Poster for Roger Waters 'Us + Them' tour. Image: Roger Waters / Facebook
Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters will be a headline artist for the BST Festival in Hyde Park, London next year on July 6, 2018. The gig will be the first time that Waters has brought his ongoing Us + Them tour to the UK. And it will also be his first performance in the UK since the release of his sixth studio album Is This The Life We Really Want?
It’s an album Rolling Stone called “precisely what a Trump-era Roger Waters LP should be” noting that Waters’ “emeritus off-the-leash ranting, [is] a fitting response to the stench and stupidity of our present moment.”
Contact sheet of Roger Waters eating a fairy cake in Abbey Road Studios, 1975, during the making of 'Wish You Were Here'. Photographer © Jill Furmanovsky
The Hyde Park concert will see the Pink Floyd icon play songs from his new album along with tracks from classic Pink Floyd albums like Wish You Were Here, The Wall, Animals, and Dark Side of The Moon. Tickets are on sale now and range from £89.90 to £249.90 for a ‘Diamond View’ ticket.
Much like Pink Floyd’s concerts Waters is known for putting on a spectacular live show. Last year Waters played at the Desert Trip festival in California and his performance utilised the biggest quadraphonic sound system ever created. Along with this Waters' Us + Them tour also features visual nods and homages to Pink Floyd too.
A homage to the Pink Floyd album cover 'Animals' for the BBC series 'Britain In Pictures'. © Jill Furmanovsky
For instance, he recreates the rising towers of Battersea Power station in reference to the classic Animals album cover. In a further nod to this he has inflatable pigs floating over the audience and a spitfire crashes into the stage, which harks back to Pink Floyd’s 1980s The Wall tour.
The Hyde Park tour also mentions special guests who will be joining Waters on stage. An example of the caliber of this was present in the Chicago leg of the tour, where Waters brought out Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder on stage to sing “Comfortably Numb”.
Roger Waters pictured at one of the first Pink Floyd photo shoots. © Andrew Whittuck
The Us + Them tour is named after the Pink Floyd song from Dark Side of the Moon. And, although the show like the latest album is politically charged, it’s also about being hopeful according to Waters.
“There is a huge trolling thing goes on the Facebook page saying, ‘Why can’t you just play the music and leave the politics?’” Waters told the Herald Sun in a recent interview. “Have you not noticed that I have ALWAYS been political in my career? I actually said last night at the end of the show that politics is important. Politics is the way people organise themselves together to try to affect the way governments affect our lives. That’s what politics is and it’s certainly more important than a few old tunes that you think you remember. This is the fundamental stuff of trying to prevent us as a species from hurling ourselves to our deaths.” Continuing, “There is only one of us — we are human beings and we have an absolute responsibility to look after one another. And we don’t. Sadly.”
Along with the Hyde Park date Waters also announced a UK tour in summer 2018, which the BST festival will kick off. You can buy tickets for the BST festival here.
Check out the single “Wait For Her” off Is This The Life We Really Want?, below.
Rockarchive is delighted to be able to offer these iconic images, along with many other photos of Roger Waters and Pink Floyd as limited edition photographic prints which you can buy here.
