Author: Peter Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Mediolanum / Milan / Italy
Concert date: 02.04.2011
Attendance: 13
The Rockline crew got a rather special chance in Milan to catch a concert by the legendary Roger Waters, the musician who wrote his name in gold letters in rock history as the vocalist, bassist and lyricist of progressive rock giants Pink Floyd. Roger earned his place among the greats above all with the monumental progressive rock opera “The Wall”, a double concept album about self-isolation that marked the peak of his career both as a solo artist and as a member of Pink Floyd. It’s one of those albums that moved the goalposts of modern popular and experimental music for good.
“The Wall” was in every respect the most ambitious project in the Pink Floyd story and one of the last progressive rock albums of which you can still say they were truly progressive in terms of musical innovation, with a far-reaching influence on future generations of musicians. The supreme commander of the whole “The Wall” project was the brilliant yet moody bassist, singer and lyricist who has also been a fervent social activist for the last three decades. That’s also the main reason nobody familiar with his musical path was surprised when he announced that his 2011 solo tour, which by his own forecasts will very likely be Waters’ last ever, would be devoted entirely to performing “The Wall”, complete with the iconography that defined the 1982 film of the same name. That makes it one of the most ambitious concert projects of the last few years.
The Mediolanum Forum arena in the middle of Assago, one of Milan’s many suburbs, was bursting at the seams with loyal devotees, all impatiently waiting for Roger and his entourage to march onto the stage and start building the wall between themselves and the crowd. The first bricks were already laid at both edges of the stage and when the sound of bombers and the familiar melody from the ‘gramophone’ rang out, it was the signal for an explosive start with “Outside the Wall”. Roger strode onto the stage in a long coat reminiscent of a Gestapo uniform, underlined by a band with the crossed-hammers symbol worn on his right arm, while he was accompanied by ‘subjects’ who briskly carried the flags of his fictional party, the Worms.
The master of cynicism delivered a great opening vocal turn, laying the first bricks of this half-autobiographical drama from a rough period of his life, one he thankfully outgrew long ago, as he himself mentioned later in the show. Meanwhile, fascinating yet harrowing video projections kept shifting on the round screen and along the edges of the wall beneath it, using animations, photographs, appeals and slogans to point out the wrong turns of our sick civilization and all of its ‘collateral’ victims.
Anyone who knows Roger’s, let’s call it socialist, view of the world surely wasn’t surprised by the amount of blood-boilingly outspoken warnings that paraded across the wall in the first part of the concert, symbolically standing in for the individual bricks in the wall that modern civilization is self-destructively building around itself. For this tour Mr. Waters once again assembled an enviable crew of backing musicians, with the seasoned veterans standing out the most: guitarists David Kilminster and Snowy White (ex-Thin Lizzy) and keyboardists Jon Carin and Roger’s son Harry Waters. Kilminster covered most of the key guitar solos and did a very good job of it, at least in terms of finesse, although plenty of people in the hall who forgot they weren’t at a Pink Floyd show naturally missed ‘the original’.
The rumble of the bombers was interrupted by “The Thin Ice” with its gentle piano melody, where most of us missed the singing of Roger’s former Pink Floyd bandmate David Gilmour the most, since his stand-in simply couldn’t match the emotional depth of Gilmour’s voice. During “Another Brick In The Wall, Part. 1” we mostly soaked up the subtle guitar solo, while “The Happiest Days Of Our Lives” kicked off the build-up of drama, with the chilling sound of a helicopter and the teacher’s screaming thoroughly heating up the tense atmosphere. The teacher finally appeared on stage as a giant, grotesque puppet and started to ‘dance’ just as the most famous moment of the whole concert arrived, and with it the best-known creation from the entire album, one everyone who hasn’t spent the last thirty years living under a rock knows: the legendary rebel anthem “Another Brick In The Wall, Part. 2”. The children’s choir was of course there, doing a great job of it while pointing accusingly at the teacher puppet. The ending was nicely seasoned with Kilminster’s weeping guitar solo, backed by the booming sound of organs courtesy of Harry Waters. When it came out, this was an excellent and innovative piece of work, but all the radio play it got is to blame for many fans of Roger Waters and Pink Floyd considering it overrated compared to their lesser-known compositional masterpieces. For those of us hearing it live for the first time, though, it was undoubtedly a really special experience.
After all that rebel drama, the heated mood in the hall calmed down a bit with “Mother”, where Roger successfully commanded the gentle acoustic melody and served up the expected vocal theatrics, though some of us again missed Gilmour’s vocal contribution. The possessive mother was very well depicted in the background as a giant creature with a helpless toddler in her arms, and she embodied Big Brother, or better yet, Big Mother, very convincingly. All the puppets and animations from the “The Wall” film were of course authentic creations of the legendary artist Gerald Scarfe. The ambient “Goodbye Blue Sky”, which sounded especially harrowing that night, was followed by “Empty Spaces”, the warm-up for the explosive “Young Lust”, without a doubt the hardest rocking number of the whole evening, during which the familiar ‘snake woman’ motif came into its own through various erotic projections. The giant puppet of the unfaithful wife, which looked most of all like a green praying mantis, portrayed it brilliantly too.
Roger also played his ‘nervous breakdown’ very well during “One Of My Turns”, gradually raising his voice in a mix of anger at his ex-wife and self-pity. On “Don’t Leave Me Now” we once again enjoyed the fragile piano melody and the piercing slide guitar, while thanks to Roger’s enraged singing the third part of “Another Brick In The Wall” came across live as the most aggressive of all three parts. The first half of the concert closed with the farewell “Goodbye Cruel World”, during which the wall was finally completed, leaving the band totally hidden from the audience. The crowd then had to wait about twenty minutes for the next part of the show, the length of the intermission.
The second half of the show was marked by the appearance of a giant flying pig puppet, an indispensable part of Pink Floyd iconography, which drew no small amount of attention from the crowd. During “Hey You”, one of the most harrowing compositions on the album, with its ice-cold acoustic guitar melody set against Roger’s emotionally drained singing, the band was still totally hidden behind the wall, so a feeling of claustrophobia spread across the whole hall.
On “Is There Anybody Out There?” we soaked up the melancholic acoustic guitar solo, and then during “Nobody Home” Roger finally showed up among the bricks, comfortably seated on a couch amid iconography representing his hotel room. The delicate piano melody and Roger’s cynical singing vividly captured Pink’s lonely life inside the mental wall. “Vera” was once again one of Roger’s cynical highlights live, since the song was inspired by Vera Lynn, a British singer from the World War II era. She sang the popular song “We’ll Meet Again”, promising families would be reunited after the war, something Roger never got to experience because of his father’s death. Waters’ plaintive singing was elevated by the backing band with piercing orchestral arrangements. “Bring The Boys Back Home”, with its signature pompous, militaristic sounds that give the impression of an army march, was another chance for Roger to stress the senselessness of wars and tell the crowd that war or careers should never estrange families.
Then came yet another highlight of the concert and of “The Wall” as a whole – the phenomenal epic “Comfortably Numb”, where Kilminster at least roughly filled in for Gilmour with two piercing solos that come off every single time as true guitar revelations, sending shivers down your spine. Pink’s part in the choruses was sung by a Gilmour imitator, while the doctor’s vocals came from none other than the as-cynical-as-it-gets Waters. During the transition into the ambient, brighter, almost uplifting section, backed by mighty orchestral curtains and a pleasant acoustic guitar melody, the mood in the hall hit its peak and the wall suddenly lit up in rainbow colors. “The Show Must Go On” set a solemn atmosphere that soon morphed into “In The Flesh”, where amid explosive organ outbursts the neo-Nazi iconography of Roger’s fictional party made a comeback. During “Run Like Hell”, Roger once again marched onto the stage dressed up as a fascist dictator, joined by the other band members, who were likewise decked out in ‘Worms’ uniforms and carrying flags. Mr. Waters couldn’t help but throw himself completely into the role of the great dictator, so a few times he gleefully ‘shot’ at the crowd with a fake model of a machine gun.
During “Waiting For The Worms” he also used a megaphone to stoke the incendiary mood even further, set to a militant rhythm. On the projection, meanwhile, the worms had finally wrapped themselves all the way around the wall of Pink’s/Roger’s brain. “Stop” was the intro to the big, theatrical finale, “The Trial”, where Scarfe’s grotesque animations really came into their own. Roger played the part of the arrogant judge brilliantly, along with the other characters from Pink’s/his own past, like the teacher, the mother and the ex-wife. In the end we did get the dramatic collapse of the wall with “Outside The Wall”, a magnificent and triumphant moment when Roger came out with his backing musicians, whom he didn’t forget to introduce, to take a bow before the crowd and play one last farewell number.
Roger blew us away with a top-notch stage presentation of his magnum opus and successfully got across the core message of “The Wall”, which could best be put like this: problems can’t be solved with inner or outer walls (and even after the fall of the Berlin Wall there are still far too many of both around the world), only through working together and connecting with each other. Of course, the ones who enjoyed the concert most were those of us who were aware all along that we weren’t actually watching Pink Floyd, and so could more easily put out of mind the absence of Roger’s ‘best friend’.
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Setlist
1.In the Flesh? 2.The Thin Ice 3.Another Brick in the Wall Part 1 4.The Happiest Days of Our Lives 5.Another Brick in the Wall Part 2 6.Mother 7.Goodbye Blue Sky 8.Empty Spaces 9.What Shall We Do Now? 10.Young Lust 11.One of My Turns 12.Don’t Leave Me Now 13.Another Brick in the Wall Part 3 14.The Last Few Bricks 15.Goodbye Cruel World —intermission— 16.Hey You 17.Is There Anybody Out There? 18.Nobody Home 19.Vera 20.Bring the Boys Back Home 21.Comfortably Numb 22.The Show Must Go On 23.In the Flesh 24.Run Like Hell 25.Waiting for the Worms 26.Stop 27.The Trial 28.Outside the Wall
Photo Gallery
