Roger Waters’ New Album Is Taking a Different Path
Roger Waters is still tweaking his first album since 1992's Amused to Death, having moved to Los Angeles to be closer for sessions with Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich. Now in the middle of a two-weekend run at Desert Trip, Waters plans to reconvene with Godrich in November.
"We've got some really good work in the can," he told Rolling Stone. "We did some work in London and in Los Angeles."
Water said the project began with a tough question: "Why are they killing all the children? It is a fundamentally important question." Waters originally approached the album as another of his thematic concept records – "a long, meandering piece that was a radio play with about a dozen songs in it," he explained – but Godrich helped narrow the focus.
"I wrote this whole thing – part magic carpet ride, part political rant, part anguish," Waters said. "I played this to Nigel, and he goes, "Oh, I like that little bit" – about two minutes long – "and that bit." And so we've been working." By the end, the radio play had been cut. "Oh, it's been completely thrown out," Waters confirms. "The radio play will be made. I will make it, because I love it."
In time, the album has also taken on a secondary theme. "It's pondering not just why we are killing the children, it's also the question of how do we take these moments of love – if we are granted any in our lives – and allow that love to shine on the rest of existence, on others," he added.
Waters' just-announced Us + Them arena tour, set for summer 2017, will include songs from the new album, as well as new audio-visual presentation of material from his time with Pink Floyd. Those dates mark his first concerts since the worldwide Wall Live tour concluded in 2013.
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