Back in 2005, Roger Waters and David Gilmour, the dueling forces behind one of the most influential bands of all time, called a temporary truce in their decades-long "Which one's Pink?" feud for a one-off performance at the Live 8 concert in London's Hyde Park where they shared a stage for the first time in 24 years. Together with fellow bandmates Nick Mason and Richard Wright, the seminal lineup of the legendary Pink Floyd were reunited for one brief shining moment and played a set that reverberated around the globe. Fans everywhere hoped the show would spark a full-on Floyd reunion, but as the years clicked off, and with the passing of Wright in 2008, that particular chance was lost. And with surviving band members continuing to show little interest in burying the hatchet in this lifetime, the odds of catching Pink Floyd live again — in any configuration — seem about as unlikely at this point as BP making right with the Gulf States.
Well, after five long years comes surprise word from the UK where Waters and Gilmour struck like a bolt out of the blue when they reunited onstage two weeks ago for a charity benefit. The unannounced pairing took the stage before 200 stunned guests of the Hoping Foundation concert on July 10th in Oxfordshire, England, where their performance helped raise £350,000 for young Palestinian refugees. Gilmour and Waters, who swapped his bass for an acoustic guitar, played a four-song set that included Phil Spector's "To Know Him Is to Love Him" and the band's classics "Wish You Were Here," "Comfortably Numb," and "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2."
According to Waters' blog, this latest reunion went down when Gilmour — who'd performed an impromptu rendition of George Gershwin's "Summertime" with supermodel Kate Moss for the Foundation's fundraiser last year — came up with the idea of singing the old Teddy Bears' song "To Know Him Is to Love Him" with arch-nemesis Waters. He thought the teaming would be funny considering the two have been embroiled in an infamous battle of wills for just under three decades now over who is the rightful owner of the name Pink Floyd.
Gilmour shot an e-mail with the suggestion to Waters, who loved the idea, and juggled his schedule to make the date. The two decided to round out their set with "Wish You Were Here" and "Comfortably Numb," and Gilmour sent Waters a demo of how they could do the songs in two-part harmony. According to Waters, "I listened with a sinking heart, knowing that David, with his superior vocal skills, could sing either part standing on his head, whilst I would have to search for a different key and then struggle through hours and hours of routining a performance that lay way outside my vocal comfort zone. To my eternal shame I bottled out and told Dave I would happily do 'Wish You Were Here' and 'Comfortably Numb' but that 'To Know Him Is to Love Him' was beyond me."
But Gilmour persisted over the coming weeks, gently nudging the failure-phobic Waters by reassuring him how easy it would be. Waters stubbornly clung to his fear until one day Gilmour made a final entreaty: Do "To Know Him" for The Hoping Foundation gig and I'll do "Comfortably Numb" on one of your Wall shows. "Well! You could have knocked me down with a feather," says Waters. "How f***ing cool! I was blown away. How could I refuse such an offer. I couldn't, there was no way. Generosity trumped fear. And so explaining that I would probably be shi*e, but if he didn't mind I didn't, I agreed and the rest is history."
The "Wall shows" Gilmour's referring to are, of course, the 90-plus dates Roger Waters is playing worldwide in honor of that album's 30th anniversary. Long considered Pink Floyd's crowning achievement, The Wall — a concept album which focuses on a disaffected young musician facing an existential personal crisis that reflected Waters' state of mind at the time— was released in November 1979 and spent 15 weeks atop the Billboard 200 chart. The album has since been certified 23X platinum. Waters will perform The Wall live in its entirety, backed by a full band and state-of-the-art production which will feature a 240' wide, 35' high wall that will be constructed between Waters and his audience during the first half of the show and slowly knocked down as the concert progresses. Other props and special effects are expected to be part of the show as well. Waters says this tour will be the final staging of The Wall. "I'm not a young man anymore," he says.
The Wall had only been performed 31 times prior to Waters' upcoming shows — by Pink Floyd in 1980-81 with limited engagements in Los Angeles, California; London, England; Uniondale, New York; and Dortmund, West Germany. It was also performed at an all-star presentation by Waters in July 1990 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Waters asked Gilmour to join him on the current tour, but his onetime bandmate declined. "David is completely uninterested," Waters said in May. "I could have probably gone for doing some more stuff, but he's not interested."
Even without Gilmour, Waters' The Wall Live tour is one of the few gems in what has otherwise been a dismal summer for concerts. While artists including Rihanna and the Jonas Brothers and tours like Lilith Fair and American Idols Live continue to unravel, the demand for The Wall’s 30th anniversary tour has led Waters to double, triple and, in some cases, quadruple the number of dates he's performing in certain markets.
As for keeping up his end of the bargain, Gilmour has just upped fan anticipation of the event with the recent announcement that he will make a guest appearance at one of the upcoming dates, though whether it will be a date on the tour's fall 2010 or spring 2011 leg, he will not say. According to Waters, his former Pink Floyd compatriot "will decide in due course which gig he wants to do" and that the chosen city shall remain a surprise. With an itinerary that boasts more than 90 gigs, it's going to be like hitting the lottery for one lucky city.
What the future holds for Pink Floyd only time will tell, though Waters did leave fans a curious morsel after the recent Hoping Foundation gig saying that, "We did it, and it was f***ing great. End of story. Or possibly beginning."
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Roger Waters’ The Wall Live tour begins September 15th in Toronto, Canada, and wraps in Mexico City, Mexico, on December 21st before heading to Europe for a run of dates in spring 2011. Check out Waters' website at www.rogerwaters.com for tickets and further details.
More to come on The Wall's 30th anniversary tour after the show touches down here in Pittsburgh in late September. Like every other ticket holder in every other city around the globe, I'll be holding my breath at the first strains of "Comfortably Numb."
