Shown below are various newspaper reports, reviews, etc., all with links to the original pages. The articles are included here as not every article will remain available on the original sites.
British cult singer and former Pink Floyd leader Roger Waters will perform in the Middle East for the first time in April, with three-hour concerts in Beirut and Dubai, organisers said Sunday. A spokesman for Buzz Productions, which is organising the event in Lebanon said that the show in front of 7,000 people in Beirut will also be the first "surround sound" concert in the Middle East.
Waters, who is due to kick off his In The Flesh 2002 World Tour in South Africa on February 28, is expected to sing all the greatest hits of his career with Pink Floyd and as a solo artist.
The word got around Beirut about two months ago very quickly. Even before local radio stations launched the advertising campaigns, dedicated Pink Floyd and Roger Waters fans already knew that their idol would play his first gig ever in Lebanon on April 17 at BIEL (the Beirut International Exhibition and Leisure center).
The really fanatical ones still have difficulty believing that the ex-Pink Floyd bass player and one of the band’s masterminds will actually show up.
Pascale Sakhry, 24, for instance, is afraid of Waters canceling the show: "I can’t believe he will come," she said. "He might just put it off due to the current insecure political situation."
But Waters has made it quite clear, in a series of press conferences given throughout the past year, that canceling because of political instability is out of the question.
"You know, people currently canceling shows in places other than in America or Europe are mostly Americans," he said. "I really find their reaction to Sept. 11 rather infantile and extreme. The chances of me being run over by a car are much bigger than getting killed in a bomb explosion."
After his first In the Flesh tour in 1999 that took him to the United States, Waters originally wanted to start the second tour in 2001. But one of the show’s key musicians, guitarist Andy Fairweather-Low, was on tour with Eric Clapton, so he postponed until 2002. "Andy is very much Eric’s bread and butter; I didn’t want to go on tour without him though," he stressed.
Starting in Johannesburg in March, the tour has taken him to South America, then to Japan and Australia, and eventually to Lebanon. The tour closes in the indoor Wembley Arena in London in June.
Before the In the Flesh tour, Waters was regularly asked why he was doing it; did he not have any new songs of his own? "My answer to the why," Waters said, "is: ‘I am a performer and I have rediscovered the stage.’"
For a long time Waters was not allowed to play many of the songs he wrote as a Floyd member: After he left the band, he changed his record company from EMI to Sony Music. EMI and Pink Floyd owned the song rights, so he could not perform or record any of his old songs.
During this period, his relations with David Gilmour turned sour. Gilmour had replaced Syd Barrett as guitarist in the early stages of the band’s development. It was always an issue between Gilmour and Waters that the former was not a founding member. Waters can now play his Pink Floyd songs again, but he still does not speak well of Gilmour.
"I was not involved in the planning of the Pink Floyd Greatest Hits album," Waters said. "All I contributed was the title. David originally wanted to call it Some of the Parts a terrible title, an awful pun. I just simply said it should be called Echoes and that’s the way it went. Eventually."
The rift also had an effect on Pink Floyd fans. On hearing that Waters was on his way to Lebanon, Gabi Chabo, 22, a great Pink Floyd fan, said: "I believe there is much too much fuss about Waters. Gilmour was just as influential. After all, after Waters left the band, they made some of their best albums. Division Bell is my personal favorite."
In the Flesh presents a comprehensive overview of Waters’ music, including the classic compositions from The Wall, Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here, less well-known pieces from Animals and The Final Cut, and a variety of songs from solo albums Amused to Death and The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking.
According to Waters, a new album is on its way. He has compiled 10 songs that are ready to be finished, but he has not yet decided what the theme of the album will be and how the songs fit together: "I think a taxi ride could be important for the album," he explained. "I once had this ride in a New York taxi with this Croatian driver. He had scars all over his face from the Balkan wars, but he didn’t want to talk to me. The album could be about finding out that guy’s story."
The only new song Waters is playing on this tour is Each Small Candle. Possibly to make up for the lack of new material, the show’s visuals and sound quality have been heavily invested in. The tour utilizes elaborate large-scale video projections, theatrical set pieces and an array of special effects to accentuate the power of the music, which is delivered via a 360-degree quadraphonic sound system.
This huge spectacle is, of course, pricy. Tickets range from $40 to $100. The cheap tickets are already sold out.
"It’s a great thing Roger Waters is coming to Beirut, but it’s just too expensive for me," said Tarek Yamani, 22, a musician himself. "With $100 I can buy all the Roger Waters CDs and listen to them at home. Maybe that’s what I’ll do on April 17, and just imagine I’m at the concert and listening to Roger Waters live."
Roger Waters’ In the Flesh is at BIEL, April 17; the show starts at 8pm. Information on 01/611-600.
Nearly 6 500 people give a standing ovation to the symbolic leader of Pink Floyd, Roger Waters.
With a duration of three hours, the show gave its audience a single world, made of exceptional guitar riffs, a breathtaking voice and quadraphonic sound that set exceptional standards.
The whole was packaged in a visual and luminous show as only this psychedelic Englishman can do. The comet passed too quickly (photo Michel Sayegh).
Former PINK FLOYD songwriter ROGER WATERS played a show in BEIRUT last night (April 17), despite the current tensions in Palestine bringing the threat of renewed conflict between Israel and Lebanon ever closer.
While this week has seen Beirut regularly buzzed by Israeli warplanes, an estimated 6000-strong crowd turned out to see Waters play the show - a rare incursion into Lebanon by a major western artist.
The concert - the first in the Middle East to use surround sound - gave an ecstatic crowd a comprehensive run through of Waters' greatest hits.
Opening with a medley from ’The Wall’ the set-list included material from ‘Animals’, ‘Dark Side of the Moon’, ‘The Final Cut’, ‘Wish You Were Here’, as well as songs from solo albums ‘Radio K.A.O.S.’, ‘The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking’ and ‘Amused to Death’.
However, the biggest cheer was reserved for ‘Perfect Sense Part 1’, and the lines: "The Jews killed the Arabs and the Arabs killed the hostages, and that is the news. Is it any wonder that the monkey's confused?" With a reference to the current Israeli/Palestinian tension, the song was played out against a big-screen panorama featuring images of Nazareth.
Many assumed the Beirut stop-off would be scrapped because of current political instability.
But, speaking at a press conference earlier in the year, Waters said cancelling was not an option: "The chances of me being run over by a car are much bigger than getting killed in a bomb explosion," he said.
Noelle Baz of Buzz Productions, the company which managed the show at the Beirut International Exhibition and Leisure Centre, said: "They said that if commercial flights stopped, they wouldn't come. But until that happens it's OK."
Last year's summer music festival at Baalbek - Lebanon's equivalent of Glastonbury staged amid 3000-year old temples - drew a crowd of 9,000 for a performance by Sting.
Red Hot Chili Peppers pulled out of a planned show in the Middle East recently because of the tension in the region.
Roger Waters performs in concert in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Monday April 15, 2002.
(AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili)
Roger Waters, the former Pink Floyd member, despite the climate of war that inflames the Middle East, performed his show a couple of evenings ago in Beirut, in Lebanon.
Although by now there are regular overflights of Israeli airplanes on the city, there to see Waters was a crowd of approximately 6000 persons. The former Pink Floyd musician opened with a medley from 'The Wall', then proceeded to draw tracks from 'Animals', 'Dark Side of the Moon', 'The Final Cut', 'Wish You Were Here' and from the solo albums, 'Radio K.A.O.S.', 'The Pros And Cons Of Hitch Hiking' and 'Amused To Death'.
The greatest applause was felt for 'Perfect Sense Part 1', with its explicit reference to the situation of the Palestinian people and its opposition to the Israeli occupation.
Many groups have cancelled their scheduled concerts in the cities of the Middle East.
The ex singer of the group Pink Floyd, Roger Waters, inspired 7000 fans in the Lebanese capital Beirut with anti-war songs.
The loudest applause in the concert was for "Bring the Boys back Home" from the "The Wall" album of 1982. Many of the young listeners had appeared with Palestinian cloths and flags. To the sounds of the famous "The Wall" passage "Hey teachers, leave the kids alone", the lyrics "Hey Sharon, leave the kids alone" were sang to the public who view the Middle East conflict first hand.
Waters appearance in Beirut was part of the "In the Flesh 2002 World Tour", which has led him so far through 30 countries, among them Japan, Russia and India. The initial member of Pink Floyd left the group in 1984 after discrepancies with his colleagues.
Former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters enthralled fans here late Wednesday with songs about love and freedom, drawing loud applauds from an audience strongly marked by the Middle East conflict.
Waters drew the entire audience of about 7,000 to its feet when visuals of the Bible and the word Nazareth appeared on the large screen behind his band, prompting dozens of spectators to wave the Palestinian keffiyeh, or traditional checkered scarf. Acts and signs of solidarity with the Palestinians have been on the rise in Lebanon since Israel launched its invasion of Palestinian towns on the West Bank on March 29.
The audience particularly reacted to songs about love and freedom as well as anti-militaristic lyrics such as "Bring the Boys Back Home" from the 1979 "The Wall" album. A small part of the audience changed the words of the famous cry of The Wall's "Another Brick in the Wall," to shout: "Hey Sharon, leave us kids alone," in reference to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
During the three-hour concert, members of non-governmental organisations from among the audience distributed leaflets and sold T-shirts with pictures of Palestinian victims of Israeli attacks, with poetic lyrics from Waters songs. "Not the torturer will scare me ... but the blind indifference of a merciless unfeeling world," read a T-shirt sporting an Israeli soldier pointing an assault-rifle against a Palestinian woman and two girls.
Waters' spectacular show at the newly-built BIEL hall on Beirut's seafront featured video projections, fireworks and dazzling special effects delivered via a state-of-the-art 360-degree quadraphonic sound system. The Beirut concert is part of Waters' 2002 world tour across 30 countries, dubbed "In The Flesh," and featured all the greatest hits of his career with Pink Floyd and as a solo artist. It was also Waters' second performance in an Arab city after Monday's concert in Dubai.
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