Interview: Roger Waters reflects on ‘Us & Them’ and tearing down … – AZCentral.com

Music legend Roger Waters is launching a 51-city North American tour in 2017. Called 'Us & Them,' the tour lands in Phoenix on June 14. Wochit

Roger Waters performs.(Photo: Kate Izor)

It's been 45 years since Roger Waters wrote the lyrics to "Us and Them." His latest tour shares itsname with thathaunting meditation on the senselessness of war, andit also shares amessage that there is no us and them, no matter what the politicians tell you.

Waters checked in from a San Francisco hotel room and spoke for nearly 50 minutes, precious few of which he spent promoting his upcoming concert in Glendale or the album he'd released just six days earlier.

He's more about using the platform his art has afforded him to weigh in on the issues of the day,from Donald Trump to those who think musicians shouldn't be allowed to share their views on things like presidents and peace.

At one point, Waters seemed to feel he'd gone a bit too far off-topic while sharing his thoughts on the state of the world and America's place in that equation

"Anyway," he said, "were getting into deep, uncharted water."

Then, he reconsidered.

"Im sorry," he said. "Hang on. This is the water that we should be sailing through. This is the important stuff. This is what defines what kind of lives our children are going to lead."

This cover image provided by Columbia Records shows, "Is This The Life We Really Want," a new release by Roger Waters. (Columbia Records via AP)(Photo: AP)

And with that, we returned to discussing the themes andissues that have driven Waters' most compelling music from the early days of Pink Floyd through his latest concept album, whose title asks "Is This the Life We Really Want?"

It's a question Rogers answers midway through the album with a sneer.

"It surely must be so," he sings, "for this is a democracy and what we all say goes."

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There are no punches pulled here, no messages lost in translation, no reason to wonder who Waters could possibly mean when he snipes, "And every time a nincompoop becomes the president."

Waters eases us into the darkness, setting the tone withan openingtrack called "Deja Vu" that purposefully echoes Pink Floyd's "Mother" while playfully noting,"If I had been God / I would have rearranged the veins in the face to make them more resistant to alcohol and less prone to aging."

There are other darkly comic accents to be found. But the prevailing mood is far more serious than that, producer Nigel Godrich underscoring Waters' gravitas as he weighs in on drone strikes, bankers grown fat on the meat of the poor, the refugee crisis, terrorism and the heavy toll humanity has taken on this planet we all share.

Question: I saw your set at Desert Trip and I was truly blown away by the production. Was that any indication of what people can expect on the Us & Them Tour?

A: Yeah, it is, though clearly were indoors now, so its modified. Were still using the power station chimney gag, but indoors, we build it in the middle of the arena, over the heads of the crowd, so its kind of weirdly spectacular, I have to say (laughs).

So far, theres been a lot of wow going on where weve done it. But really, the wow is in its emotional factor. Its very committed emotionally, the show.

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Q: And what is that emotion?

A: Well, the show is titled Us & Them, and its based on my contention that the divisiveness that we see in the contemporary political arrangements on this small planet are counter-productive to the sum of happiness that is available to human beings. Thats why I call the show Us & Them, because I believe there is no them. Theres only "us."

We need to figure out a way to organize ourselves more efficiently and make life better for our kids and even save life for our kids and their kids on this planet because at the moment were hellbent on destruction, driven as we are by commercial interests and this insatiable appetite that some of us have for profits and war.

Roger Waters at Desert Trip in 2016.(Photo: Kate Izor)

Its very political, the show. Its very rooted in the idea that we have a responsibility as human beings to care for one another and to give each other refuge in times of trouble.

So rather than railing against refugees and foreigners and telling each other how dangerous they are and how we must build walls to keep them out and spend even more money on armaments so we can fight imperial wars thousands of miles from home, we might, in my view, want to concentrate more of our resources on trying to figure out how to protect the "Crystal Clear Brooks" for future generations.

I know its a bit of a political speech but its how I feel and how a lot of people in this country feel. And a lot of people all over the world. These are the people who demonstrated on February the 14th, 2003, against the policy to invade Iraq. Twenty million people took to the streets.

And we have learned that they were right, and [Dick]Cheney and [Donald]Rumsfeld, [Paul]Wolfowitz, [George W. ] Bush and [Tony] Blair and all the other a--holes were wrong. In a big way. And their policies have proved to be dangerous beyond all reckoning. They are responsible for the situation that we find ourselves in now.

And pursuing the same ludicrous policy that is espoused in this thing they call the War on Terror is only going to exacerbate the problem. This is so plainly obvious.

But because a lot of people are hurting economically and being shafted by the very wealthy, its been possible here in the United States of America to organize them and persuade them that to elect a nincompoop like Donald Trump is actually in their best interest. When clearly it isnt.

We live in very volatile times. And it is super necessary that all of us resist this move toward the militarization and establishment of a more and more authoritarian regime, not just in the United States but in Europe and elsewhere.

Weve done seven shows so far and at all of them, not just in Denver or San Jose, but Kansas City (Mo.), Louisville (Ky.) and Tulsa (Okla.), which you would think were predominantly red markets, weve found a solid core of people who are ready to resist this movement towards living in a state of perpetual war.

They dont want it. So that has been very encouraging. And thats what this show is about.

Roger Waters performs "In the Flesh" at Cricket Pavilion in Phoenix October 3, 2006.(Photo: Michael Chow/The Republic)

Q: Do you find that that divisiveness, the dividing of people into warring teams of us and them, has been a through line in your work?

A: The fact that I dont believe in it, yeah. The title of the tour is from a song I wrote in 1972. And sadly, what I was writing about then, the problems are still with us. Which is not surprising. Its a nanosecond in cosmic timelines. A tiny amount of time has passed and evolution is a fascinating process but it does take a while.

And it takes us all time to figure out how to throw off the shackles of wage slavery that weve been living under since we came out of the caves and developed agrarian societies. But theres lots of great philosophy to read and the evidence that the ways societies organize themselves dont always work is all in front of us.

Like I say in one of the songs on the new album, It dont matter much wherever youre born / Little babies mean us no harm. Its my view that when were conceived, were largely innocent and we have to be taught extreme beliefs.

It doesnt matter if youre born somewhere in the extreme religious Bible Belt in the United States or some extreme Muslim environment. You can be taught to be an extremist by your parents or by the circumstances of your life. And its very dangerous.

But its very important that we dont think that there are not fanatical religious extremists here in the United States. There are. They call themselves Christians. But none of what they do has anything really to do with the teachings of Jesus Christ. It has to do with exceptionalism, the belief that they are somehow special.

Its the same with people who have extreme attachments to what they believe are the teachings of the prophet Muhammad. They are not the teachings of the prophet Muhammad. But things get twisted.

Hence the rapture in the Bible Belt in America that some Born Agains believe in. People will say, "hes talking out of his a--, he doesnt know what hes talking about," and theyre probably right(laughs). This is not an area of expertise.

Musician Roger Waters performs during Desert Trip at the Empire Polo Field on October 16, 2016 in Indio, California.(Photo: Kevin Winter, Getty Images)

But I have read enoughto know that they believe in the second coming and they believe that on that day they will all go to heaven and all the Jews will be killed and everyone else will die.

I read somewhere, and it may be a joke, that there are websites where people arrange to have their pets looked after for the six months after they go to heaven to be with Jesus and before the whole world disappears in a conflagration.

I can lie here laughing and giggling but its not really funny (laughs). Its f--king dangerous. Its insane to believe that there is such a thing as a God that has chosen you, these very few people that are important, and no one else matters. Its ridiculous. But anybody who is an exceptionalist doesnt believe its ridiculous.

They believe that theyre exceptional, whether its because theyve been chosen by God or because of their white skin or because theyre Nordic or German. It doesnt matter who you are. If you believe youre more important than everyone else, youre dangerous. Were all from North Africa. All of us.

Weve only been here for a very short period of time. Somewhere between 70 and 80,000 years is how long human beings have existed. And weve spread out over the planet.

Were all different shapes and sizes and colors because of the vagaries of weather in different parts of the world, because of Darwinism,because we inherit the physical attributes of our mother and father. Thats why we look slightly different. But were not.

Were all from the same tree and we owe an allegiance to one another. So we need to stand up and say No to the John McCains of this world,the Hillary Clintons and the Donald Trumps, to say No, you will not persuade us that the Russian people are our enemy.

And the reason they say that is to concentrate power and wealth in their hands. Particularly in the United States of America. The United States has such an opportunity to be a leader in the world and that opportunity has been frittered away.

It disgusts me, because this country has such potential to help us on our path toward embracing the good in ourselves and in others and to save the planet, which is being destroyed by industry and greed and idiots like the Donald saying global warming doesnt exist.

How is it possible that somebody who believes that could be elected president of the most powerful country on Earth? Its beyond belief.

But Ill tell you, Im still doing Another Brick in the Wall (Part II) and I still recruit children everywhere we go to sing the chorus. They appear in the show in orange prison jumpsuits,they rip them off and underneath, theyre wearing T-shirts with the word Resist written across the front.

Roger Waters at Desert Trip in 2016.(Photo: Kate Izor)

Last night in San Jose, the little kid standing next to me, he was about four feet tall, he grabbed hold of the word resist and was holding it out and shaking it at the crowd. I looked at him and I thought, "This is what we need, whole generations to resist what Eisenhower warned us about, the rise of the military industrial complex.

Eisenhower was so right. It has happened. And now Congress is going to endorse increasing military spending by the United States. Increasing! You already spend more in this country on killing brown people in foreign countries than the next eight most powerful military powers in the world put together, including China, Russia and the U.K.

What is wrong with that picture? Really? You want to be the Roman Empire and have legionnaires in every country in the world? Is that who Americans want to be? I dont think so.

You in this country have been fed a diet of American exceptionalism. Trump was a boil waiting to burst on the surface, but its deeply rooted, the whole U.S.A! U.S.A! bulls--t that has made you so unpopular all over the world. (laughs). Its soooo unattractive.

Q: At Desert Trip, you said you feel your art has given you a platform that you would not have otherwise have had and you intend to use it. Have you always felt that way or is that a philosophy you developed as your platform grew?

A: When I was 15 years old, I was the chairman of the Youth Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in Cambridge. I would always have been somebody who would have had opinions political, moral, philosophical, maybe even musical. And I would always have expressed them.

But because of pop groups Ive been in and because Ive been successful writing songs and playing a banjo, my voice is more easily heard than if Id become an architect.

There are people who say Why doesnt he just play his music and shut up? I love Pink Floyd but I hate Rogers politics. Well screw you. I dont care what you think about my politics. And the idea that I shouldnt speak because Im a musician is absurd.

Its just as absurd as the idea that I shouldnt criticize Donald Trump or George Bush because Im not an American citizen. What, youre not allowed to criticize Adolf Hitler unless youre German? Its ridiculous. Everybody should be allowed to speak. Thats what the first amendment of your constitution is about.

Q: I was surprised at the number of people expressing outrage over the more overtly anti-Trump components of your Desert Trip performance. Have they listened to your records?

A: Everybody with an ounce of intelligence has to speak out. Donald Trump is the perfect example of exceptionalism gone crazy, laboring under the misconception that hes great. He believes himself to be sort of a pinnacle of human development.

Maybe he is. Maybe this is the peak to which humans can aspire, to be that shallow, vulgar, stupid, ignorant, racist, sexist pig. If that is what were aspiring to be, then somethinghas gone terribly wrong with the values that human beings might have developed over the last 78,000 years.

What about thoughtful, educated, loving, kind, compassionate, philosophical? What about some of those attributes? Not acquisitive, aggressive, money-grabbing and dumb beyond all imagination. This is what we admire? No. Hes an ignorant pig. A dreadful, dreadful person.

And its a huge tragedy for the United States that he managed to persuade an ill-educated electorate that he was going to do something for them. Hes only been president since January but already he has absolutely shown by everything that he has done that he doesnt give a s--t about them and he never did.

He has no interest in improving the lot of the American middle class. He is interested in feathering his own nest. Thats all he was ever interested in and its obvious. What, hes reducing corporate tax to 15 percent? Hes taking healthcare away from millions and millions of people. He doesnt care about any of those working people.

And it will be interesting to see what happens when the majority of them finally get it and go Whoa, weve been hoodwinked. And he did it all by getting us to turn on our fellow man, by telling us that the people responsible for our plight where our standard of living has been dropping while his has been soaring are theChinese and the Mexicans, the Muslims, the them.

Q: How do you think he was able to get those people to believe in him?

A: The middle class in the United States has been reduced to dire straits. There is no safety net, mainly because the regulations on Wall Street and big business have all been removed, mainly by Bill Clinton in the first instance.

So theyre absolutely at the mercy of the very rich. And the very rich have managed to get away with fleecing everybody. Since the Second World War, really.

The easiest way to get a population to follow you is by identifying somebody else as being the cause of all their problems. And thats what he did. First, it was the Mexicans and saying theyre all rapists. Then its the Muslims. The War on Terror has been a huge factor in all of this.

The war in Iraq was obviously a huge disaster and by far the most important fillip to the spread of extremism in the Middle East. Theres nothing like dropping bombs on people to turn them into radicals. First, go invade Iraq, kill everybody. Then start bombing them using American armaments all over the Middle East. You will create radicals.

One thing you will not do is reduce the numbers of people who want to retaliate against the United States of America. You cannot wipe them out. Youd have to kill every man, woman and child to stop the spread of the resentment. People who have studied this stuff understand that.

We armed Osama Bin Laden. We armed and created the Mujahideen in Afghanistan to fight against the left-wing government. The United States created an armed resistance to a legal government. And that created the environment for all of this. Its very hard to put that genie back in the bottle.

The interference in domestic policy of other countries has come back to biteus. Its standard practice for imperial powers to interfere in the affairs of other countries. You always try and help the rich guy to suppress the people who want what you espouse here, which is a democratic state where the needs of the many are taken care of.

Now the John McCains and the Hillary Clintons and Donald Trumps, they want to exacerbate that situation by more military in more places, more belligerence, more sword-waving, more accusing Russia of being the great enemy, more war, more walls, more no-fly zones, more exercise of power, more aircraft carriers, more troops.

Q: This new album shares a title with a poem you wrote in 2008, reflecting on the hope you saw in Obama. Did you think wed turned a corner when he won?

A: Yeah, like the rest of us. Or maybe not the rest of us. But most of us hoped that this would be a new awakening. And in some ways it was.

Youd elected somebody who was apparently humane, who wasnt one of the elite, who was black, which was fresh and unique, who was eloquent and thoughtful and who, I have to say, throughout his presidency behaved in a presidential manner.

But he also, in my view, was too careful. Im not gonna knock Obama because he did a lot of good. Obamacare, for instance, which he did manage to get through Congress, was a huge advance. But unfortunately, he believed in the militaristic foreign-policy bulls--t. He was a big supporter of drone attacks and targeted assassinations.

So he made a huge mistake, in my view, in believing that he could use drones to subjugate whole populations.

What hes done is hes created a land where the buzz of a drone in the sky has become central to the lives of millions of people who feel threatened, not just that theyre under surveillance but that at any minute they could be blown to bits.

If you read any of the literature coming out of environments like that, it is full of what that does to the children. They are traumatized every moment of their lives. They live in absolute fear.

There are 70,000 (Afghans) with no legs, walking around on prosthetic limbs whove been blown to bits by you. For what? So Lockheed can make more money to distribute to its shareholders? It certainly isnt to bring peace to anybody. And it certainly isnt to make Americans safer.

Being in Afghanistan at war for 15 or itll be 20, then 25, then 30 years, you think thats making you safer? Its demonstrable that it is not. There need to be sane voices in this story.

Noam Chomsky is a perfect example of a very, very wise man who is largely sidelined and dismissed as a crank because he is sane and wise and humane. And we should be listening to him, but we dont. Why?

Q: What do you think it is that keeps humanity embroiled in this tribal mentality, where its not only us AND them, its us at constant war with them?

Its convenient to the very wealthy and powerful people who make the decisions. It doesnt matter whether youre the king of Saudi Arabia or the people behind this presidency. You have discovered that the economic power that you have can be translated into military power and also the power to influence your people.

You control people by keeping them poor and attached to outdated religions and so on and so forth. Its all an exercise in control because you want power and money. So the world is being controlled by the greedy, inhumane impulses of a very few, very, very rich men and women.

Q: You end this album on a hopeful note. How do you stay hopeful?

A: I believe in the transcendental power of love. How John Lennon and 60s hippie bulls--t can you get? Well, he was right. Lennon was right. And Im right. There is a huge power in love. We all feel it.

If, for instance, you come to my show and while Im singing The Last Refugee, you feel a lump in your throat, or you turn and you look at your wife and shes got tears rolling down her cheeks,you are experiencing your ability to love.

And your ability to love eventually may trump, to use the stupid pun, your attachment to the idea of your own exceptionalism.

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