The Roger Waters concert and what it meant to me & what it meant to be there
Firstly the songs he playedIn the Flesh, Mother, Set the controls for the heart of the sun, Shine on you Crazy Diamond,
Wish you were here, Have a cigar, Southhampton dock, The Fletcher memorial home, Leaving Beirut, Amused to death, Dogs (from Animals), Breathe, Time, Money, Us & Them, Brain Damage, Eclipse, Another brick in the wall, Comfortably numb, Vera Lynn, Bring the boys back home
One of life's little ambitions has been realised today. They say that there are many influences that go to shape one's life;I can safely say that one of them is Pink Floyd in mine. I'm sure I am not unique in this . fact is, there were another 10 thousand folks there at the MMRDA ground who obviously felt similarly.
As far as back as I can remember, I was always sure that the real creative genius behind the band was Roger Waters. Back then these things mattered somehow. It was important to know that it was Lennon (& then McCartney in that order) who were responsible for the creative brilliance of the Beatles; Ian Anderson for Tull. Likewise it was Waters who wrote everything on most albums. Thus it gave him a special place in my impressionable mind.
And he's stayed right there ever since. The dark, angst-ridden lyrics about insecurity have kept me engaged all my life.I remember having an LP of the Dark Side handy at home (courtesy my uncle - thank you mama for doing this great service to me!I remembered you at the concert and wished u were (t)here) and playing it often enough since I was in the 5th class. Actually i also have the films division to thank for actually drawing me into Floyd-dom. There was a documentary feature on insanity or some such on doordarshan. And the brain's descent into instability was vividly showcased (though in black & white on our Bigston TV since this was pre-Asiad days) through animated graphics and accompanied by the appropriately weird airplane-crashing sounds of On the Run. Clearly visual aids help in magnifying the power of a song. But in my case it wasn't MTV that did it - it was plain old DD!
Many years later i went on to discover the mysteries behind the wall, the sad and subliminal Wish you were here (oh can there ever ever be a more universal lament for a loved one, a friend, a moment.....i think not), the protest filled the Final Cut, the under-rated early works consisting of Atom Heart Mother and A Saucerful of Secrets and of course the supremely well crafted Animals.
I saw the Wall concert soon after it happened in 1990. Not live but on my VHS player. In those closed-economy days, it wasn't available easily. I got it after getting in the good books of some Floyd-freaks (like me) in the U-special, who obviously were better connected than i was. These guys had relatives or some such benefactors in the UK who would zip the video (VHS mind you) across to New Delhi. I was given it under trust that not a scratch would happen and that too for just a day. Fortunately I had the facility of making a VHS copy (courtesy the temporary luxury of 2 VHS players in the house) and I promptly did. This had the unexpected impact of raising my profile instantly, as I now was in possession of THE video.
Roger Waters was sensational - mantling and then dis-mantling an actual Wall in Potsdamer Platz, with a phalanx of singers coming and going. The flying pig, fireworks, the syringe in Comfortably Numb and the final court room sentencing - I had never seen anything like this. This wasn't just an album with some songs; it was cinema, animation, drama and opera all rolled into one.
Of course I resigned myself to the fact that I would probably never get to see Roger Waters perform. After all, he was getting older and with every passing year getting shorter he would never seem to find the time, and beyond a point wouldn't play live. Maybe a song or too at a live-aidish do. Fat chance of me seeing him. But I hung on in quiet desperation (in an Indian way). Then in 2002 he came to Bangalore. I booked my air-ticket and got ready to rock on some really high priced tickets. But unfortunately I had to host a close friend flying in from the US of A (he worthy of a wish you were here, if you know what i mean) and so I gave it a miss, thinking that Waters was not to be in my life.
But he came again, 5 years later. 63 years old. But rocking as good as I remember in that video. Wonder what this guy eats? He's more sprightly than a lot of people I know; I doubt I could have lasted 3 hours on stage, forget about singing and playing the bass guitar.
As i said earlier, one of life's little ambitions has been achieved today. I saw the pink pig fly; it floated by me and I flew into the sky with it.
1 comment:
You know what, the ‘concert recording’ will be my handset caller tune for many days to come!!
Well yes, Roger Waters was an experience of a lifetime…It’s an experience that has the full potential to turn this quintessential Bong into a braggart of sorts… as it is regaled, reminisced, and passed on to family and friends today and surely down generations.’ I was there, I saw and, I absorbed him, his songs and undying plaintive, anti-war passion as still apparent in ‘Leaving Beirut’, his whisper of a ‘Wish you were Here’, the amplified magnificence of sounds of ‘Money’, ‘aircrafts’ that we take so much for granted, leaving me and every Floyd-manic around me Comfortably Numb.
Flyod for me is innumerable memories, of many evenings spent with friends, of several jamming sessions on the grass on a ‘Delhi’ winter afternoon, of several college fests and the ‘grass’ that kept us green, of treks & trails that was the flavour of almost a decade after my teens – like the Floyd ‘assorted cassette’ essentially carried along in the backpack, playing on the ‘khatara’ stereo of the Sumo ferrying us to the Rishikesh valley for our rafting expedition. Mind you, only Tia and me could fit into the front seat with the old driver and the onerous charge of playing RJ ‘talk incessantly’ and VJ to keep him awake and us alive as he drives through the night, narrow serpentine passage up to the valley. I didn’t mind having to keep awake at all (the jing-bang bobbing 'n asleep in the back-seat of the Sumo), what with the surrounding darkness being broken only by the dying headlights of the cab and Floyd whispering into our ears. Several such treks, beer guzzling evening(s) at a friend’s, sitting around at Mezz with some friends or Gautam, listening and hopelessly falling in love with Waters, with the band again and again and again.
I am lucky, hugely lucky for having been there. An 18th of February replete with wonderment, love, heart-beats, moments of disbelief ‘Am I really listening to him!’ ,’Am I really here!’… and surely thanking God for being there with ‘N’ - my love and ‘wish(ing) you were here’ for some others who weren’t with me!
“Shine on you…Roger’ and may we see you again, in this lifetime. And may this time it be all four of you and ‘Pink Floyd’.
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