At sixty-four years old, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Roger Waters has sailed past his peak of rock-stardom, resigning himself to celebrity reality TV spin-offs or sitting miserably in vast riches where others who have tasted success as massive as Pink Floyd have. At the first of his two night residency at the newly rejuvenated O2 Arena, a rock spectacular featuring spacemen, pigs and giant laser prisms begged to differ.
Boasting a 20,000 person capacity, the O2 was a bursting metropolis of shops, cinemas and restaurants that surrounded the arena itself – tonight it was filled with a whole range of different people, young and old, showing that Roger Waters is still immensely popular not only to the people who were there for Pink Floyd’s original gigs, but also newcomers to the legacy such as myself. Walking in and taking our seats, the sheer enormity of what was about to come hit us – 3 screens took up pretty much the entire width of the O2 at the stage end, while a whole wealth of sound techs were situated in the middle of the floor, ready to fine tune the sound and pretty much pull the strings on the visual side of things. Before the show itself begun, the middle, biggest screen was occupied by that of an old vintage radio and WW2 model plane, complimented by whiskey and cigarettes – reminicent of all Pink Floyd work from The Wall onwards, the music played changed as a hand delved onto the screen and fiddled with the radio.
Promptly at 7:45, Roger Waters and his band strolled out on stage to overwealming reception from the audience, who greeted him with a standing applause well into this first song, In The Flesh. This was possibly met with somekind of dismay for a couple of thousand people who were still spilling into the seats by the time the third song started; the O2 is by no means quick to get into, taking about 15 minutes from when you entered the dome, through security checks and finding the entrance you were told to go into. However, the steady stream of people did little to detract those already seated from the spectacle Roger had started – at one point in the song, spotlights probed the audience as Roger sang “Are there any queers in the theatre tonight? Get ‘em up against the wall! And that one in the spotlight, he don’t look right to me. And that one looks Jewish, and that one’s a coon! Who let all this riffraff into the room?”, while a camera pointed onto said spotlights and showed the person being filmed on the two subsidary screens – cue person pointing and laughing at themselves on camera. The finale of the song played out as the sound of a crashing plane spiralled around the surround sound system and ended as a seemingly impossible amount of sparks and pyrotechnics erupted on stage: Waters was here.
As a stark contrast, the acoustic guitar was pulled out for another Wall classic, Mother. This returned to the vintage radio seen before Waters got onto the stage, and pulled the camera around the room it was situated in: fans of the film adaptation of The Wall would see a striking resemblance to Bob Geldof’s character in the film, smoking and looking at all kind of nudie mags, which was an eiree conterpart to the actual song – although the visuals lacked a real kind of climax to accompany the spiralling solo, the backup singers and Waters himself managed to keep the stadium transifxed. After this, a massive CG rendition of the sun loomed down onto the screens, which marked the first appearance of the night of a Syd Barrett-era song, Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun. Greeted by an enormous roar of approval, the visuals led the audience from the Sun and space to stills of old Pink Floyd videos Arnold Layne and Scarecrow, both of which feature Barrett in promince. The song seemed to take on a fiercer, more powerful personna than on the record, which by comparison was more spacey and psychedelic – this song alone is proof that Waters still has it in him to command a powerful tune.
Continuing the theme of Syd Barrett, the next song was the first half of Wish You Were Here epic Shine On Your Crazy Diamond. In case the Barrett tribute wasn’t obvious enough already, Shine On featured a journey through stars and space, all the way to stylised portraits of Syd Barrett himself. The music itself was flawless – the spacey keyboard intro, the guitar solos, the saxophone which characterises the track… at times, it was almost like watching a film – yes, the ride may be fixed on one set path, but hell, it’s a wild ride, and while Roger Waters lacked intimacy with the lack of any real on-stage banter (and of course the enormity of the venue), he really utilized the space he had in order to create the most spectacular show many in the audience had witnessed. And don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen the likes of Bjork fire lasers off walls, Animal Collective dazzle the crowd with pugnant, powerful lights, and The Aquabats create a mosh pit with beach balls and rubber dingys, but of all of the gigs I’ve been to, Roger Waters was the one that really pulled out all the stops.
Along with this, he also knew which songs would really get the crowd going: following Shine On were Have a Cigar and Wish You Were Here, which formed a tryptch of songs from Wish You Were Here. Needless to say, the crowd loved it – Have a Cigar’s bodacious bassline matched with equally spectacular precision lighting onto the stage and images of city life and, you guessed it, cigars, while Wish You Were Here was presented in it’s original, stripped down form, using two guitars, keeping the audience mesmerised. Following these were Southampton Dock and The Fletcher Memorial Home, both of which from The Final Cut, which is pretty much ugamiously the weakest of Pink Floyd’s discography. While these songs did little for me on record, Waters managed to create whole new beasts on stage, the dynamics of which were incredible – he could change from moving to powerful within a few bars, while the visuals showed WW2 veterans in homes from the old, a moving and poignant accompaniment to the music showing Water’s distaste for current politic problems in the middle east; graffittied quotes littered this home for the elderly, such as Stalin’s famous quote, “Death is the answer to everything – no people, no problem”.
Now, despite being a big Pink Floyd fan and being at a Roger Waters solo show, I had unfortunately neglected to listen to the man’s solo work beforehand. However, I got the feeling that most of the crowd probably had – the reaction to Perfect Sense (Parts I-II) was probably one of the biggest of the night, and you can see why: alongside the usual sprawling solos and tight saxophone work, it became apparant that a giant imflatable spaceman was, in fact, floating across the arena. After this, the screen turned into a stadium filled with water, in which a submarine fires a missile at an oil platform, and then, I kid you not, a miniature explosion goes off on stage, which the heat I could feel from my seat a good 30 or so rows back from the front in block B. Obviously people were far more accustomed to his solo work than myself, as, by the end, people were standing up and victoriously singing, arms spread wide open. Continuing with his solo work, Leaving Beirut was introduced by Roger explaining the backstory behind the song – a teenager travelling across the middle east (if I recall correctly), his car breaks down and he is forced to hitchhike back to England. Oddly enough, once the song starts, a giant comic book esque setting appears on the screen, in which presumably the real actions of Roger Waters are played out in comic book form. Now here’s the real quirk – when he sings a line, a fantastic speech bubble appears on stage, and then a smaller version appears above the backup singers! The song itself went on for about 10 minutes – this is by no means a bad thing, not at all; the song takes many progressive twists and turns throughout the song, filled with many an epic solo, yet also being very politically charged, and not in the Green Day-esque “fuck you, Bush”, but real criticisms of the system – although it did feel a bit… outdated, namedropping Tony Blair.
Ending the set on a politically charged noted, Waters brought out the now infamous pig for set finale Sheep, the only song represented from Animals. It’s hard to say that the pig didn’t completely stole the show – OK, I’ll go right out and say it, the pig completely stole the show. And if that wasn’t enough, the entire arena was rained down upon with confetti and bits of paper with the word OBAMA and a tick box next to it – although the message is probably falling onto deaf ears as, well, we can’t vote for Obama (well, I can’t vote for anyone anyway), his dedication to Obama is admirable. Despite the pig, the song itself was incredible – the keyboards, the bass, the guitar… everything driving, pounding to the finale of the set, in which Waters declared a 15 minute break before the Dark Side of the Moon set.
Building up to the Dark Side of the Moon set was, fittingly enough, a moon, coming closer and closer on the screen, until the end of the break where the famous heartbeat started, and people flooded back to their seats again as Speak To Me / Breathe started (do people not learn?). Taking on a very similar layout to the P.U.L.S.E. Pink Floyd DVD, most of the DSOTM set’s visuals took place in a circle in the middle of the stage screen, sometimes bursting out of the circle, creating a spectacular colourful visual experience. However, the visuals were at times tired and repetitive when compared to the first set – some songs just used different coloured moons, and Money had the potential to be so much better. But back to Breathe, the first real song of Dark Side of the Moon, introduced by Speak to Me - the first startling difference to the first set and, indeed, the record itself, is the fantastic use of surround sound – the sound effects used all over the album took a new dimension, characterised in Speak to Me by the man speaking, the innane laughter, the screams… things were taken to a terrifying, dynamic new high.
On The Run, the real electronic track of the record, took on a modern new personna on stage, and, much like the previous songs, was slightly terryfying – for the first time in the set, the colours were truly alive and jumped out of the circle. The sonic assualt swirled around yourself and took you to a different, colourful, psycedelic place… before being innteruppted by the roar of trains – this was oddly the most terrifying moment of the evening, and it was a dimension of the song I hadn’t felt since listening to the record for a first time a couple of years back. I’d imagine that many people in the audience felt the same, but some having listened to the record for the first time nearly 3 and a half decades ago no doubt, I can only imagine either the sheer nostalgia or the sheer terror they were experiencing.
After the sheer power of On The Run, Time had a lot to live up to. And, for the most part, it was indentical to the CD counterpart. Which was the main problem of the DSOTM set – it all seemed very similar, if not identical to the record most people had listened to in the arena countless times, the only real difference being the admittedly spectacular visuals on stage and around the arena. However, with all credit to the band, for this to be possible, they had to have been perfect with their instruments – and they were, Time taking on the classic song encompassing live, death and the entire world in a mere 5 or so minutes. Breathe (Reprise) was along similar lines, taking back the set to Breathe, before wisking away to The Great Gig In The Sky, which showed off the backup singer’s impressive array of singing to a backdrop of a saturated sky, while still engaging the audience.
Ah, the audience. Despite the relative age of the audience (and I mean no offense by that), they were, on the most part, really getting into it, some more than others. The most enthusiastic you could truly see getting into the music, and it was obvious that they were here to hear the record they had heard all those times in the flesh – dancing, singing, arms outstreched, some people truly were engaged. Of course, the most people got up and got truly enthusiastic during arguably Pink Floyd’s biggest hit off DSOTM, Money. The sound effects on this one were truly breathtaking – the sound effects that made the introduction so famous swirled around you and sucked you into the show. While the green hued lights all the way through the song were a smite uninspired, the backdrop of the record spinning and various different money clips was a perfect accompaniment to the swirling, famous saxophone solo and the bouncy bass riff which opened the song.
Us and Them was one of the songs which I felt was slightly underpowered compared to the rest of the set – it’s not the greatest song on the album in the first place, but the jazzy saxophone juxtaposed with the awe-inspiring chorus was still a formidable effort by the band. This can be compared to Any Colour You Like, which is my favorite song on the album – take this with a pinch of bias, but live, it is even more incredible than I could have ever imagined. For this song, they created the iconic prism, but made it out of light lasers – they then had another coupld of long, wavey, colourful lasers, which complimented the colourful and equally spectacular visuals on the stage. Of course, the musicians for this were at their peak – the effects laden, psychedelic guitar effortlessly joined with the equally trippy keyboard parts to create a colourful musical canvas. Behind Sheep, this moment alone was my favorite moment of the night.
Any Colour You Like eventually gave way to Brain Damage, another favorite off the album. Continuing the colourful trippy visuals which accompanied the previous song, this number featured computer generated visuals of brains, stars and pills opening into the infinates of space – epic does not describe it, it was the penultimate sing which pulled the set along to a grand climax in Eclipse. The prism was fully turned on, and fired out lasers which made it look like a full, giant laser version of the iconic album cover which still, to this day, graces the top album cover lists. This was greeted by the crowd as the driving finale to the show, as the entire arena stood up to show their appreciation to the creator of such classics – the screen similarly summed up the entire set’s visuals, visiting parts of every bit of the entire show, creating a moving retrospective of the entire album, moving the audience to a stunning standing ovation which lasted well beyond the final bow.
Although we had to leave before the encore in order to catch a train, I have it in good faith that after The Dark Side of the Moon, Waters and the band played a few The Wall era songs, including Comfortably Numb and Another Brick in the Wall Part II. I can just turn on the MP3s and pretend I’m there. Awesome.
Setlist:
- In The Flesh
- Mother
- Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun
- Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts II-V)
- Have a Cigar
- Wish You Were Here
- Southampton Dock
- The Fletcher Memorial Home
- Perfect Sense (Parts I-II)
- Leaving Beirut
- Sheep
- Speak To Me
- Breathe
- On The Run
- Time / Breathe (Reprise)
- The Great Gig In The Sky
- Money
- Us & Them
- Any Colour You Like
- Brain Damage
- Eclipse
- The Happiest Days of Our Lives
- Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)
- Vera
- Bring the Boys Back Home
- Comfortably Numb
