Trivia / Roger Waters

• All-Star Cast: The Wall - Live In Berlin features performers like Joni Mitchell, Scorpions, Bryan Adams, Cyndi Lauper, members of The Band, and Van Morrison as well as cameos from Tim Curry and others.
• Banned in China:
  • In 2017, several public broadcasters in Germany announced they would not be airing several upcoming concerts by Waters, citing allegations of antisemitism over his harsh criticism of Israel. Whether or not this was justified is highly debatable.
  • Due to a mix of his pro-Russian statements during the Russo-Ukrainian war and his older opinions on Israel, he has also been banned from performing his This Is Not a Drill concert in the German city of Frankfurt and others in the country in 2023.^note In particular, a clip of him at a Frankfurt concert in fascist garb, firing a prop gun at the Pig, which had a bunch of political symbols and a Star of David printed on it, got him investigated for possibly violating German law.
  • Every city in Poland where he was to do his 2023 This Is Not a Drill tour refused to have him perform due to the above-mentioned pro-Russian statements pertaining to the invasion of Ukraine, since Poland has been helping Ukraine from the start with humanitarian aid, welcoming of refugees and weapon deliveries.
• Black Sheep Hit:
  • "What God Wants (Part One)", his biggest solo hit, is the closest his solo career gets to Hard Rock.
  • "5:01 (The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking, Part 10)" can seem like an attempt at this—an uptempo, riff-driven pop-rock song on an otherwise slowy, moody, and atmospheric album. However, it failed to chart.
• Career Resurrection: His tours in The Oughts and beyond were mega sellers, particularly his The Wall tour.
• Celebrity Star: The Pros And Cons album and tour featured Eric Clapton on guitar. Waters became annoyed with Clapton's fans at the live shows, who often were disinterested unless Clapton was soloing. Later tours featured the much-less-famous session guitarist Andy Fairweather Low.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Has been harsh on Radio K.A.O.S. in interviews.
    "Between Ian Ritchie [the high tech co-producer] and myself, we really fucked that record up. We tried to hard to make it sound modern. I allowed myself to get pushed down roads that were uncomfortable for me. I should never have made that record."
  • In a 2014 televised BBC interview, he expresses regret over challenging the rest of Pink Floyd during The '80s over rights to the band name. At the time he seemed to regret his past grumpy attitude and bad behavior in general. By 2023, however, he had soured on them once again and pointedly stated that The Dark Side of the Moon was his project and that the rest of the band weren't artists at all.
  • Waters looks back poorly on the time where he spit on a fan during an Animals concert.
• Creator Killer: The failure of Pros And Cons and Waters' subsequent feud with the rest of Pink Floyd severely damaged his professional reputation until his Career Resurrection at the Turn of the Millennium.
• Creator's Favorite Episode: Waters ranked The Dark Side of the Moon, The Wall, and Amused to Death as his most essential works, calling the latter underrated.
• Executive Meddling: Reputedly, "The Tide Is Turning (After Live Aid)" was only added to Radio KAOS after Columbia Records felt "Four Minutes" was too depressing of an ending for release.
• Rarely Performed Song: He rarely plays songs from Pros and Cons or Radio KAOS live, though he did perform "5:06 AM (Every Stranger's Eyes)", from Pros and Cons, on his 2000 In the Flesh tour.
• Real-Life Relative: His band has included son Harry Waters on the keyboards since 2002.
• Role-Ending Misdemeanor: In 2022, Polish authorities cancelled two planned concerts by Waters after several of his statements regarding the unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine (and an open letter to the Ukrainian first lady urging the country to surrender to Russia) were widely considered pro-Russian and pro-war in Poland, resulting in a severe public backlash against Roger when the April 2023 gigs were announced. Especially hurting considered Waters previously had a very large fanbase in Poland.
• Schedule Slip: The Dark Side of the Moon Redux, Waters' Self-Remake of The Dark Side of the Moon, was originally announced with an intended May 2023 release date. However, the month came and went without a song or a word; in late July, Waters announced a new release date of October 6.
• Self-Remake: The Dark Side of the Moon Redux is a re-recording of The Dark Side of the Moon, which Waters wrote the lyrics for. Among other things, the remake omits the guitar solos from the original album as a byproduct of renewed tensions between Waters and former Pink Floyd bandmate David Gilmour, instead replacing them with spoken-word passages. According to Waters, the decision to redo the album 50 years later was born out of a desire to make its intended messaging more overt, feeling that it attracted a Misaimed Fandom over the years as a result of its success.
• Sequel Gap: Amused to Death released five years after Radio K.A.O.S., owed to a mid-development change in concept caused by the Tiananmen Square protests and the Gulf War. Is This the Life We Really Want?, meanwhile, released a whopping 25 years after Amused to Death, owed to Waters focusing more on his live shows and side projects during that time. In turn, The Dark Side of the Moon Redux came out six years after that album.
• Serial Spouse: Roger has been married five times. The latest one at the age of 78, which he commented was "finally a keeper".
• Similarly Named Works: "Hello (I Love You)" is not a cover of the classic song by The Doors.
• Technology Marches On: Amused to Death, as a concept album about the effect of television, shows this in its cover art designs. The original 1992 cover prominently features a CRT TV, while the 2015 reissue has a flat panel on the cover.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The Pros And Cons Of Hitchhiking was one of two projects Waters proposed to Pink Floyd to follow up Animals in 1979. The other was The Wall. Obviously The Wall was chosen, but the double album could have just as likely been a solo project as opposed to the band's album.
  • The Final Cut was also proposed to be a Waters solo album (it was arguably a Roger album in all but name anyway), but as Roger put it, the band knew "songs didn't grow on trees" and a Floyd album was due by them at the time.
  • Amused to Death cases:
    • Roger began recording Amused To Death as far back as late 1987 as a Radio KAOS sequel, with '"Going To Live In L.A." as one of the tracks, but it eventually became its own separate piece by 1992.
    • (In)famously, a sample of 2001: A Space Odyssey was to be used on Amused To Death referring to "Dave", but Stanley Kubrick refused to let him use it, hence the backmasked Take That! to Kubrick. The sample would eventually be cleared for the 2015 remaster, with the backmasked jab being removed in turn.
    • The album cover of ATD, as a Take That! to the other members of Pink Floyd, was to feature a picture of Gilmour, Wright and Mason submerged into a martini glass.
    • According to The Other Wiki, a version of "It's a Miracle" exists that is more uptempo and features Flea on bass, but it has never been released (if it's even in releasable form).
  • Roger asked Bob Ezrin to help him produce Radio KAOS. Things were going very well, and Roger and Bob seemed to have patched up their differences held since the Wall era, but at the last minute, Bob and his wife agreed that the schedule Roger set up for Bob to produce KAOS would take too much time away from Ezrin and his family, and Ezrin pulled out. Roger took it very personally, and it didn't help when Bob fully accepted the offer from a more empathetic David Gilmour to co-produce A Momentary Lapse Of Reason for the post-Waters Pink Floyd that same year. Hence, Waters "not minding" if listeners felt that the "Each man has his price, Bob, and yours was pretty low" line in Amused To Death was a Take That! at Bob Ezrin^note it was really an affectionate in-joke on Waters' influence Bob Dylan and his singing style.
  • Roger was invited by David Gilmour to join Pink Floyd onstage for one night on The Division Bell tour in 1994 for a performance of The Dark Side of the Moon album as a peace offering, but Waters refused the invitation.

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