WRITING ON THE WALL
The making of rock opera classic
On the eve of the world première of Another Brick in the Wall — The Opera, Roger Waters had one rather pressing question that had absolutely nothing to do with the Opéra de Montréal production inspired by The Wall.
“Do you think I’ll be able to get Fox Sports 2 here?” asked the former singer, bassist and songwriter from Pink Floyd, the man who was the driving creative force behind the British band’s famous 1979 rock opera The Wall.
Turns out that Waters is a big fan of the North London soccer team Arsenal, who face off against Lincoln City in an FA Cup game on Saturday. So now we know how he’s spending his afternoon in Montreal.
His evening plans, we already knew. He’ll be at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier at Place des Arts for the official unveiling of the opera adaptation of The Wall, with music composed by Québécois composer Julien Bilodeau, direction from Dominic Champagne and with Alain Trudel conducting the Orchestre Métropolitain.
Quebec baritone Étienne Dupuis plays the lead role of Pink, the troubled rock star at the heart of this story that was inspired by an unpleasant night for Waters and his Pink Floyd band-mates at the Olympic Stadium in the summer of 1977.
Waters became frustrated with drunk and stoned fans who he felt weren’t paying enough attention that night and ended up spitting in the face of one fan who clambered up on stage. He felt terrible afterwards and began thinking of the walls that rock stars build between themselves and their audiences.
Waters is very excited to finally be getting the chance to see his story turned into an opera.
“I can’t wait to come and sit there, and the lights come down, and then my only responsibility is to be moved,” Waters said during an interview Friday afternoon in the Opéra de Montréal offices inside Place des Arts.
Waters said he was hardly involved in the creation of the opera. Bilodeau came to him with an operatic treatment of a couple of the songs from The Wall and once Waters was sold on Bilodeau, the rocker left them to their own devices.
“After meeting with him and listening to (his take on) Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2 and Comfortably Numb ... I said, ‘You know what, this guy is actually good at this,’ ” said Waters.
He also received passionate letters from Pierre Dufour, who was general director of the Opéra de Montréal at the time, and Champagne.
“They explained how seriously they took the potential to extrapolate the philosophies and emotions that lie behind the original work and how important they thought they were,” said Waters. “Of course, that’s very flattering, and I’m susceptible to flattery, like anyone else.”
The libretto (the lyrics) are Waters’, but the music is an original creation of Bilodeau’s, “though I can hear the original work (in it) which is again very flattering. But the music belongs to Julien. I’ve only heard the first half as a whole piece and I thought it was really impressive.”
Waters has another concept album, Is This the Life We Really Want?, coming out May 19.
The title track is “based on a very long rant/poem that I wrote in 2008, after the invasion of Iraq, and saying that this life based on the idea that we’re perpetually at war and that we as a society have a responsibility to go and kill brown people in foreign countries is not a life that we really want. It’s very political ... love is what we have to attach to in order to transcend everything I wrote about in The Wall.”
Waters will be playing songs from this album, along with loads of Pink Floyd classics, on the upcoming Us + Them tour, that touches down at the Bell Centre Oct. 16-17.
Waters has been exploring those social/political themes since the days of The Wall and he thinks what the rock opera is about couldn’t be more relevant today, thanks to U.S. President Donald Trump and his policies, including the plan to build a huge wall between the U.S. and Mexico.
“You’ve got nincompoops like Trump suggesting that building walls is the way to go,” said Waters. “He’s suggesting it’s the way of the future, but it isn’t. It’s the way of the past. It’s very backwardlooking ... it’s ridiculous. We need the transcendental power of love to convince us that walls are a bad idea.”
And his transcendental love of Arsenal?
“I lived near Highbury Stadium (Arsenal’s home pitch) in my formative years from 1967 until 1975, which is only eight years, but they were glory years,” said Waters. “I used to go watch games regularly at Highbury and I fell in love with the atmosphere.”