ROGER WATERS TO REISSUE 1992 SOLO ALBUM, AMUSED TO DEATH

Thursday 2nd April 2015 by Andy Morris | Photos by WENN



Once claimed it surpassed everything in Pink Floyd's catalogue

Roger Waters looks set to reissue his solo concept album, Amused To Death.

According to Amazon's German site (via COS), the 'remixed/remastered' version of the album will be released on 12 June on Columbia. Taking him four years to compete, the album was based around the idea of a channel surfing monkey and saw Waters tackle political themes including the abuse of power, corporate greed, the massacre at Tianamen Square and  the first Gulf War.

Waters was particularly proud of the record, once telling Classic Rock: "My view is that I've been involved in two absolutely classic albums – The Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall. And if you haven't got Amused to Death, you haven't got the full set." Reviewers apparently agreed, with Billboard calling the rleease "one of the most provocative and musically dazzling records of the decade."

The record was previously reissued in 2011 as part of a box set. This new edition, however, features new artwork. The tracklist is below:

1. The Ballad of Bill Hubbard

2. What God Wants, Pt. I

3. Perfect Sense, Pt. I

4. Perfect Sense, Pt. II

5. The Bravery of Being Out of Range

6. Late Home Tonight, Pt. I

7. Late Home Tonight, Pt. II

8. Too Much Rope

9. What God Wants, Pt. II

10. What God Wants, Pt. III

11. Watching TV

12. Three Wishes

13. It’s a Miracle

14. Amused to Death

Last year Roger Waters was forced to clarify that he was not part of the Pink Floyd reunion. In a statement posted to his Facebook, Waters wrote:  "David and Nick constitute the group Pink Floyd. I on the other hand, am not part of Pink Floyd. I left Pink Floyd in 1985, that’s 29 years ago. I had nothing to do with either of the Pink Floyd studio albums, Momentary Lapse of Reason and The Division Bell, nor the Pink Floyd tours of 1987 and 1994, and I have nothing to do with Endless River. Phew! This is not rocket science people, get a grip."

From www.gigwise.com

Roger Waters, John Mellencamp Choose Interviewers for 'Speakeasy' TV Show

BY KORY GROW | January 8, 2015


This month a new music-themed talk show will debut that flips the script and lets musicians choose their own interviewer. Speakeasy's first class includes Roger Waters, who chose TV journalist Bill Weir; John Mellencamp, who picked Rolling Stone founder Jann S. Wenner; Carlos Santana, who selected the "King of Calypso" Harry Belafonte; Nile Rodgers, who opted for singer Valerie Simpson; and Rush's Geddy Lee, who requested Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon. Since the show is a public television series, broadcast times and channels vary.

The producers of the public-television concert series Front and Center spearheaded the show, which they filmed before a live audience at New York City's McKittrick Hotel. "Artists of this caliber have doubtless done thousands of interviews throughout their careers, answering the same questions over and over again," Speakeasy creator and Front and Center Entertainment founder Don Maggi said in a statement. "The beauty of the Speakeasy format is that it affords these artists a level of comfort, which in turn stimulates a unique, compelling and topical conversation that we would otherwise not have an opportunity to hear."

Because of the format and the pairings of artists and interviewers, each conversation is wide-ranging. Waters offers his thoughts on world peace. Mellencamp discusses songwriting and politics, while sharing stories about his personal experiences with the likes of Stephen King, Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson. Rodgers discusses the formation of his disco group Chic, as well as stories about producing Madonna, David Bowie and Diana Ross. Santana talks spirituality  and social activism. And the Rush bassist opens up about his family, and how his parents met a concentration camp during World War II.

For information on where to watch Speakeasy, visit American Public Television's website.

From www.rollingstone.com

My Pink Floyd hit and this tragedy, by ROGER WATERS

By ROGER WATERS FOR THE DAILY MAIL
PUBLISHED: 23 December 2014



The revelations about the Americans’ torture of terror suspects have rightly caused outrage across the world.
The U.S. government has owned up to the shadow of institutionalised brutality that has hung over ‘The Land Of The Free’ since the inception of the War On Terror after 9/11.

The sense of disquiet should extend to the political establishment in Britain, given the mounting evidence that our own intelligence and security agencies may have colluded with the CIA in rendition, torture and a disregard for international human rights law including the Geneva Conventions.

Nothing illustrates our own national disgrace more graphically than the case of Shaker Aamer, a 46-year-old family man from London, who has now been held for almost 13 years in the notorious detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, having been seized by the U.S. military in Afghanistan in November 2001.

During Mr Aamer’s long spell of incarceration, he has never been put on trial or even had any charges levelled against him.

He has been subjected to systematic torture, humiliation and degradation, deprived not just of his liberty, but of all rights normally afforded to those in custody yet to be proven guilty of any crime.
The time has surely come for a judge-led inquiry to find out the true extent of Britain’s role in the barbaric treatment of Mr Aamer.

Yesterday, the Daily Mail reported on the growing pressure on David Cameron from nine human rights groups for just such an inquiry into the CIA’s torture of prisoners, including Mr Aamer.

No human being should be subjected to such monstrous and prolonged treatment — 13 years, with no evidence produced to suggest a crime!

It is little wonder that one recent medical report stated Mr Aamer is now suffering from a host of serious health problems, including failing eyesight, kidney damage and depression.

This is, after all, a man who has been incarcerated for so long without trial that he has never even seen his youngest child, a 12-year-old son.
His experience is a scandalous affront to justice, making a complete mockery of respect for the law and due legal process.

Even cold-blooded murderers rarely serve as lengthy a sentence as Mr Aamer has had to endure, and, if they do, they will at least have been convicted in a court by a jury of their peers.

I have a deep personal involvement in the campaign to release Mr Aamer, ever since his case was brought to my attention by the renowned defence advocate Clive Stafford Smith.

With a spirit of selfless determination, Clive runs the organisation Reprieve, which campaigns for the rights, among many others, of British prisoners held overseas. Appalled by Mr Aamer’s plight, Clive had contacted him and lent him his support.

That is how I became involved. In one letter to Clive from Guantanamo, Mr Aamer began with the opening lyrics of one of my songs, Hey You, from the 1979 Pink Floyd album The Wall. Mr Aamer said the lyrics captured his experience in Guantanamo. These lyrics run:

‘Hey you! Out there in the cold
Getting lonely, getting old. Can you feel me
Hey you! Standing in the aisles
With itchy feet and fading smiles. Can you feel me
Hey you! Don’t help them to bury the light
Don’t give in without a fight.’

Clive was able to pass Mr Aamer’s letter on to me, and I was profoundly touched that Hey You had had such a resonance with him. Other parts of his letter reinforced how much this man was suffering. He explained that for most of the time, he had to stay in his tiny cell and was denied access to a computer, books, journals or even stationery.

He was occasionally allowed to write a letter, but even this was difficult because the pens provided by the guards were wobbly and soft, like a ballpoint with the plastic outer casing removed.

Apparently, this was a security precaution to stop the detainees attacking their guards — an obviously ridiculous measure, given that the guards outnumbered the prisoners ten to one and were armed with M16 rifles.

On a more uplifting note, in his letter Mr Aamer paid tribute to an American Christian pastor who had been in touch with him and had spoken of his work to build an understanding between Christianity and Islam.

This highlighted Shaker’s attachment to the idea of understanding between peoples and faiths, to the idea of reconciliation and peace, and his fundamental opposition to extremism.

But then, his entire story seemed to undermine the American claims that he was a dangerous extremist embedded with Al-Qaeda and bent on the destruction of Western civilisation.

Born in Saudi Arabia and trained as a nurse, he came to Britain in the mid-1990s, married a British woman and started a family.

In 2001, he moved with his family to Afghanistan, where he began work for a humanitarian charity. This fact is disputed by the Americans, who claim he became an Al-Qaeda fighter.
Really? Where is the evidence?

Shaker has never been allowed to defend himself in a court of law. In effect, he has been held purely on the whim of the U.S. authorities.

This abuse of power exhibits all the hallmarks of despotism. Either we believe in freedom to live under the law, including the law of Habeas Corpus, or we don’t. Either we, the so‑called enlightened West, are law-abiding or we are a tyranny.

Strangely, the U.S. government, the ‘tyranny’ that guards the rest of us from Shaker Aamer, now appears all the more culpable with the extraordinary news that the British Government has repeatedly called upon them to release him.

The failure to heed this request must raise suspicions that American and British intelligence are worried that, if Mr Aamer is set free, he might reveal the shocking complicity of British intelligence in the savage interrogation of prisoners at Guantanamo, and at secret rendition sites elsewhere in the world.

Last month, I attended a gathering in Parliament Square in support of a movement to free Shaker Aamer. Among the others present was the campaigning journalist Andy Worthington. Andy, to his eternal credit, has devoted much of his recent working life to exposing the horrors of Guantanamo.
I was proud to be there, standing as I did alongside other Brits who still care about the law, about standards, about justice, about fair play.

Thanks to the recent Senate report into CIA torture, the public mood has changed, maybe even dramatically, in the past few days.

It is possible people are coming to see that justice is important and that the British legal principles dating back to Magna Carta in 1215 enshrine the rights of the individual and are to be defended at all costs.

Detention and incarceration without trial have absolutely no place in the legal system which we, the British people, are all rightfully proud to call our own.

From dailymail.co.uk

Roger Waters Recording First Rock Album in Over Two Decades

BY ANDY GREENE | November 13, 2013





Concept record is 'a quest,' says the Pink Floyd co-founder

David Wolff - Patrick/Redferns via Getty Images

Roger Waters wrapped up his three-year Wall tour in September, and since then he's turned his attention toward his first rock album since 1992's Amused to Death. "I finished a demo of it last night," he tells Rolling Stone. "It's 55 minutes long. It's songs and theater as well. I don't want to give too much away, but it's couched as a radio play. It has characters who speak to each other, and it's a quest. It's about an old man and a young child trying to figure out why they are killing the children."

He's not sure if he'll support the disc with a tour. "I'm suffering a little bit of withdrawal after ending the Wall tour," he says. "It's sort of a relief to not have to go out and do that every night, but they're such a great team. There were 180 of us together everyday. That piece was very moving every night."

The massive show was staged 219 times at stadiums and arenas all over the globe, grossing upwards of $458,000,000. "I can't top that tour," Waters says. "First of all, you have to accept the fact that I'm not going to live forever. I'm 70 years old. You just have to accept that when you do something as enormous as that tour. The hardest thing in the world is thinking of something to do, so going and doing it is a reward in itself." 

The memory of the tour still brings a big smile to his face. "I found that the loudest fans in the world are in Istanbul," he says. "I remember standing there with the band during 'Hey You.' We were behind the wall, so nobody could see us playing. We started looking at each other going, 'What is that sound?' When they sang 'Don't give in without a fight,' you could feel it. It was like the roof was coming off, even though there was no roof. It was amazing." 

With that in mind, he refuses to rule out the possibility of reviving The Wall tour at some point in the future. "I'm not thinking about that right now," he says. "But that's not to say I won't. I think there's an audience there. We did do 219 shows, which is a lot." 

From rollingstone.com

Roger Waters Reminds Curious Fans: 'I Am Not Part of Pink Floyd'

BY KORY GROW | October 2, 2014




"I have nothing to do with [new album] 'Endless River,' singer writes. "Phew! This is not rocket science, people. Get a grip"

Founding Pink Floyd bassist Roger Waters left the group bitterly in 1985 and famously sued his ex-bandmates at the time for wishing to carry on with the group's name, but some of his fans appear to have forgotten this. The singer-songwriter has issued a note on Facebook to remind his fans that, while Pink Floyd are indeed issuing their first record in 20 years – the instrumental record The Endless River – he had no role in making it.

"Some people have been asking Laurie, my wife, about a new album I have coming out in November," Waters wrote. "Errhh? I don't have an album coming out, they are probably confused. David Gilmour and Nick Mason have an album coming out. It's called Endless River. David and Nick constitute the group Pink Floyd. I on the other hand, am not part of Pink Floyd. I left Pink Floyd in 1985, that's 29 years ago. I had nothing to do with either of the Pink Floyd studio albums, Momentary Lapse of Reason and The Division Bell, nor the Pink Floyd tours of 1987 and 1994, and I have nothing to do with Endless River. Phew! This is not rocket science people, get a grip."

Waters lost his lawsuit over the band name in 1987, and that same year the band issued A Momentary Lapse of Reason. In recent years, Waters has revisited his Pink Floyd past. On July 2nd, 2005, Waters, Mason, Gilmour and keyboardist Rick Wright performed together as Pink Floyd for the first time in nearly a quarter century at the Live 8 concert at London's Hyde park. Waters has mounted solo tours in recent years, performing the Floyd albums Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall in their entirety, and reunited again with Gilmour and Mason in London at a tour stop for the latter in 2011.

"It was really nice to be part of it and to show support for Roger, not that he really needs it," Mason told Rolling Stone after their 2011 reunion. "I suppose it's nice to have Roger wanting to register David and myself as part of it, in a way. It was a mutual thing: it was nice to be recognized but also very nice to lend support to Roger and make it clear that we're not punching it out in these auditoriums. We're not critical of him doing it."

In 2013, Waters told the BBC he regretted his lawsuit over the band name. "I was wrong," he said. "Of course I was. Who cares?"

In the same Facebook note, Waters also criticized the role of some countries in the Israel-Palestine conflict. "On another subject, my recent trip to Bruxelles was very moving," he wrote. "To listen to the testimony of some of those present in Gaza during the euphemistically named Operation Protective Edge, July and August 2014 was deeply disturbing. I am still non plussed by the acquiescence of the governments of the USA, UK and EU to the policies of the current Israeli administration. Should we encourage our leaders to sue for a peaceful solution or not?"

The Endless River – which does not feature Waters – will come out on November 10th. The band decided to put out the record after discovering recordings they had made with Wright, who died in 2008, during the sessions for The Division Bell. "We listened to over 20 hours of the three of us playing together and selected the music we wanted to work on for the new album," Gilmour said in a statement. "Over the last year we've added new parts, re-recorded others and generally harnessed studio technology to make a 21st century Pink Floyd album. With Rick gone, and with him the chance of ever doing it again, it feels right that these revisited and reworked tracks should be made available as part of our repertoire."

From www.rollingstone.com 

Roger Waters Says ‘The Wall’ is ‘Unashamedly Anti-War’

Brent Lang
Senior Film and Media Reporter
SEPTEMBER 6, 2014

Roger Waters is bringing one of his greatest artistic triumphs to the screen at a time when war and armed conflict is consuming broad swaths of the planet.

At the Toronto Film Festival premiere of “Roger Waters’ The Wall,” the former Pink Floyd singer and guitarist said he was inspired to make a film of his wildly successful concert tour of the famous album out of political necessity.

“Any armed conflict is an underscore and an exclamation mark to this movie, because this movie is unashamedly anti-war, ecumenical, and about love for all men and women whatever their race, color, creed, nationality or whatever,” said Waters.

It’s also the second time that a film has been made of “The Wall,” but unlike the 1982 Alan Parker film, this isn’t a narrative picture and it’s not autobiographical. That film dealt with an emotionally isolated singer, but the 2014 version widens its canvas, while retaining a soundtrack that includes such rock classics as “Comfortably Numb” and “Hey You.”

“When Roger decided that he wanted to bring it back on the road he said, ‘I’m not that guy. I’m happy. I’m not this angry kid anymore,'” said co-director Sean Evans. “We took the meat of it and made it more about the world and building walls in society, religion and politics.”

Waters has been outspoken of late, criticizing the United States, for instance, for supporting Israel in its standoff with Hamas. At the premiere, he did not speak about any specific war or hot zone, but implied he felt that people needed to become more politically active in order to prevent future bloodshed.

“It’s about our children and about each other and about how we so desperately need to transcend national boundaries in order to cooperate with one another rather than sitting entrenched on our side of a boundary or wall and lobbing bombs at each other over the top of it,” he said.

“We’re on a slippery slope and we need to dig our heels in and say enough, enough, this is not right,” Waters added.

The premiere happened to coincide with the rocker’s 71st birthday, an anniversary that the filmmakers insisted was coincidental.

From variety.com

Toronto fans sing 'Happy Birthday' to Roger Waters

By JOHN CARUCCI, Associated Press | September 6, 2014

Photo By Frank Gunn/AP  Roger Waters, right, signs autographs as he arrives for the premiere of "Roger Waters: The Wall" at the Toronto International Film Festival in Toronto on Saturday, Sept. 6, 2014.

Photo By Frank Gunn/AP  Roger Waters waves as he arrives for the premiere of "Roger Waters: The Wall" at the Toronto International Film Festival in Toronto on Saturday, Sept. 6, 2014

TORONTO (AP) — Roger Waters celebrated his 71st birthday in style with a world premiere of his new documentary at the Toronto International Film Festival.

When the former Pink Floyd front man walked out on stage to introduce the film, a fan in the packed Elgin Theater screamed out happy birthday. That began an impromptu chorus of "Happy Birthday," and Waters graciously acknowledged his age with an expletive.

"Roger Waters: The Wall" chronicles his recent tour covering the seminal 1979 Pink Floyd album — as well as his inspiration for writing it.

Waters told the audience he began working with co-director Sean Evans five years ago to update the show with a more ecumenical and anti-war approach. Since it kicked off four years ago in Toronto, the tour has grossed nearly $500 million.

Waters came back out for the post-film Q&A to a standing ovation. Moderated by TIFF CEO Piers Handling, the question of Waters' strong political feelings and the criticism he received for it came up early.

Waters politely responded by saying that his strong, humane traits came from his parents, but he wasn't there to defend himself or fight with anybody.

The musician has spoken out about Israeli treatment of Palestinians and has refused to play any shows in Israel.

The film does not have a release date.

From www.chron.com

Pink Floyd's Roger Waters: 'I've made an anti-war movie'

By Rebecca Hawkes and Reuters 08 Sep 2014

The Pink Floyd co-founder say it's time to protest against politicians

Roger Waters performs in Portugal in 2011 Photo: EPA

Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters' new film, Roger Waters: The Wall, documents the singer-songwriter's three year The Wall Live tour, which ran from 2010 to 2013, and saw Waters perform Pink Floyd's famous 1980 double album in its entirety.

But Waters says that the film should be seen as a protest against the growing spread of armed conflict, rather than just a concert documentary.

The film, which had its world premiere on Saturday at the Toronto International Film Festival, documents the band's impressive concerts, that included pyrotechnics, animation, a flying inflatable pig and an actual wall constructed on stage as the show progressed.

But it also includes vignettes of Waters visiting war cemeteries and memorials in Europe, including the grave of a grandfather who died in World War One, and the site of the 1944 battle that killed Water's father when the singer was just a baby.

The concert itself featured projections on its set of veterans, activists and average people who died in wars, protests and attacks on civilians.

Waters said a major theme of the original album is the need to challenge politicians who seem increasingly willing to resort to the use of violence.

"It's a question that's not being asked of our leaders often enough. If this film asks that question, at least in part, then it would be good," Waters told Reuters on the red carpet ahead of the premiere.

"It's a protest movie. It's an anti-war, protest movie."

The film received a standing ovation after a screening packed with fans. The audience also sang an impromptu "Happy Birthday" when Waters, who turned 71 on Saturday, took to the stage.

The Wall Live became one of the top grossing concert tours of all time as it grew to more than 200 shows in Europe, North and South America and Australia.

Waters said he had welcomed the opportunity to spread the album's core message that politicians and citizens must work to overcome the divisions fueling the wars we see today.

"It's very easy for people to say... that will never happen, because they are this, and they are that. And you can't talk to them," he told Reuters.

"They just lived in a different part of the globe and are educated differently. And they need education the same way that we do so that we can cross the great divide that we might call the wall."

From www.telegraph.co.uk

Roger Waters' 'The Wall' Tour Documentary Premieres in Toronto

BY DANIEL KREPS | September 7, 2014

Sonia Moskowitz, Getty Images

Roger Waters celebrated his 71st birthday September 6th at the Toronto International Film Festival by attending the world premiere of his new documentary Roger Waters: The Wall. TIFF was the perfect venue for the former Pink Floyd bassist to debut his film since The Wall Live tour actually began its run at Toronto's Air Canada Centre on September 15, 2010, so Roger Waters: The Wall's TIFF premiere was like coming full circle. Also, what better way to follow "Bill Murray Day" than with a film that explores Waters' epic tour from behind "the Wall."

Longtime Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich is credited with "Sound" in Roger Waters: The Wall, along with veteran sound mixer Adam Scrivener. The documentary runs for 133 minutes – 12 minutes longer than the classic double-LP itself – and was co-directed by Waters and Sean Evans, who was The Wall Tour's creative director. Roger Waters: The Wall was filmed in three cities on two continents. So far, no release date has been announced for the documentary, but there will be two more Toronto screenings. Waters also revealed that his tour documentary could double as "an anti-war, protest film."

Following the premiere, and after an impromptu serenade of "Happy Birthday" by the crowd, Waters conducted a Q&A session with audience members and was asked why Pink Floyd's The Wall is so enduring. "I think people are sick and tired of being told that the most important thing in their life is commerce and the new this and the new that," Waters said according to the Toronto Sun. "I think people are probably ready to go now, 'Well, all of that rhetoric lead us to lob bombs over the top of the wall, that divides society ecologically, economically, philosophically and politically, from all our fellow human beings. And we no longer want to be told by our political leaders that they are scum and that we are great.' So that I believe that it may be we're no longer interested in the 'us and them' form of political philosophy that we've been fed on for the last couple of 1,000 years and that we may be ready to move into a new place." All that, plus "Comfortably Numb" is awesome.

"I can't top that tour," Waters told Rolling Stone last November. "First of all, you have to accept the fact that I'm not going to live forever... You just have to accept that when you do something as enormous as that tour. The hardest thing in the world is thinking of something to do, so going and doing it is a reward in itself."

www.rollingstone.com

Roger Waters Discusses Emotional Anti-War Documentary ‘The Wall’ at TIFF

By Karen Bliss
September 07, 2014

"It has a more universal message, which is passionately anti-war," Roger Waters says.

If a concert film can be emotional and even require a tissue, Roger Waters The Wall is it.

Roger Waters Premieres His New Doc at Toronto International Film Festival

Roger Waters, the Pink Floyd co-founder marked his 71st birthday at the Toronto International Film Festival Saturday (Sept. 6) night for the world premiere of this unique live concert documentary. The film takes his strong anti-war stance and interweaves a highly personal mission into concert footage from his 2010-2013 sold out The Wall Live tour, which actually started in Toronto.

The 133-minute documentary, which includes all 26 songs from Pink Floyd’s 1979 album, The Wall, is still seeking a distributor.

“The only difference in the movie is that I’ve made a road movie about visiting the graves of both my grandfather and my father -- well, my father doesn’t have a grave because his remains were never found. He died in 1944 at Anzio [Italy] in the Second World War, but there is a memorial to him which during the movie I visit,” Waters told Billboard before the screening.

“I basically visit all kinds of serious iconic places with friends of mine from the past, in this movie. I hope that that road movie is integrated within the context of the concert movie we’ve made and serves to accentuate some of the points that we made in the concert.”

Waters worked closely with co-director and co-writer Sean Evans, the creative director on The Wall Live and previous visuals designer for Waters’ 2006-2008 The Dark Side of the Moon Live tour and his opera Ça Ira.

“It has to do with his impetus for writing The Wall,” Evans says of the narrative component to the film. “It’s all one big circle and it’s great how it all ties back.”

In The Wall Live -- based on the songs from Pink Floyd’s classic double album, The Wall, and subsequent tour -- Waters hammered home the idea that war is commerce and the immense cost in human lives. The stage show includes military costumes, animation of fighter planes and bombs, and dozens of fan-submitted photos of people all over the world whose lives were lost to war in this last century.

The original album and Alan Parker’s legendary 1982 film were based on the destructive life of an isolated rock star whose father was killed in action during World War II.

“I wrote this piece nearly 40 years ago. It came to me a few years ago that it had a broader message than the original message of the whiny guy who spat at the kid in Montreal in 1977,” Waters says, referencing his notorious reaction to a disruptive fan during Pink Floyd’s In The Flesh/Animals tour.

“And it has a more universal message, which is passionately anti-war, believing that war is a business -- Smedley Butler’s whole ‘War Is A Racket.’ It’s all about people making money. It actually doesn’t help the people who are expected to be collateral damage -- and most casualties in modern warfare are civilians.”

Like the concert, the documentary includes all The Wall songs in chronological order, but Waters’ road trip makes the message more powerful. He is not just looking at war from the outside; he knows firsthand the lifelong pain such loss has on the families of those left behind.

As the end credits roll, he respectfully shows all the photos of fallen loved ones.

After the screening, Waters did a 25-minute Q&A session, telling the audience at the Elgin Theatre he hoped this new film version of The Wall is “more universal and ecumenical and anti-war and humanitarian than the original version that I did with my much loved old colleagues from Pink Floyd, Dave and Rick and Nick.”

He added another hope -- that we’d “find a different way of organizing our politics and our commerce that don’t require that we murder each other.”

“Because we are all brothers and sisters under the skin and above it,” he says. “I know it sounds ridiculous to say, but it’s super important that we stop lopping bombs over the top of the wall and start trying to dismantle it so that we can say ‘Hi’ to whoever is on the other side, whether the divide is religious or nationalistic or political or economical.”

From www.billboard.com

 

A note from Roger - July 11, 2014

"Enough is enough".
In January this year I wrote a private letter to Neil Young, it was sent via his manager Elliot Roberts' email, I never received a reply of any kind.

More recently I spoke openly about The Rolling Stones performing in Tel Aviv.

In light of the appalling recent events in Israel and Gaza and my dismay at the the lack of any response from our governments and in a final appeal to Neil's possible attachment to the rights of all human beings, not just the disenfranchised natives of North America, but all human beings all over the world, I am publishing that letter now.
Here it Is.


Dear Neil Young.

There are rumors flying about that you are considering doing shows in Tel Aviv this year.

The picket lines have been crossed in this last year by one or two lightweights from our community but no one of your stature. Woody Guthrie would turn in his grave. Neil Young! You are one of my biggest heroes, you are one of a very short list, you, John Lennon, Woody Guthrie, Huddy Ledbetter, Harry Belafonte, Sam Cooke, Billie Holiday and, like some others, but not many, your songs have always been redolent of love and humanity and compassion for your fellow man and woman. I find it hard to believe that you would turn your back on the indigenous people of Palestine. That you would lend support to, and encourage and legitimize, with your presence, a colonial apartheid regime, largely settled from Europe, that seeks to confine the native people of the land, either in exile or in second class status in reservations and ghettos.

Please, brother, tell me it ain't so.


As I recall, back in the day, along with the rest of us (Stevie van Zandt, Bruce, Led Zep etc etc etc etc)  you would not "Play In Sun City" I am asking you to stand on the same moral ground now. The late, great, Nelson Mandela lives on in us, we cannot let him down. He was explicit in his position and I quote, " We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians".  It is time for "Rock Against Racism" to show some of it's muscle by refusing to lend our names to the whitewashing of the illegal colonization of Palestinian land and the systematic oppression of its indigenous people. Unfortunately the opposition lobby has a lot of muscle too. They spend millions on their "Hasbara"(If like me you have no Hebrew)”Explaining” or to you and me "Propaganda". The propaganda machine is well oiled and ruthless. We, on the other hand, have only our commitment to non-violent resistance to lie down in front of the IDF caterpillar tractors that would raze the native people from the land of Palestine. We stand with those people, and with all the brave people of Israel and Palestine, Jewish and Arab alike who oppose The Israeli Governments brutal policies. We stand with Rachel Corrie, the young American woman who gave her life under the caterpillar's tracks. Please join me and countless other artists all over the world in solidarity with the oppressed and the disenfranchised. It is time to heed the peoples call. People like The Bedouin, the nomadic people of the Negev in the arid south of Israel, please research their plight, one village, Al-Araqib has been destroyed 63 times by IDF Bulldozers. If you are in doubt about any of this, I will go with you to Palestine, and Israel, if they’ll let me in, you will see what I have seen, and then let us figure out the right thing to do.


By the way I watched your Bridge School concert on YouTube last year, it was very moving, you were, of course magnificent. You had asked me to perform, and as I explained to your management, I would have gladly done so had I not already been committed to The Wall Tour in Europe and Stand Up For Heroes in New York. This year I will be pleased and proud to come and support you if you call.

With respect, and love.

Roger Waters.

PS.
Fyi. Nice Christmas present.



Bedouin Village Demolished For 63rd Time
Thursday December 26, 2013 18:18 by Chris Carlson - 1 of International Middle East Media Center Editorial Group

For the 63rd time, Israeli forces have demolished the Bedouin village of al-Araqib, in the Negev, Thursday morning.

A Ma’an reporter in Beersheba said that bulldozers, escorted by 25 police patrols, raided the village at 9 a.m. and demolished all of its steel houses.

“Forces of demolition and destruction raided our village in the morning and demolished our houses, for the 63rd time. This is a barbarian assault, as they left residents homeless during wintry weather,” local resident Aziz Sayyah al-Touri told Ma’an.  He highlighted that the assault has come following the Israeli annoncement to abandon the Prawer Plan in displacing Negev Bedouins. Bedouins claim the are as their ancestral lands, while Israel considers al-Araqib and all Bedouin villages in the Negev illegal. There are about 260,000 Bedouin in Israel, mostly living in and around the Negev, in the arid south. More than half live in unrecognized villages without utilities, with many living in extreme poverty.


PPS
Google “Prawer plan” and follow a few links, you may catch a glimpse of the tip of an extremely large and terrifying iceburg.

Neil, we’re talking about the occupation, subjugation, dispossession, eviction, ghettoization and possible eventual eradication of a nation.

You, more than most should find this, taboo, story, more than a little disquieting.

From Facebook

Roger Waters. Człowiek za murem

Roger Waters. Człowiek za murem
Autor: Dave Thompson

wydawnictwo: Rebis
data wydania:15 kwietnia 2014






Dla jednych jest liderem Pink Floyd z klasycznego okresu działalności grupy. Dla innych pomysłodawcą i głównym autorem albumów zaliczanych do największych w historii rocka - The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish Yoo Were Here czy The Wall. Dla jeszcze innych jednym z najbardziej oryginalnych i utalentowanych tekściarzy swojego pokolenia. Dla wszystkich pozostaje zagadką. Jest gwiazdą rocka, która nie tylko odżegnuje się od gwiazdorstwa, ale przez większą część kariery otwarcie na nie narzeka. Trudno jednak byłoby go nazwać człowiekiem pełnym sprzeczności. Roger Waters jest osobowością, której w ogóle nie da się zaklasyfikować.

Książka Dave'a Thompsona jest pierwszą pełną biografią muzyka. Ukazuje całe jego życie, od dzieciństwa w pogrążonej w wojnie Anglii po rozliczne boje, które Waters osobiście później toczył - z kolegami z Pink Floyd, z publicznością, a przede wszystkim z samym sobą. Obfitująca we wnikliwe analizy i unikatowe wywiady, prezentująca szczegółową dyskografię książka rozbiera mur, cegła po cegle, żeby odsłonić w całej chwale stojącego za nim człowieka.

Za lubimyczytac.pl

Kup
lideria.pl
taniaksiazka.pl
empik.com
merlin.pl

Roger Waters: Why I must speak out on Israel, Palestine and BDS

ROGER WATERS, MONDAY, MAR 17, 2014


Salon exclusive: The Pink Floyd star details why he supports the boycott

 AP/Bebeto Matthews

Seventy years ago, my father – 2nd Lt. Eric Fletcher Waters – died in Italy fighting the Nazis. He was a committed pacifist, and a conscientious objector at the start of the war, but as Hitler’s crimes spread across Europe, he swapped the ambulance he had driven through the London blitz for a tin hat and a commission in the Royal Fusiliers and he joined the fight against fascism. He was killed near Aprilia in the battle for the Anzio Bridgehead on Feb. 18, 1944.  My mother – Mary Duncan Waters – spent the rest of her life politically active, striving always to ensure that her children, and everyone else’s children, had no Sword of Damocles in the form of the despised Nazi Creed or any other despicable creed hanging over their heads.

Last month, thanks to the good people of Aprilia and Anzio, I was able to pay tribute to the father I never knew by unveiling a memorial in the town where he died and laying a wreath to honor him, and all the other fallen. Losing my father before I ever knew him and being brought up by a single, working mother who fought tirelessly for equality and justice colored my life in far-reaching ways and has driven all my work. And, at this point in my journey, I like to think that I pay tribute to both my parents each time I speak out in support of any beleaguered people denied the freedom and justice that I believe all of us deserve.

After visiting Israel in 2005 and the West Bank the following year, I was deeply moved and concerned by what I saw, and determined to add my voice to those searching for an equitable and lawful solution to the problem – for both Palestinians and Jews.

Given my upbringing, I really had no choice.

In 2005, Palestinian civil society appealed to people of conscience all over the world to act where governments had failed. They asked us to join their nonviolent movement – for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) – which aims to end Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories, to secure equal rights for Palestinian citizens of Israel, and to uphold the right of Palestinian refugees to return to the cities and villages they were violently forced out of in 1948 and 1967.

After more than two decades of negotiations, the vulnerable Palestinian population still lives under occupation, while more land is taken, more illegal settlements built, and more Palestinians are imprisoned, injured or killed struggling for the right to live in dignity and peace, to raise their families, to till their land, to aspire to each and every human goal, just like the rest of us. The Palestinians’ prolonged statelessness has made them among the most vulnerable of all peoples, particularly in their diaspora where, as now in Syria, they are subject, as stateless, powerless refugees, to targeted violence, from all sides in that bloody conflict, subject to unimaginable hardship and  deprivation and, in many cases, particularly for the vulnerable young, to starvation.   

What can we all do to advance the rights of Palestinians in the occupied territories, Israel and the diaspora? Well, BDS is a nonviolent, citizen-led movement that is grounded in universal principles of human rights for all people. All people! In consequence, I have determined that the BDS approach is one I can fully support.

I feel honored to stand in solidarity alongside my father and my mother, and alongside my Palestinian brothers and sisters, and so many others of all colors, faiths and circumstances from all over the world – including an ever-increasing number of courageous Jewish Americans and Israelis – who have also answered the call.

In the furor that exists in the U.S. today about BDS and the right and wrong of a cultural boycott of Israel, a quote from one of my heroes, Mahatma Gandhi, has been on my mind. He prophetically said, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”  The BDS movement is fulfilling its promise and fits Gandhi’s description.  Once dismissed by many as a futile strategy that would “never work,” BDS has gained much ground in recent weeks, bringing with it the expected backlash.

Divestment votes at major U.S. universities, European pension funds divesting from Israeli banks that do business with illegal Israeli settlements, and the recent high-profile parting of the ways between actor Scarlett Johansson and the global anti-poverty group Oxfam are symptoms of a growing resistance to the Israeli subjugation of the indigenous people of Palestine, and also, to the decades of occupation of land designated by the U.N. as a future state for the Palestinian people.

And with each new BDS headline, the ferocious reaction from the movement’s critics, with Netanyahu and his AIPAC fulminations in the vanguard, has risen exponentially.  I think it’s safe to say BDS is in the “then they fight you” stage.

Some wrongly portray the boycott movement, which is modeled on the boycotts employed against Apartheid South Africa and used in the U.S. civil rights movement, to be an attack on the Israeli people or even on the Jewish people, as a whole. Nothing could be further from the truth. The movement recognizes universal human rights under the law for all people, regardless of their ethnicity, religion or color.

I do not claim to speak on behalf of the BDS movement, yet, as a vocal supporter, and because of my visibility in the music industry, I have become a natural target for those who wish to attack BDS, not by addressing the merits of its claims but, instead, by assigning hateful and racist motivations to BDS supporters like me. It has even been said, cruelly and wrongly, that I am a Nazi and an anti-Semite.

When I remarked in a recent interview on historical parallels, stating that I would not have played Vichy France or Berlin in World War II, it was not my intention to compare the Israelis to Nazis or the Holocaust to the decades-long oppression of the Palestinians.  There is no comparison to the Holocaust.  Nor did I intend or ever wish to compare the suffering of Jews then with the suffering of Palestinians now.  Comparing suffering is a painful, grotesque and diminishing exercise that dishonors the specific memory of all our fallen loved ones.

I believe that the root of all injustice and oppression has always been the same – the dehumanization of the other. It is the obsession with Us and Them that can lead us, regardless of racial or religious identity, into the abyss.

Let us never forget that oppression begets more oppression, and the tree of fear and bigotry bears only bitter fruit. The end of the occupation of Palestine, should we all manage to secure it, will mean freedom for the occupied and the occupiers and freedom from the bitter taste of all those wasted years and lives. And that will be a great gift to the world.

“Ashes and diamonds

Foe and friend

We were all equal

In the end.”

From www.salon.com

The American University of Rome presents Roger Waters with Honorary Degree

February 19, 2014

Left to right: Provost Thompson, Chairman Battista, Roger Waters and President Hodges

A Doctorate of Humane Letters Honoris Causa Degree was awarded on the 18th of February 2014 to Roger Waters by The American University of Rome. Waters, who was the co-founder, lyricist, and conceptual leader of world famous progressive rock band Pink Floyd, and champion of veteran causes and human rights, was awarded for his contribution to music and for his social activism around the globe.

Accompanied by his wife Laurie Durning and by war veteran and close friend Harry Shindler, Waters was honored his degree before an intimate group of AUR students, veterans, faculty, and staff at the Istituto Italiano Studi Germanici in Rome following attendance of the Anzio commemoration ceremonies for the 70th anniversary of the Allied landings where his father, Eric Fletcher Waters of the 8th Royal Fusiliers, died as he fought to repel a German counter-attack in a battle that changed the course of the Second World War. Mr. Shindler, who also fought in the assault, was key in helping Waters locate the exact spot where his father fell.

Prof. James Walston, left, with WWII veteran of the battle at Anzio, Harry Shindler.

After receiving the Honoris Causa Degree, the social activist gave a short and concise talk directed to AUR students in which he recited a critical poem written in 2004 in light of the re-election of former US President George W. Bush.  He then encouraged AUR students to “make the world a much better place than it is now” and further highlighted his hopes that the current education system would focus on getting students interested in discovering and delivering the real truth about the issues of the world.

Waters then answered questions from AUR students regarding inspiration for his music, his thoughts on education, and his passion for veteran causes and human rights. Particularly, he shared with the audience that he finds the work he does with veterans to be the most rewarding of all. In a moving moment, he said “countries of the world really need to think more critically about the psychological situations they are putting their children in when they ask them to go to war”. The AUR Veterans Club concluded the ceremony by presenting Roger Waters with a Certificate of Appreciation in recognition of his father’s ultimate sacrifice and for Waters’ continued outreach to the veteran community.

From www.aur.edu

Recollections on Roger Waters

"AUR was quite magical on Tuesday night.  Awarding Roger Waters  an honorary degree was Harry Schindler’s idea, the 93-year veteran of Anzio who had located where Mr. Waters’ father had fallen on 18 February 1944, seventy years before. Modest and quite unlike a rock star vapidly consumed with fame, I had the fortune to hear Roger speak in public and then to quiz him about his life in private. Like his music, there is an epic dimension to his own history. 

I remember Pink Floyd from the late ‘sixties and I have a sense of ‘one more brick in the wall’, especially from the Berlin concert in 1990. But in all honesty their music passed me by. Now I rather regret this because Roger is a poet telling the particular stories of his generation.

During the question-and-answer session with the students, Waters spoke about being the son of a primary school teacher. He also revealed that he’d spent five years studying to be an architect. These are minor elements in ‘The Wall’. Perhaps more telling was his longer view of his personal history. His grandfather was a coal miner from the Durham pits who was called up to be a sapper. He died at Arras in the first days of the Somme, leaving a son – Roger’s father, who was aged about three at the time. So the grandfather never knew his son, any more than Roger knew the son, his father. His grandmother went into service and with determination sent her son, Roger’s father, to Durham University where he studied divinity. Eric Fletcher Waters taught at a school in Palestine before the Second World War, and when conscripted, he declared himself to be a pacifist. Driving ambulances in the blitz he met Roger’s mother, already a communist, and with time he decided to enlist. Anzio was the brutal, disorganized end chapter, an Arras in Italy. But of course it wasn’t the end.

The ceremony over, the students became bolder they pushed forward to get his autograph and to photograph him. Their unalloyed joy was quite something to behold! He is quite used to fame, of course, yet you can see that it belongs to a world he left behind long ago. He is focussed instead upon continual reinvention of his musical ideas as opposed to living off the music he made thirty, forty or even nearly fifty years ago. His recent shows have been colossal productions, possibly some of the largest grossing extravaganzas in rock history, and in unlikely places – Argentina and Turkey, for example – as well as in more familiar cities. In this new invention, of course, he remains a discomforting political activist, speaking to old and new audiences alike. The undisguised honesty sustains a personal story that encompasses Arras and Anzio, and, in some way, was shaped by architecture school.

This honorary degree ceremony, like so many before at AUR, shed a spotlight on the importance of education in the world today. It also emphasized unexpectedly the place of history in a portfolio of popular music that will forever be associated with the great social changes of the baby-boomers from the 1960s through to the end of the cold war."

—Richard Hodges

From www.aur.edu

Roger Waters memorialises his fallen WWII father

Nick Squires in Aprilia
18 Feb 2014


Pink Floyd rock star unveils a memorial to the father he never knew, 70 years after he was killed during a battle between British and German forces south of Rome.

Seventy years to the day after his father was killed in a desperate battle with German troops in Italy, Roger Waters unveiled a memorial in which he paid moving tribute to the man he never knew.

The founder of Pink Floyd was just a baby when his father, Lt Eric Waters, died during the bitter, close-quarters fighting that took place after British and American troops landed at Anzio in Jan 1944 in order to outflank the Germans and liberate Rome.

His unit, Z Company of the 8th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers, was all but wiped out in an aggressive German counter-attack on Feb 18, 1944.

His remains were never found.

The death of his father has haunted the British rock star all his life and inspired many of Pink Floyd's best known songs, including some off the album The Wall.

But as he stood in front of a newly-erected white marble obelisk commemorating his father in the town of Aprilia south of Rome, he finally achieved a degree of closure.

"It is 70 years to the day since my father died here and I have finally come to the end of a journey to discover what really happened to him," the musician and composer said, after placing a wreath of red poppies at the foot of the monument, next to a British steel helmet peppered with shrapnel holes, retrieved from the battle field.

Waters, 70, said that at the outbreak of the Second World War his father had declared himself a conscientious objector, but as the evils of Nazism became more and more apparent he decided that he should join up.

"So he went back to the conscription board in London and told them he had changed his mind. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Royal Fusiliers, which is how he ended up here 70 years ago. He believed he was involved in a necessary fight against the Nazis, and for that he paid the ultimate price."

Waters said he found the unveiling of the memorial "extremely moving" and at one point had to staunch a nose bleed with tissues.

"I feel an enormous attachment to my father today. I'm very happy to be here," he said, placing his hand over his heart.

Until recently, the guitarist had no idea exactly how or where his father had died.

He knew only that he had been killed following the landings, when tens of thousands of Allied troops streamed ashore at Anzio and Nettuno and established a precarious bridgehead.

But last year his story was taken up by Harry Shindler, an Anzio veteran who lives in Italy and who is head of the Italy Star Association of British veterans.

He scoured war diaries and military maps held by what is now the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers at the Tower of London, and came upon an intelligence report that described the desperate last few hours of Lt Waters' unit and the exact spot where he was killed.

Mr Shindler, 93, who on Wednesday will be awarded an MBE by the British ambassador in Rome in recognition of his services to veterans, has since become friends with Waters.

"Roger, I hope that you can go into calmer waters now and that this wall at least is down for you," Mr Shindler, who also served with the Royal Fusiliers, said.

On Monday the two men paid a private visit to another recently-built memorial, a circular stone monument which marks the spot where Lt Waters died, close to a gully that British troops called "the Wadi".

Although the death of his father caused him huge pain during his life, he seems to have found some peace with the enemy soldiers who killed him.

The monument, which lies on the edge of a grove of olive trees, is inscribed with words from 'Two Suns in the Sunset', the closing track on the Pink Floyd album The Final Cut: "Ashes and diamonds/Foe and friend/We were all equal in the end."

Waters was flanked by two soldiers from the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, who flew out from the UK to take part in the commemoration.

"In the regiment we have a saying - 'once a fusilier, always a fusilier' - so we feel it's very important for serving members to attend events like this," said Major Chris Head, who was a platoon commander in Z Company, just like Waters' father.

Colonel Duncan Venn, the British military attaché in Rome, said: "It must be very difficult for the relatives of soldiers whose remains were never found because they have no focus for their grieving. Hopefully these monuments will offer some comfort to Roger Waters."

From telegraph.co.uk

Comune di Anzio - Cittadinanza Onoraria a Roger Waters

Roger Waters made honorary citizen of Anzio

19.02.2014







Pink Floyd musician attends commemorations for his father.

Pink Floyd founding member Roger Waters was made an honorary citizen of Anzio on 18 February on the 70th anniversary of the death of his father, Lt Eric Fletcher Waters who died following the Allied landings at Anzio. 

The British musician also attended commemorative events in nearby Aprilia, the small town south of Rome where his father was killed on 18 February 1944, when Waters was just five months old. 

Waters placed a wreath at the foot of a new white marble memorial in honour his father, saying, "It is 70 years to the day since my father died here and I have finally come to the end of a journey to discover what really happened to him." 

Waters was helped in his quest by Harry Shindler, the 93-year-old Battle of Anzio veteran who was awarded an MBE in Rome on 19 February for his work in tracing the graves of British servicemen killed or listed as missing in action during world war two.

From wantedinrome.com

Roger Waters unveils war memorial in honour of his father

Published: Wed, February 19


PINK FLOYD star ROGER WATERS fought back tears as he unveiled a monument to his father in Italy exactly 70 years after he was killed in battle.

The rocker's dad, Lieutenant Eric Waters, died during the 1944 battle of Anzio when his son was just a baby, and the star spent years trying to piece together his final movements.

Waters returned to the area to unveil a special memorial in honour his father on Tuesday (18Feb14), exactly 70 years after his death.

He laid a wreath of symbolic red poppies at the foot of the plinth, which is inscribed with his father's name and rank along with a Pink Floyd lyric, and Waters was overcome with emotion as he paid tribute to his long lost dad, saying, "It is 70 years to the day since my father died here and I have finally come to the end of a journey to discover what really happened to him... I feel an enormous attachment to my father today. I'm very happy to be here."


Waters also planted an olive tree in a field close to where his father fell in battle. A solider played military funeral anthem the Last Post, and Waters later borrowed his bugle to give an impromptu performance of his band's track Outside The Wall.

From express.co.uk