Being Roger Waters

 

So Roger Waters has gotten himself into the news by daring to declare himself more important than Drake or the Weekend. While it may sound like a dickish thing to say, he’s certainly not wrong. I know it’s unfashionable to declare some artists and some works superior to others, but give me a break: Drake is about as brainless as porridge, and if we’re still discussing the Weekend in thirty years, you can call me Monday.

 

Nor am I impressed by the ageist argument that old people always claim their own music was better than the rubbish the kids are playing now: as if that alone proves it false. Possibly old folks only choose to remember the good stuff they listened to, and have chosen to forget (or have pretended to forget) the rubbish they themselves listened to at that age. Nor does it apply to me: I was three years old when The Wall came out, so I can hardly claim it was music from “my day”. “My day”, if anything, was the height of grunge, which I barely tolerated at the time, opting instead for. . ., well stuff like The Wall.

 

 I’m not interested in debating that any further: folks will like what they like. I would like to say a few things about The Wall.

 

It’s an extraordinary work really. It may feel a bit cliched, as it sold a kabillion copies, but that doesn’t bother me – sometimes art and commerce do converge. If a work I consider profound happens to resonate with the masses, and happens to reward its creators I’m not going to complain. And if stuff I consider to be profound was at one point popular, or even - *(GASP)* - mainstream, well, what of it?  I find it mind boggling how stuff I like was once considered mainstream. If this is a very steep rabbit hole to descend straight back to kids these days!, I’d again point out that nothing I like has been mainstream within my living memory (does 3 count?), but that’s yet another digression, so I won’t go there either.

 

Like many a weird, spaced-out teenager, (though anomalously drug free), I took to The Wall like a bee to pollen (“fly to shit” really doesn’t sound flattering enough).  I didn’t like the movie. It quite literally depicted everything in the album, but seemed to lack its psychological horror. I mean, the actors were all doing what Waters and Gilmour were singing, but somehow it didn’t feel right. I think I was hoping for something less literal, more surreal and impressionistic. More Gerald Scarfe and less Bob Geldoff.   The “Comfortably Numb” sequence surely needed something more serenely psychedelic. Surely “Young Lust” wasn’t just about groupies. The first, what, two thirds were all rock star decadence followed by Oswald Mossly cosplay, with the connection between them not being made in any way a young audience could pick up on.

 

This seems an irresponsible omission. An a fully intentional one.

 

I know a guy who thinks all pop music is basically fascistic. Because of the way, via mass production, recording, and amplification, it manipulates emotions and appeals to base instinct. I think on some level Roger Waters believes this too. He’s drunk deeply of Rock-stardom, tasted its powers, and keenly sensed its dangers. This is a well-documented inspiration for The Wall. But it’s difficult to believe, that on some level he doesn’t also relish it.

 

Hence the all-too effective Rock spectacle pastiche of “In the Flesh”.  It’s absolutely intended to open up concerts in grand Wagnerian manner, going straight for the loins and the tear ducts. I’ve seen him do it: ’99 or some such year, at the then Molson Amphitheatre.  The band blasted the riff, Rogers strutted on stage, raised his arms to the audience, and crossed them at the wrist, forming a large O above his head. We of course, all his puppets at this point, did the same. I’d bet good money he was perfectly aware this was also how the Oceanians saluted Big Brother in Michael Radford’s film adaptation of 1984.

 

Music does that to you. On some level (that phrase again!), you want it to do it to you.

 

That’s the danger of music.

 

Waters recognized this, but is too damn good at it to subvert it. He made an album about the dangers of pop-culture Rockstar hero worship that made people want to worship him even more. He’s not done much to dissuade them. Just watch footage from his 1989 concert in Berlin. Massive stage, massive set, dozens of musicians, hundreds of choristers (including the bleedin’ Red Army! In Berlin!), maybe a hundred thousand people in the crowd, and him at the centre of it all! And when he finally dons the military outfit in the style of some South American dictator, is he really not enjoying it?

(The Red Army should have sung “Waiting for Worms”. Now that would have brought the fascist overtones home!)

 

None of this is to condemn Roger Waters, a tremendous talent I admire and respect. Just I think he was (is) too invested in it all to really follow his thesis through. As we all are. Pop music is so central to most of our identities that we really can’t envision a world without it, nor do we want to. ‘tis why neither the film nor the various stage presentations of The Wall  could actually come out and say “pop culture is like fascism”.  People don’t like to hear it, and the Record labels and Studios sure aren’t going to promote it.  A lot of folks in this society will shrug off criticisms of their religion or their political beliefs, but woe betide anyone who criticises their favourite band.

 

I can’t be too hard on Rogers for not going the whole nine yards. If he had, The Wall probably wouldn’t have been as good. It’s tempting fruit this stuff. If he doesn’t exactly mind thousands of people stroking his ego, even while objectively recognizing the risks, I can’t say I blame him. In his place I’d probably do the same thing.