's on the album and take off from there.
|
||
|
Every once and a while I'll remember a bit from the record and fall back on
|
||
|
that. Of course, the solo in the middle of Comfortably Numb is worked-out.
|
||
|
I always do that the same. But I never play the main solo - the jam solo at the
|
||
|
end - exactly the same as the original.
|
||
|
|
||
|
(end of interview)
|
||
|
|
||
|
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
|
||
|
|
||
|
Something from TAP:
|
||
|
|
||
|
QUNTROVERSY & AGGRESSION
|
||
|
|
||
|
Winding through the tapes of writer Matthew Gwyther,
|
||
|
we found quotes from Waters and Gilmour which, while
|
||
|
too specialist for his Observer feature (see Medialog,
|
||
|
TAP 59), will interest scandalously-inclined Floyd
|
||
|
fans...
|
||
|
|
||
|
DG on Waters: "I haven't spoken to Roger since the
|
||
|
23rd of December, '87, when we finalised our agreement.
|
||
|
We made up, on a word processor, an agreement; the two
|
||
|
of us together with one guy, from our accountants...
|
||
|
"I have seen him since, at Paul Carrack's 40th birthday
|
||
|
party... he turned round from the bar with two drinks in
|
||
|
his hand and couldn't help but smile. Then he stalked off
|
||
|
and gathered his party and left."
|
||
|
|
||
|
Waters on Sorm Thorgerson: "He came and stayed with my
|
||
|
mother and brothers and me. I'll never forget him saying,
|
||
|
Oi, I want my cup of tea, or, I want my breakfast. My
|
||
|
mother said, Well, go downstairs and put the kettle on,
|
||
|
then. 'Oh, alright.'
|
||
|
"About ten minutes later, this 11-year old came back and
|
||
|
said, How do you put the kettle on? He'd been at (boarding
|
||
|
school) since the age of five and didn't know how to boil
|
||
|
a fucking kettle of water! [Which is] a fantastic indictment
|
||
|
of that whole thing about education and children." *
|
||
|
|
||
|
Fast forwarding futher, Matthew asks about Mason being
|
||
|
Rog's best friend: "Well, so I thought... But when push came
|
||
|
to show, when we were making The Final Cut, I asked him to
|
||
|
stand by me, to be part of 'my gang'.
|
||
|
"He said to me, '...I want to go on with Gilmour...'. At
|
||
|
least he had the courage to tell me that. I went, Alright,
|
||
|
if that is what you belive."
|
||
|
|
||
|
Finally, we get to the poetry Rog's been composing. There's
|
||
|
stuff about Grantchester Meadows, fishing in the River Cam
|
||
|
and the obligatory dead dad bit: "We did our best / We kept
|
||
|
his trust / Our dad would have been proud of us." You read
|
||
|
it here first...
|
||
|
|
||
|
* Thorgerson gets his revenge, in an interview with Simon
|
||
|
Taylor, for the laters college dissertation 'The Music and
|
||
|
Images of Pink Floyd':
|
||
|
"There was an argument between Roger and me over the
|
||
|
crediting of the Animals cover. Using Roger's concept, it
|
||
|
was up to me to design the cover and organise it all.
|
||
|
Getting the pig, photographers all in place was my work.
|
||
|
"Therefore, I credited myself as sleeve designer. Roger
|
||
|
was furios and after a long argument the sleeve notes were
|
||
|
changed with him listed as designer. After that, he never
|
||
|
bothered to call me again; which is a shame really, because
|
||
|
we were good friends.. That is typical of Roger, a very
|
||
|
unforgiving sort of chap.
|
||
|
"That is why I didn't get asked to do The Wall cover. The
|
||
|
one they used is very bleak, isn't it? But then it reflects
|
||
|
the music on that album. On the whole, I think his covers over
|
||
|
recent years have been awful, but that's his decision."
|
||
|
|
||
|
Incidentally, can Storm explain the Delicate Sound Of Thunder
|
||
|
cover...?
|
||
|
"Because [it] was a live album, I wanted the cover to reflect
|
||
|
what was so special about a Floyd gig - what made their shows
|
||
|
unique - which I concider to be the marriage of light and
|
||
|
sound. So you have Mr. Light in a showdown with Mr. Sound. The
|
||
|
whole thing was shot in Spain."
|
||
|
|
||
|
Lastly during his chat with Simon, Storm confirmed he had
|
||
|
been "working on a book about Pink Floyd with Nick Mason". This
|
||
|
was not the Shine On rubbish, so maybe we'll see something
|
||
|
interesting published to coincide with next year's Pink
|
||
|
shenanigans...
|
||
|
|
||
|
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
|
||
|
|
||
|
Roger Waters, Musician Magazine, May 1992
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
Something is triggered off in each of us when we listen to certain songs,
|
||
|
a feeling so intangible that it might only whisper, yet is recognized. Roger
|
||
|
Waters explained how he thinks music does this: "As an audience, we look at
|
||
|
the painting or hear the music and recognize truth of some kind that affects
|
||
|
us deeply. It explains our universe to us in some way that is reassuring.
|
||
|
It is that which makes me feel there may well be something to be in tune with."
|
||
|
|
||
|
Roger's description of his school illustrates how the traditional educational
|
||
|
process seems designed to squash creativeness, a theme that he later explored
|
||
|
artistically in The Wall. "My father was killed in the war when I was three
|
||
|
months old, and I was brought up in Cambridge, England, by my mother, who's
|
||
|
a school teacher. She didn't encourage my creativity. She claims to be tone
|
||
|
deaf, whatever that means, and has no interest in music and art or anything
|
||
|
like that. She's only interested in politics. I didn't really have a happy
|
||
|
childhood. I loathed school, particularly after I went to grammer school.
|
||
|
Apart from games, which I loved, I loathed every single second of it. Maybe
|
||
|
toward the end when I was a teenager, going to school was just an 'us and
|
||
|
them' confrontation between me and a few friends who formed a rather violent
|
||
|
and revolutionary clique. That was alright, and I enjoyed the violence of
|
||
|
smashing up the school property. The grammer school mentality at that time
|
||
|
had very much lagged behind the way young people's minds were working in the
|
||
|
late '50's, and it took them a long time to catch up. In a way, grammer
|
||
|
schools were still being run on pre-war lines, where you bloody well did
|
||
|
as you were told and kept your mouth shut, and we weren't prepared for any
|
||
|
of that. It erupted into a very organized clandestine property violence
|
||
|
against the school, with bombs, though nobody ever got hurt. I remember one
|
||
|
night about 10 of us went out, because we had decided that one guy - the man
|
||
|
in charge of gardening - needed a lesson. He had one particular tree of Golden
|
||
|
Delicious apples that was his pride and joy, which he would protect at all
|
||
|
costs. We went into the orchard with stepladders and ate every single apple
|
||
|
on the tree without removing any. So the next morning was just wonderful;
|
||
|
we were terribly tired but filled with a real sense of achievement.
|
||
|
|
||
|
"Syd Barrett [the cofounder of Pink Floyd with Roger] - who was a couple of
|
||
|
years younger - and I became friends in Cambridge. We both had similar
|
||
|
interests - rock 'n' roll, danger and sex and drugs, probably in that order.
|
||
|
I had a motor bike before I left home, and we used to go on mad rides out into
|
||
|
the country. We would have races at night, incredibly dangerous, which we
|
||
|
survived somehow. Those days - 1959 to 1960 - were heady times. There was a
|
||
|
lot of flirtation with Allen Ginsberg and the beat generation of the American
|
||
|
poets. Because Cambridge was a university town, there was a very strong
|
||
|
pseudo-intellectual but beat vibe. It was just when the depression of the
|
||
|
postwar was beginning to wear off and we were beginning to go into some
|
||
|
kind of economic upgrade. And just at the beginning of the '60's there was a
|
||
|
real flirtation with prewar romanticism, which I got involved with in a way,
|
||
|
and it was that feeling that pushed me toward being in a band. I used to go
|
||
|
with friends on journeys around Europe and the Middle East, which in those
|
||
|
days was a reasonably safe place. How much all that experience had to do with
|
||
|
my eventually starting to write, I've no idea.
|
||
|
|
||
|
"The encoragement to play my guitar came from a man who was head of my first
|
||
|
year at architecture school at Regent Street Polytechnic, in London. He
|
||
|
encouraged me to bring the guitar into the classroom. If I wanted to sit
|
||
|
in the corner and play guitar during periods that were set aside for design
|
||
|
work and architecture, he thought that was perfectly alright. It was my
|
||
|
first feeling of encouragement. Earlier, I had made one or two feeble attempts
|
||
|
to learn to play the guitar whan I was around 14 but gave up because it was
|
||
|
to difficult. It hurt my finger, and I found it much to hard. I couldn't
|
||
|
handle it. At the Polytechnic I got involved with people who played in bands,
|
||
|
although I couldn't play very well. I sang a little and played the harmonica
|
||
|
and guitar a bit. Syd and I had always vowed that when he came up to art
|
||
|
school, which he inevitably would do being a very good painter, he and I
|
||
|
would start a band in London. In fact, I was already in a band, so he joined
|
||
|
that."
|
||
|
|
||
|
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
|