What a great guy Roger Waters is! I discovered Roger Waters (then with Pink Floyd) through his album “A Saucerful of Secrets” released in 1968 which I heard for the first time a couple of years later, around 1970. I was only 7 years old then! The discovery of Waters’ amazing music and poetry stayed with me for the rest of my life. I am 54 now and I still listen to his music at least every 2nd day (I also feel a very strong connection with the man himself – in a weird and uncanny way, we have much in common, including many similar pains). So it is a huge joy for me to say that at least one of my childhood heroes has not disappointed me: Roger Waters is still himself, in spite of a world gone crazy.
In this interview, Roger does a superb job giving interesting replies to mostly dull questions (sigh, rolleyes). Enjoy!
the questions make me cring – but yeah, he answers them because he knows that it can only help Palestine if he answers them kindly.
Excellent job by Waters here. Very much enjoyed watching and listening.
Thanks for this, Saker. I had seen a clip of Waters speaking but never sat down with him, so to speak. Wonderful man, a great breath of fresh air.
I must say that I liked the questions and dialog from Sophie. She is a wonderful interviewer, in my opinion, because she actually has a conversation with her subjects, she stays right there with them. She did the same here. An interviewer’s job is to get the person talking, and although she obviously knows – and I think agrees with – everything Waters said, she let him say it.
Beautiful conversation between two very perceptive people.
Great interview. I love watching Roger Waters. I love his empathy and his fearlessness and telling it like it is in a very strong, uncomprosmising but accessible way.
I love also that he mentioned the Quakers. He is right. Of course there is also a Friends Meeting house in Cambridge, Mass. ( I assume he was talking about Cambridge, England).
The interview became much livelier and more human as, I think, Water won over Shevardnadze to leaving, a little bit, her professional space and dialoguing with him. As opposed to the stance with which she started (I think), which was super-professional, I am in charge, I am the one asking the questions and I am not going to just give you carte blanche. But in the end she was aligned with him and spoke as a Russian citizen. Great work, Roger!!! What a “good person,” as he mother said.
Katherine
Isn’t Roger Waters an interesting character! He tells us that his mother gave him a good insight into politics and religion; the subjects, along with sex, that were most often banned in our generation.
I am totally ignorant in regard to Roger and his music; I followed a different path, of folk music and piping, with a bit of classical, but may I ask if you could recognise the intellectual power required to write good music and songs?
Roger tells us that only after somebody asked him to support the “White Helmets” that he did something most wouldn’t; he researched! It doesn’t take much research to discern the difference between the truth and lies, and too many people leave such work to others and thus are led astray.
Roger also tells us another reason why most people today and in a quandary, because they have been educated to be in that cocoon of ignorance, and thus we have the creation of the herds of sheeple.
The question I asked myself many years ago was; “when did this manipulation of the masses begin?” Roger mentioned the ‘French Revolution’, but on considering what happened at the Bastille, that tells us that the lies and deceptions were in use then as they are today.
If we go back to Cicero in Rome, we get a clue, and even Matthew warns us against who the father of the lie is, but even then the lie was being cultivated to led us into servitude.
Does that tell you something? I’m certain Roger Waters understands it completely.