Newspaper reviews of Waters gigs

Thought you might like to see what the British press made of our Roger:

THE TIMES
Roger Waters
by David Sinclair
Pop
NEC, Birmingham




IT HAS certainly been a career of two halves for Roger Waters. As one of the key figures in Pink Floyd, he was instrumental in creating the most monolithic repertoire in rock. But as a solo artist since 1984 he has only produced three unremarkable studio albums, each more pompous and ponderous than the last.
When he returned to the concert stage in England on Friday night for the first time since 1987, apparently to promote a compilation album of his solo material, Flickering Flame, it was clear that Waters’s real mission was to re-establish himself as the true keeper of the Pink Floyd flame. With his former group currently inactive, perhaps permanently so, this is certainly a sound strategic move, and there was a genuine sense of occasion as he began standing atop a white “wall” set behind the ten-piece band on the stage below.

Dressed in a dark suit with a thatch of elegantly greying hair framing his increasingly gaunt features, the 58-year-old bass player and singer looked like a character out of Gormenghast as the band pushed off with the majestic, undulating riff of In the Flesh followed by the familiar marching beat of Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2. From the striking of the very first note, the quadrophonic sound was tweaked to absolute perfection — a mixture of power and clarity rarely experienced in a venue of such vast dimensions.

As Waters worked his way through long tranches of Pink Floyd material, including Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun, Wish You Were Here, Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Time and Money, a familiar succession of images played out on the giant screen behind: marching hammers, a pig flying over Battersea Power Station, priapic flowers, rivers of blood, piles of glittering coins.

So far, so good. But although Waters has a fair claim to co-ownership of these songs and images, he does not have the resources or collective mystique of Pink Floyd itself. Guitarists Snowy White and Chester Kamen produced passable imitations of David Gilmour’s guitar parts and the band could hardly be faulted for their attention to detail. But it lacked the authentic touch and over-arching splendour of the real thing.

Then there was a substantial chunk of Waters’s dreary solo material to wade through. Seamlessly stitched into the show as if it were somehow all part of the same body of work, pieces such as Perfect Sense (Parts 1 & 2) and Amused to Death stretched on interminably, giving free expression to Waters’s inflated musical vision and hysterically paranoid world view.

Waters may be offering the next best thing to a Pink Floyd show, but the experience is not without its moments of penance.





THE GUARDIAN
Roger Waters

3 stars
Birmingham International Arena

Alexis Petridis
Guardian

Monday June 24, 2002


To say that Roger Waters has a peculiar relationship with his audience is like claiming his former band Pink Floyd did quite well in the 1970s. He came up with the wheeze of building a polystyrene wall between Pink Floyd and their audience after one Canadian crowd annoyed him so much, he spat at them. Today it seems Waters himself knows his image could do with a makeover: these greatest-hits shows, he claims, represent him "coming out from behind my wall".

Former collaborator David Gilmour recently attempted to inject some humanity into Pink Floyd's austere oeuvre by playing intimate acoustic gigs, but Waters is made of sterner stuff. The inflatable flying pig has gone, but he can't abandon pomp entirely. Sound effects echo quadraphonically, specially commissioned films flicker. There is even the occasional burst of amateur dramatics. During Dogs' gargantuan keyboard solo, Waters and his band play cards and swig whisky. The significance of this remains a mystery. Perhaps these days even Waters needs a stiff drink to get through Pink Floyd's more rococo instrumental passages.

Steel-haired and plummy, Waters is not a natural frontman, but he is clearly trying, standing on the lip of the stage and encouraging an audience singalong during Comfortably Numb. When he invites them to dance - "It's only rock'n'roll, after all" - it seems odd and out of character, like an aloof company director suddenly joining in the office party hokey cokey. In addition, the material is hardly party stuff. The later Floyd tracks in particular are so cold that Radiohead, the inheritors of their mopey mantle, sound like Chas and Dave by comparison.

Still, nobody is here for belly laughs and bonhomie. They want Money and Shine on You Crazy Diamond, and for over two hours Waters and his note-perfect band power slickly through his back catalogue to general delight. The underwhelming response to his post-Pink Floyd albums may be behind his sudden and slightly awkward change of heart, but for the first time in his career, Waters seems happy to oblige.