The one concert that convinced Roger Waters to tour again: “A great night”
Everything Roger Waters brought to the masses had to be as gargantuan as possible. While Pink Floyd could have continued entertaining an audience for the rest of their lives as a psychedelic progressive band, would it really have been any fun if they didn’t have the massive pig balloon onstage or the major structure of The Wall for the show of the same name? Waters is always about the concept around his performance, but after finding himself in a slump, it took one major gig to get him back on track.
For the first few years after leaving Pink Floyd, it looked like Waters had grown too jaded about the idea of playing the bombastic rock and roll he was used to. There were still people eager to hear what he wanted to do, but it must have been stressful for him to have to sit back at zero while David Gilmour tore up every single solo he played during Pink Floyd’s latest arena gig.
No matter, though. Waters still had the means of making great music, but his first few solo albums were a bit of a head trip for everyone who heard them. The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking was one of the options that Waters presented to the group before working on The Wall, but if this is all that he had to go on, that could have been the album when the prog giants broke their hot streak of writing incredible material.
Although Radio KAOS was a bit better pacing-wise, that didn’t matter to Waters. It was 1990 by this point, and the collapse of The Berlin Wall led to him putting on a show in celebration, resurrecting the set for The Wall and bringing in an all-star cast to work with him throughout the day. Given how stressful it was putting together and his open disdain for artists like Sinéad O’Connor, Waters took a break from making those kinds of major productions.
Most people would be content having at least those shows under their belt, but Waters was convinced to give the big productions another shot, thanks to Don Henley. Instead of coaxing him into performing for a heavy price tag, Waters remembered being turned around by an all-star benefit for Henley’s Walden Woods Project.
When working amongst his fellow legends, Waters thought it was the perfect time for him to sink back into the major stage spectacles again, telling Uncut in 2007, “He asked me if I’d sing a few songs. It was Don, me, John Fogerty and Neil Young. A great night. There was an enormous feeling of warmth coming from the audience. I thought, ‘Wow, this isn’t too bad. Maybe I should do some of this again’ that was in the back of my mind through the 1990s, then, finally, in ’99, I thought I’d dip my toe in the water and see what happened.”
After returning to the road, Waters started to warm up to his legacy songs, with most of the set dominated by the material he made with Pink Floyd. Although the Gilmour-led version of the band was still going strong on the touring circuit, this kind of nostalgia may have gotten the wheels rolling for the unthinkable to happen.
Once Waters had that tour under his belt, he would eventually be invited to join his bandmates at Live 8 for a show, playing a handful of their most famous tunes. It didn’t result in the group reuniting permanently, but Waters at least got back on his feet as a performer, and we have the man behind ‘Hotel California’ to thank for that.
