by Mark Blake
Ticket prices alone wouldn’t cover the estimated $8 million needed to stage the show, and Hollingsworth was called in to produce the event for a global TV audience. As well as a planned live album and video, the idea was also sold to TV, with the show eventually broadcast live by satellite to thirty-five countries. Waters also put up his own $500,000 publishing advance. He planned to perform The Wall with a supporting cast of special musical guests in place of Pink Floyd. It was also agreed that all participants would donate their royalties from the live album and video to the fund. Despite rumours beforehand, Pink Floyd were not invited, though, according to Nick Mason, Waters made a point of sending invites to all of their ex-wives.
The Floyd’s former set designers, Jonathan Park and Mark Fisher, were brought back to help stage the show. The wall itself was now 82ft high, 591ft long and constructed out of 2,500 fire-retardant bricks. Three cranes were positioned behind it to help with the dismantling during the show. One of the cranes also supported a giant-sized version of Gerald Scarfe’s schoolteacher puppet. Scarfe, meanwhile, pitched in with a new design: a giant inflatable pig’s head with spotlights for eyes.
Even by Pink Floyd standards, this was a grandiose project. In addition, before work could begin on Potsdamer Platz, which was essentially ‘no man’s land’ on the East Berlin side of the wall, the authorities had to scan the area for unexploded mines and bombs lying dormant since the Second World War. During their examination, they discovered a mound of earth that had once housed the main entrance to one of Hitler’s bunkers. ‘It’s an extraordinary, historic piece of land,’ raved Waters.
However, with just eight weeks to go and with countless TV deals in place, the only act definitely confirmed to appear were German heavy rock band the Scorpions. Waters called an emergency meeting and agreed to accompany Tony Hollingsworth on a talent-scouting trip to Los Angeles.
Ex-Bleeding Heart Band member Paul Carrack was now playing in Genesis’ bass guitarist Mike Rutherford’s side project, Mike and The Mechanics, when he took the call. ‘Roger gave me this twenty-minute spiel about how it was going to be the biggest concert of all time, and so on,’ recalls Carrack. ‘Finally, he came to the point and asked me: did I have Huey Lewis’s phone number. I did and I gave it to him, then asked, “What about me, Roger?” and he just said, “You’re not famous enough!” There was no attempt to spare my feelings,’ laughs Carrack. ‘In fact, Roger probably took great delight in telling me that. I thought it was perfectly reasonable, though. Nobody did know who the bloody hell I was.’
Progress was slow, though, as various musicians, including Neil Young and Eric Clapton, were unable to commit, and others agreed in principle but failed to respond later. Nevertheless, with Hollingsworth’s diligence, Waters’ unswerving self-belief and Cheshire’s saint-like reputation, they were able to commandeer the use of two US military helicopters to recreate the intro for ‘Another Brick in the Wall Part 2’, a hundred-strong Soviet Army marching band and the Rundfunk East Berlin Radio Orchestra and choir. Six weeks before the show, when builders working on the site threatened to down tools unless they were paid the $200,000 they were owed, in cash, within an hour, Cheshire was able to sweet-talk a London bank into helping them out.
However, the retired group captain felt compelled to intervene when Waters proposed ‘buzzing’ the audience with two Second World War bombers. ‘He felt bad about it, knowing he’d once been up there, dropping bombs on the poor bastards,’ Waters told Q magazine. ‘He said, “You can’t do that!”’ Waters reluctantly backed down.
On the night, the cast of supporting extras included, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson and Rick Danko from The Band, Van Morrison, Bryan Adams, Cyndi Lauper, Sinead O’Connor and Joni Mitchell. Actors Tim Curry and Albert Finney played the prosecuting lawyer and judge for ‘The Trial’ (though Sean Connery had been one of the first choices for the Finney role until Waters vetoed it), Marianne Faithfull (playing Pink’s mother), Jerry Hall (as the groupie in ‘One of My Turns’), German torch singer Ute Lemper (as Pink’s wife) and Thomas Dolby, as the schoolteacher. And, lurking behind the wall, Paul Carrack.
‘A week before the gig, Roger rang me up again,’ says Paul. ‘They were already over there rehearsing, and I think they were having one or two problems with the special guests. Roger said, “I want you to listen to these six songs and learn them, just in case.” And then, two days before it all kicked off, I got the call to go over.’
Leonard Cheshire officially opened the 21 July show with the blowing of a First World War whistle. From here on, it was straight into ‘In the Flesh’, Waters’ spoof heavy metal song performed by the Scorpions. Midway through ‘The Thin Ice’, disaster struck when the sound blew out, leaving Waters alone and unheard on stage. Showing a welcome and all-too-rare glimpse of humour, he broke into a tap dance before the sound resumed and they jumped straight to ‘Another Brick in the Wall Part 2’, with an irritating guest vocal from eighties pop star Cyndi Lauper, and some extended soloing from Bleeding Heart Band guitarists Andy Fairweather-Low, Snowy White and Rick di Fonzo. Sadly, the presence of so many satellite TV links to the site meant that sound problems and power failures persisted. Meanwhile, Sinead O’Connor emoted wildly on ‘Mother’, Joni Mitchell tried hard on ‘Goodbye Blue Sky’, Jerry Hall fouled up the ‘Wow, what a fabulous room …’ routine as the air-headed groupie on ‘One of My Turns’, and Van Morrison growled his way through an edgy version of ‘Comfortably Numb’, with support from various members of The Band; the Dylan-approved folk-country rockers that had wowed all of Pink Floyd back in the early seventies.
Huey Lewis was nowhere to be seen. Meanwhile, faithful understudy Paul Carrack sang ‘Hey You’ from behind the wall itself. ‘Had I known I’d have offered to wear a paper bag over my head,’ he jokes. ‘It was very scary, it really was the biggest gig of all time. If the cameras could have seen me, they’d have caught my knees knocking.’
Staying faithful to the original stage show, much of the original drama was maintained, despite the ever-changing cast of special guests. Using the wall again as a giant screen on which to project images, Waters updated the original films. During ‘Bring the Boys Back Home’ the wall showed a roll call of all those soldiers that had died during the war. However, more than one eyewitness pointed out the uncomfortable parallels between the scenes later in the show, when rock star Pink imagines himself as a fascist dictator, and events in Germany’s still recent past. Seeing Waters, in military uniform and black sunglasses, jackbooting and ranting through ‘Waiting for the Worms’ (‘Would you like to see our coloured cousins home again?’), might have stirred some disturbing memories for those old enough to remember life in Berlin before the wall. ‘Everybody understands that that’s satire,’ claimed Waters.
The audience were nevertheless united for ‘The Trial’ and the closing chant of ‘tear down the wall’, the Berliners imbuing the words with more personal sentiment than the standard Pink Floyd fan. In this context, the choice of the Radio K.A.O.S. ballad ‘The Tide is Turning’ – a song celebrating faith in the human race – as the show’s finale made sense. The official attendance figure for the gig was given as 200,000, with others maintaining that there were twice that number on site, with an estimated billion more watching on TV around the world.
In the aftermath, one rumour began circulating that the whole show had to be re-staged due to those earlier power failures; something Paul Carrack staunchly denies. However some parts had to be repeated for the video cameras. While most of the guests obliged, Sinead O’Connor refused to re-sing her performance of ‘Mother’, resulting in her dress rehearsal performance being used in the final video.
‘Everyone was fabulous to work with,’ said Waters later. ‘Bryan Adams, Van Morrison, Cyndi Lauper, all brilliant. All except Sinead O’Connor.’
The forthright Irish singer-songwriter had also, according to Waters, complained about the lack of ‘young people on the show’, and suggested that Waters should have hired ‘Ice-T or
one of those people to rework one of my songs as a rap number’.
Yet still the lack of the Pink Floyd brand proved a problem. Released in September, neither the commemorative live album nor video did the level of business Waters or Leonard Cheshire might have hoped for. The album scraped into the Top 30 in the UK, but remained outside the American Top 50, generating a fraction of the anticipated amount for the Memorial Fund for Disaster Relief. Asked for their opinions on the staging of The Wall in Berlin, Pink Floyd were guarded, if quietly critical: ‘I was rather entertained by it,’ insisted Nick Mason. ‘If I had a criticism it would have been that I’d have liked a different guitarist.’ Gilmour was sniffier: ‘I suspect that the motivation for putting The Wall show on in Berlin was not charitable.’
In October 1987, Waters had taken The Bleeding Heart Band to Nassau to record songs for a follow-up to Radio K.A.O.S. His plan then had been to revive the character of Billy and to continue the narrative. The working title for this new album was Amused to Death, taken from a book titled Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman, a critique of television’s hold over the Western world. Rumours circulated that Gerald Scarfe had designed an album sleeve, featuring three figures (the current members of Pink Floyd?) floating in a Martini glass. Although Scarfe denies this.
Work resumed on the album after the Radio K.A.O.S. tour, and in fits and starts throughout 1988 and the early part of 1989, until news filtered out that Waters had put the album on hold. Around the same time, rumours circulated that he was also working on an opera based on the history of the French Revolution. It would be a further fourteen years before that came to completion.
Mindful of Radio K.A.O.S.’s poor sales, EMI were, it transpired, in no mood for Radio K.A.O.S. Part 2. Waters’ relationship with the label had also soured during the legal war with Pink Floyd, as he believed that the company would always be more supportive of Pink Floyd to the detriment of his solo career. Following the Berlin Wall show, Waters would withdraw from public view, while dealing with upheaval in his professional and personal life.
In 1990, he appointed a new manager, Mark Fenwick, part of the Fenwick’s department store dynasty, who had previously co-run the EG Records label, home to Robert Fripp and Brian Eno. That same year, Waters left EMI and signed a new worldwide deal with his US label Columbia. A year later he turned up for his first live performance since Berlin, playing ‘Another Brick in the Wall Part 2’ and other Floyd classics at the Guitar Legends concert in Seville. There was further turmoil in his private life. Waters left his second wife Carolyne Christie after sixteen years together. He had, he claimed, met someone else, American actress Pricilla Phillips. Waters would divorce Carolyne in 1992 and marry Pricilla a year later. The two also would go on to have a son, Jack Fletcher, together in 1997.
In August 1992, Amused to Death, the product of several years’ work in ten different recording studios, was released. It arrived five years after Radio K.A.O.S., the longest gap between albums in Waters’ career. The Floyd-in-a-Martini-glass cover had been dumped for a picture of an ape staring at a single eye peering back at him through a TV set. The sleeve mirrored the theme of the album, and the thinking behind Neil Postman’s book. While some of the remaining ideas dated back to 1987, Waters had revised many of the songs following specific world events. The most topical themes were the 1989 massacre in Tiananmen Square and the first Gulf War, both of which had been heavily televised. Waters was in his element.
‘I’ve always been intrigued by this notion of war as an entertainment to mollify the folks back home, and the Gulf War fuelled that idea,’ he explains. ‘Amused to Death deals with the idea of whether TV is good or bad.’ As a positive, Waters recalled a TV documentary about the First World War (‘an example of television taking its responsibilities seriously’), in which veterans from the conflict recounted their experiences. The album’s first track, ‘The Ballad of Bill Hubbard’, featured dialogue from the programme, in which an old soldier, Alf Razzell of the Royal Fusiliers, can be heard detailing his failed attempts to save a comrade’s life.
For much of the album, Waters focused on the negative effects of the medium. ‘I had this rather depressing image of some alien creature seeing the death of this planet and coming down in their spaceships and finding all our skeletons sitting around our TV sets,’ he announced. The televising of the Gulf War on CNN had demonstrated the power of the global communications network, and Waters was not impressed. Also in his sights was US President George Bush Snr (‘I get gobsmacked when I hear him saying that God was on their side during the Gulf War’), whose predecessor Ronald Reagan had been given a thorough drubbing on Radio K.A.O.S.
Amused to Death was certainly a better album than its predecessor. While Waters had written it alone, he’d roped in a stellar cast of session men and special guests, alongside The Bleeding Heart Band. The hired hands included drummer Jeff Porcaro and arranger Michael Kamen (both of whom had featured on The Wall), while the guests included The Eagles’ Don Henley, country singer Rita Coolidge and guitar hero Jeff Beck, the man once mooted for the Pink Floyd job before David Gilmour.
Beck’s playing on the album’s signature song ‘What God Wants Part 1’ was a singular highlight, and clearly another concerted effort by Waters to snag a guitarist with a reputation to rival David Gilmour’s. Beck later explained that he and Waters had bonded after he’d been allowed to drive Waters’ vintage Maserati through Richmond Park. Waters had also enlisted a co-producer, Pat Leonard, the songwriter who’d penned hits for Madonna and played keyboards on A Momentary Lapse of Reason. ‘Whatever Pat had done before didn’t interest me,’ claims Waters. ‘He had sat in a Chicago theatre, aged fourteen, watching Pink Floyd play Dark Side of the Moon. He knew all my work and I was impressed.’
One of Waters’ old Bleeding Heart Band members once recalled a conversation in which Waters had declared, ‘I’m just in the process of choosing someone to perform the menial task of producer on my next record.’ Nevertheless, Leonard made his mark on Amused to Death, helping to give it the similarly widescreen sound Bob Ezrin had achieved on A Momentary Lapse … Not that Ezrin went unmentioned on Amused to Death. On one song, ‘Too Much Rope’, Waters crooned the line, ‘Each man has his price, Bob, and yours was pretty low’, which most took to refer to their falling-out over Ezrin’s decision to produce Pink Floyd five years earlier. Waters explains that ‘the original line was, “Each man has his price, my friends”, so make of that what you will.’ (‘Isn’t that childish? Isn’t that just amazing?’ commented Ezrin.)
Ezrin wasn’t the only high-profile figure on Waters’ hit list. While recording the album, he’d approached film-maker Stanley Kubrick for permission to use dialogue from Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey on the album. Kubrick refused, and found himself mentioned in a garbled message recorded backwards at the start of the song ‘Perfect Sense Part 1’. Though perhaps Kubrick was paying back Waters for his refusal to allow him to use Atom Heart Mother for one of his films over twenty years previously.
On completing the album, Waters invited old friend Ron Geesin over to his Kimbridge manor house. ‘I turned up at half-past twelve and by half-one he still wasn’t there,’ says Geesin now. ‘Roger used to do this when I first knew him. You’d arrive at the time he’d suggested and he still wasn’t back from playing squash. I used to call it the C.L.F. – Calculated Lateness Factor. It was his way of trying to keep you on your toes.’
When Waters finally arrived, he played Geesin some sketches from the opera he’d been working on. ‘I made some vague suggestion, like, “Oh, maybe the brass section should do this or that …” and he turned round and said, “I didn’t invite you here to find out what you think …”’
Before leaving, Waters handed Geesin a CD copy of Amused to Death. When he went to play it back at home, Ron discovered that the box was empty. ‘So I made this little piece of art, shaped like a CD, on which I wrote a poem about the disc not being in there, and sent it back to him. After three days I phoned
him up and he said to me, “What’s this thing in here? I don’t understand it.” He knew perfectly well that it was just an affectionate gift and a joke about how the disc had been missing. We’d done things like this for years. He was just being difficult. Next thing, Roger said to me, “What’s this I hear about you reviewing the album?” I told him that I was doing nothing of the sort, and nor would I have the outlet to do so. He said, “Well, that’s what I’ve heard.” So this went back and forth, and in the end I just said, “Roger, that’ll be that then. Now fuck off.”’
The two have not spoken since.
To help sell Amused to Death, Waters submitted to the sort of promotional campaign that would have met with his withering contempt back in the days of Pink Floyd. He made for a fantastic interviewee: passionately explaining his new album, while taking verbal pot shots at world leaders, TV stations, Pink Floyd, everyone … Waters blithely informed one interviewer the only music he was currently listening to was that of vintage soul singer Joe Tex. Elsewhere, he decried Madonna as ‘an awful, ugly, dull person’, and clearly felt no need to prove himself hip: ‘I hope people get fed up with teenagers with baseball hats on back to front and rappers talking over other people’s music.’
That said, he still bit the bullet and submitted a video clip to MTV. ‘I see the irony,’ he told Details magazine. ‘But I had to decide whether to get hard-nosed and say, “I will not make a video”, and substantially reduce the chances of people becoming aware of this record.’ The music channel had been in its infancy when Waters began his solo career. Unfortunately, Roger had once clammed up during an MTV interview about The Pros and Cons of Hitch-hiking (when they asked for his comments about Pink Floyd), and had been sorely under-represented on the channel ever since. Two years later, the relaunched Pink Floyd would enjoy widespread coverage on MTV.
