Roger Waters adds more dates to 'The Wall' tour
Mon, 20 Sep 2010
Roger Waters has added more tour dates to his May-June tour next year after already selling out 3 dates at London's O2 Arena and 2 at Manchester MEN Arena.
The official press release below confirms the new dates:
Due to unprecedented demand for tickets for Roger Waters The Wall Tour, Live Nation & AAA have added even more shows. An extra show has been added at London’s 02 Arena on Wednesday 18th May and two more shows on 28th and 29th June at Manchester’s Evening News Arena, all these shows go on sale at 9am Friday 17th September from www.livenation.co.uk
Roger Waters, founder member of Pink Floyd, is set to bring his groundbreaking masterpiece, The Wall, to Europe in 2011. This is the first time The Wall has been performed in over 20 years and with Roger hinting this could mark his final big tour, it is already one of the hottest tickets of the decade.
Previously the show was simply too large to contemplate a tour, but new arenas and advances in touring technology have solved that dilemma. Now, after 18 months of meticulous planning, Waters has updated the look and feel of the show to ensure it matches the astonishing theatrical extravaganza that The Wall’s live incarnation became so legendary fo
r - thus allowing yet another generation to be inspired by the grandeur of the breathtaking visual and aural spectacle.
The first half of the show sees the band playing and the wall being built and the second half is played behind the wall. Waters has developed dynamic new video graphics and visual images to illustrate the story and the songs, using an 8,000 sq ft wall as a huge screen. The show features all the Roger Waters scale grandeur and special effects such as original Gerald Scarfe imagery and crashing aeroplane, quadraphonic sound, pyrotechnics, spot pods, gigantic inflatable puppets, projection, video mapping and many elaborate effects. Waters’ band on this world tour is: Snowy White (Guitar), Dave Kilminster (Guitar), GE Smith (Guitar & Bass), Jon Carin (Keyboards), Harry Waters (Hammond Organ), Graham Broad (Drums), Robbie Wyckoff (Vocals), Jon Joyce, Pat Lennon, Mark Lennon and Kipp Lennon (Backing Vocals).
“Thirty years ago when I wrote The Wall, I was a frightened young man,” he recalls. “In the intervening years it occurred to me that maybe the story of my fear and loss with its concomitant inevitable residue of ridicule, shame and punishment, provides an allegory for broader concerns: Nationalism, racism, sexism, religion, whatever! All these issues and ‘isms are driven by the same fears that drove my young life.”
Boasting Roger Waters classic songs including Comfortably Numb, Another Brick in the Wall Pt. 2, Mother, Run Like Hell and Young Lust, The Wall resonated with millions of fans around the world to become one of the biggest albums ever recorded. Hugely successful upon its release, The Wall was the best-selling album of 1980 in the United States, where it remains in the top five best-selling albums of all time.
To date, The Wall has been performed by its creator just 32 times live, including Pink Floyd's 1980-81 31 date tour in support of the album. Waters resurrected the phenomenon in July 1990, with one of the largest concerts ever held, to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall. The awe-inspiring event attracted nearly half a million fans to the Potsdamer Platz and countless millions more around the world watched the extravaganza on television, critics hailed Waters’ creation as the best concert ever, setting the standard for every act since to try to achieve. And Waters revealed that to make sure The Wall is as relevant in 2011 as it was 30 years ago, he has revisited every song and embraced the latest technology and special effects to energise his masterpiece.
"Projection systems now are completely different from what they were then, which means that I would be able to project over the entire 240-foot expanse of the wall ... which we couldn't do in those days," says Roger.
More important to W
aters than the theatrics is The Wall’s political and social commentary and he is planning to use the construction of the wall to honour soldiers who have lost their lives in battle. The rogerwaters.com website is running an appeal to relatives of those lost in war to submit photographs which Waters will project on The Wall during the show so that each victim becomes, in effect, another brick.
"When we first did it, we were after the end of the Vietnam War, and we're right now in the middle of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, so there's a very powerful anti-war message in The Wall. There was then and there still is now," he notes.
"This new production of The Wall is an attempt to draw some comparisons, to illuminate our current predicament, and is dedicated to all the innocent lost in the intervening years," he adds.
Having only been performed live in the United States, Germany and the UK previously, the tour will allow fans around the world their first (and possibly their last) chance to see The Wall for themselves. Prior to the European shows, Roger Waters The Wall Tour hits the road this month with 50+ dates in North America. The latest details on Roger Waters The Wall Tour, and more, can be found via the artist's newly re-launched website, www.rogerwaters.com. Waters is personally involved with the site and is using it to communicate with his fans across the globe.
And he has used the forum to confirm that these concerts will likely mark the end of his performing days. "However, I still have the fire in my belly, and I have something to say. "
Roger Waters The Wall Tour Dates 2011
MAY
Wednesday 11 The O2 Arena, London SOLD OUT
Thursday 12 The O2 Arena, London SOLD OUT
Saturday 14 The O2 Arena, London SOLD OUT
Sunday 15 The O2 Arena, London
Tuesday 17 The O2 Arena, London
Weds 18 The O2 Arena, London EXTRA DATE ADDED
Friday 20 Manchester MEN Arena SOLD OUT
Saturday 21 Manchester MEN Arena SOLD OUT
JUNETuesday 28 Manchester MEN Arena EXTRA DATE ADDED
Weds 29 Manchester MEN Arena EXTRA DATE ADDED
Related Products:
Learn to Play Pink Floyd Volume 1, Volume 2
Jam With Pink Floyd