“Too complex”: The tour Roger Waters said he would never play
The most authentic way to catch any of your favourite musicians is to see them bring their songs to life onstage. Even though bands like The Beatles helped pioneer new sounds that could have never been produced in a live setting, nothing compares to the sense of euphoria that came with seeing them in their natural state in the early 1960s or watching Paul McCartney deliver those tunes live to this day. And while a lot of what Pink Floyd did during their prime relied on the live show, there were certain tours that Roger Waters thought were out of reach forever.
That doesn’t mean that Waters doesn’t like the idea of touring, either. A lot of what made Floyd shows so special in the early 1970s was because of how much of a spectacle it was. The road to making Dark Side of the Moon may have involved a lot of studio trickery to get the final takes down on tape, but when listening to how they performed them at Live At Pompeii, they were an otherworldly force despite never having people to hear them play.
And that’s only a fraction of what they did compared to their amazing light shows. They had already decided to move away from the trippy effects that came with the Syd Barrett era of the group, but their replacements like the giant inflatable pig used during the Animals tour were a great substitute when making their points about capitalism and the greed that exists in every facet of society.
When Waters first started making strides towards The Wall, it was bound to be the greatest hurdle the band ever had to cross. This was the kind of rock opera that everything was leading up to, and while a lot of bells and whistles had to go into the final version of it, the idea of erecting a gigantic wall on top of the stage and then tearing it down as the grand finale felt like it needed a small army to pull off every night.
Which is probably why the band only played in select theatres when they played the entire project live. Waters felt that playing it in stadiums was never going to work without the proper resources, but looking at the footage and the live sound that we have from Is There Anybody Out There, it’s clear that the band are in top form, even managing to have a bit more world-building by performing tracks like ‘What Shall We Do Now’, which never made it on the album but brings a greater sense of urgency to the piece.
Waters had laid everything out perfectly, but even into his solo career, he said that he didn’t see any point in making an entire tour based around The Wall, saying, “You can’t tour The Wall, the show is too complex. I was asked to perform The Wall this summer on 4th July, somewhere in America, the Indianapolis speedway I almost agreed because they said it would be a free concert. However, as I looked further into this free concert idea I discovered the concert would be paid by corporate America like Coca-Cola and they would want control of the way their tickets were distributed so they would be in control.”
And looking at what Waters had to deal with, the last he wanted to do is give up control of his musical offspring. Even when the band were at odds with each other, Waters always made sure to hang on to the rights of The Wall, only allowing it to be performed on select occasions and managing to bring in some special guests of his choosing when performing it live in Berlin in the 1990s.
It might be a shame that fans won’t get to see a version of The Wall that Waters had in his mind, but it’s much more sensible to have this kind of record that stands alone in Floyd’s discography. Most people can look at the record and pick out bits and pieces, but outside of a song like ‘Comfortably Numb’, it makes more sense not to spend all of that money on building a gigantic wall every single time a show starts.
