Roger Waters Taking ‘The Wall’ On The Road

The Wall, Pink Floyd's 1979 double-album mega-ode to teenage sturm und drang, was in large part a Roger Waters solo effort – with ambitious art design to match the Floyd founding member's arena-ready ego. In 1980-81 the band toured the world, embellishing their music with amazing Gerald Scarfe illustrations, projected onto a 40-foot cardboard wall that arose between the band and its audience, and giant inflatable animals. Songs such as "Comfortably Numb" and "Run Like Hell" subsequently entered the jamband canon.

Although Waters has performed the rock opera a few dozen times post-Floyd, most notably in Berlin to celebrate the downfall of another wall, on September 15 in Toronto he embarks on a lengthy North American tour featuring a technologically beefed-up version of his work. Tickets go on sale May 10 for the dates (available here), with a global tour likely to follow.

HeadCount pal Benjy Eisen discussed the tour with the typically grandiose Waters for AOL's Spinner:

"30 Years ago when I wrote 'The Wall' I was a frightened young man," Waters tells Spinner. "Well, not that young -- I was 36 years old. It took me a long time to get over my fears. Anyway, in the intervening years it has occurred to me that maybe the story of my fear and loss with it's concomitant inevitable residue of ridicule, shame and punishment, provides an allegory for broader concerns: Nationalism, racism, sexism, religion, whatever! All these issues and 'isms are driven by the same fears that drove my young life."

"This new production of 'The Wall' is an attempt to draw some comparisons, to illuminate our current predicament, and is dedicated to all the innocent lost in the intervening years."