Roger Waters Amping Up Politics, Projections for 'Wall' Tour

Roger Waters visited Late Night With Jimmy Fallon yesterday and delivered good news for fans of his classic The Wall stage show: "We have the pig. We have the teacher. We have all that stuff." But as promised, he'll be bringing even more of a spectacle when he hits the road this spring to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Pink Floyd's classic double album. "We have a bunch of new projections we've been working on for the last few months. The piece has changed a bit since 30 years ago," he explained. "I've broadened it. I've made it more political. Hopefully it will have more universal message. Back then it was only about this miserable, angry middle-aged man. Now I've tried to make it more about the walls that divide people in a general way."

During the brief interview, Fallon encouraged Waters to open up about his days in Pink Floyd and his relationship with Syd Barrett. The rocker became visibly emotional when discussing Barrett's breakdown, recounting the story dating back to the Wish You Were Here sessions when Barrett appeared at the studio and no one in the band recognized him. "I had no idea who this person was, and this was my closest childhood friend," Waters said. "He put on about a hundred pounds in weight." Waters added, "He had trouble keeping a grip on the reality of the situations — and on top of that he did take too many hallucinogenics. It was very sad. And he sort of drifted from the reality of the rest of our lives."

Waters' Wall tour kicks off on September 15th in Toronto and wraps December 13th in Anaheim, California. The 36-date, three-month production will hit up nearly every major American market, including Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. As Rolling Stone reported yesterday, Waters has said former bandmate David Gilmour is "uninterested" in participating in the Wall trek.

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Song Stories

“I'm Yours”

Jason Mraz | 2008

Jason Mraz re-emerged after his disappointing second album with this lead single, a Jack Johnson-esque ditty about giving yourself fully to someone else. The success of the reggae-tinged song (it earned two Grammy nods and a spot on the Billboard singles chart for well over a year) was something the folk-pop singer never predicted when he wrote it in 15 minutes at home. "I played a happy-hippie chord progression that would probably work without 50 different Bob Marley songs," he told Rolling Stone. "I thought, 'It's too novelty. This is a nursery rhyme,'" concluding that "you can never guess what's gonna be a hit."

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