Rarely lacking in big ideas
Roger Waters was in Nashville last year attending the U.S. premiere of his opera about the French Revolution, “Ca Ira,” when he bumped into Goldenvoice chief Paul Tollett in an elevator.
Tollett, who had booked Waters as a headliner years earlier at the annual Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, talked with the Pink Floyd cofounder about a return engagement at Coachella.
“I said, ‘Sure — when?’ ” recalled the soft-spoken British rocker. “He came back to me a little while later and said he had his idea for another show, in October, and asked if I’d be interested.”
Waters, looking fit at 73 in a black T-shirt and closecropped beginnings of a beard, was telling this story backstage Friday, on the opening night of that other show — the Desert Trip festival, which Waters will conclude on Sunday evening.
“What appealed to me was that for the first time I felt I was being recognized for my share in the [legacy] of Pink Floyd,” said the group’s lyricist and cocomposer of many of its signature songs. “That was flattering, and I said yes, I’d be interested.”
For the occasion, Waters designed a show exclusive to his Desert Trip performances, having completed his last major tour in 2013 with his production of “The Wall Live.”
“I wasn’t doing anything else except working on a new album,” he said in a trailer set up behind the Desert Trip stage. The album project, he added, remains untitled, but he has vowed to finish it before the end of this year and release it possibly next spring.
Rogers’ Desert Trip performance is fully in keeping with — or even exceeds — his previous grand-scale rock extravaganzas, and uses “the biggest quadrophonic sound system I’ve ever built.”
“There’s one theatrical moment in the middle,” he said, “that I’m really fond of.”
Asked about his penchant for large-scale rock operas and concert productions, and whether he thinks that mindset is going by the wayside in pop music, he said with a wry smile, “Well first you have to have big ideas.”