With the end of his 2012 Wall Tour looming at the time, Roger Waters spoke to the US magazine Billboard, and the interview, along with a very striking cover image drawn by Gerald Scarfe, is now published in this week's issue, hitting stores in the US tomorrow.
Excerpts from the interview can be seen here, and finds Roger talking expansively about The Wall. "In the intervening 33 years [since I wrote the piece], I've realized that because of the theatrical construction of the "wall" -- which was an idea that I had back in '77 because of my disaffection with big audiences and stadiums and all that -- the power of the metaphor lends the story a much more universal vision and appeal. So I've come to realize it's not about me -- it's about anybody that has suffered the loss of a loved one in some kind of conflict, whether it be war or something else. It's about the problems we all face with errant authority, or all the difficulties we all have in relationships with one another, whether they're sexual relationships or political/international relationships.
"That excited me about revisiting the piece, and in this most recent incarnation of it making a version that would work in stadiums and ballparks and football stadiums, which is ironic, because my starting point was my disaffection with that situation. But I've come to realize that not only does it work in big spaces, its appeal is such that people in big spaces feel intimately connected with the message."
"The irony is not lost on me. But I feel I've transcended the problems of the wall between me and the audience, so the piece is rock'n'roll theater at the highest level, and it expresses the existence of all the other walls that I've talked about: the walls of media, the walls of government, the walls of religion, the walls of all kinds of extremism, and all those walls that exist between human beings. It very powerfully tells the message."
The magazine with the full interview should be on US newsstands and stores from tomorrow, and in the UK and Europe can be bought from selected outlets as an import in due course, or ordered direct from Newsstand.co.uk who sell individual copies of magazines.
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