DVD front cover

Unaired MTV Interview

Data: 21 June 1984
Miejsce:  MTV Broadcast

I listened this interview (only audio) some years ago, that it's famous because Roger Waters didn't want answer at questions.
Last week I was checking an old VHS and I found the video interview.
After a thread on Yeeshkul! and some words with Nino and Ron, I assume that it's very rare.
So, get it!
Quality isn't the best, but very funny see the Waters eyes after the questions!
Enjoy!

Read here too: http://www.rogerwaters.org/unairint.html

From site : http://www.rogerwaters.org/unairint.html

Roger Waters Un-Aired
The MTV Un-released Roger Waters Interview by Nina Blackwood

On June 21 1984, MTV's Nina Blackwood interviewed Roger Waters in his dressing room at Earls Court hours before his first UK concert of The Pro's and Cons of Hitch Hiking tour. This filmed interview was never aired on MTV, perhaps because of a certain degree of animosity between some of the MTV management towards Roger and his views of commercial music video television. I received an audio tape of this interview courtesy of REG member Paul Powell Jr. (thanks Paul!) and because of the rarity of this interview, I felt it was something that most REG members would like to read. Special thanks go to Roman Guzman and his wife who went to great time and trouble transcribing this interview for us.
Nina:
OK, Well we've been looking forward to your stage productions as, as always, actually, and uh, can you describe to us, briefly, what this particular show is gonna be about?
Roger:
Uh ya, I can... It's two halves, and the first half is um, some of my old songs, and that runs about an hour, and um, I'm using some of the old uh... animation from past shows, from old Floyd shows for a number of tunes. Um, and then the second half's a visual presentation of "The Pro's and Cons of Hitch Hiking," which also, I think, runs about an hour.
Nina:
So now uh, the look of this particular show, then is based more on film images then uh, the stage set that you used for The Wall?
Roger:
Um... Well there's no wall but there is a set and there is a series of flats with false perspectives built into them that some in, in front of the uh, the screen to create the illusion that the audience is party to the bedroom within which the piece takes place; The Pro's and Cons of Hitch Hiking. In the first half the movie is all uh, anybody that has ever been to a Floyd show will remember the sort of circular screen format that we used to use for the last ten years or so. And so um, all the material in the first half is projected using that format.
Nina:
Do you feel that you're creating a visual type of counter-point in all the different images being on the three screens at one time, can you say that?
Roger:
A visual counter-point? What, amongst themselves or...
Nina:
Ya.
Roger:
Uh, at certain points ya, absolutely. Some of the stuff that Nick Rhodes shot in uh Death Valley, and in Oregon, is cut so that it's sort of... There's a dreamlike quality with the way that the screens work with each other. Like that...who made the Napoleon film, the three screens... black and white...?
Nina:
I don't uh...
Roger:
I don't remember either, but that was back in the thirties I think.
Nina:
Do you find that that process, the counter-point of visual process is similar to a musical process?
Roger:
I think it all works together, you know, all the different elements within the show only become satisfying when they all work together um... which is why the thing is so difficult to do because it depends to a fairly large extent upon maintaining a sync. And maintaining sync in such a way that the musicians on the stage feel comfortable enough to be able to play their instruments even under the threat that at any minute it's all going to go... crazy.
Nina:
Why would you say that...?
Roger:
Well, well we're working through that now, we've done three shows so far, right, we've got through them all. We lost one projector in Rotterdam for about ten minutes. But in Stockholm we went from top to bottom, and it was great!
Nina:
Uh, people know uh, Gerald Scarfe, Scarfé, is it...?
Roger:
Scarfe. (scarf)
Nina:
It is Scarfe...
Roger:
In a way I prefer Scrarfé.
Nina:
ScarfŽ, yeah it sounds nicer.
Roger:
Yeah it does; Scarfé.
Nina:
But, they know Scarfe's work primarily from the album covers and also the animation that he did with The Wall. Now is he translating similar images visually onto the screen?
Roger:
Um, I think you really have to look at it. You know, it's silly for me to start giving you verbal descriptions of pictures. I don't think I can really convey very much. I mean, there are backgrounds, there are pictures of, you know Krupps Steel Works. There's all kinds of things. But, there's a whole scene where the central character takes on the persona of a dog. The one... the song about going to live in the country in the states, is all based upon a dog character called "Reg." But you're none the wiser till you see it.
Nina:
You also have used the same set designers right?
Roger:
Yeah.
Nina:
That you've used, since the Animals tour?
Roger:
Yeah.
Nina:
Why do you enjoy working with them?
Roger:
Um, well, they're very, very good at their jobs, and also they're um, it's a mutual thing. They like being given these ludicrous problems to solve. And I think they enjoy the fact that I take risks as well, because suddenly faced with, well, how do you get scenery in and out in, you know, in ten seconds? To cover an area that's 100 feet by 45 feet silently. Where you have no room above the stage so that you can drop stuff behind the presinia and it just flies out into this huge space. Well, we don't have any space. It's very hard in fact, to find auditoriums that have the necessary... we have to have 60 feet from the floor to the ceiling to fit the show into it.
So there are all kinds of technical problems which they really love to solve. But having said that, they're not just, this is not Fisher & Jonathan Park, they're not just technical. They... the boast for them is the fact that when they've solved the technical problems they can sit there and, you know, be moved by it all. We all go through a process, where, eventually, because it's all in the design and planning stage, nobody has the... nobody knows what it's going to look like. It's a real act of faith. Nobody has seen all the film together until we get three projectors running in a big, in a large auditorium. When that happens, and we run the tape with it, we'll sit there in our chairs trembling slightly and throw some loud music out and look at everything, and you know, if you get the chill up the spine the first time you do it, look at it, and stuff, then you know you've cracked it and if you don't, you know you've got to go and work on it, do something else.
Nina:
You come to them with uh...(camera stops to change tape) um, what I was gonna ask you uh... when you come to the set designers, do you... come to them with a specific idea, you know, that's written down on paper or designed? Or do you just throw out a mental idea, or you have them listen to music... how do you do that?
Roger:
Um, no. Mark (Fisher) and Jonathan (Park), I brought them in, played them the album, and then I show them the drawings, sketches, I do sketches, you know, just as an exercise, but I tend to keep a book, and when I start having ideas about a show, I write them down and I do sketches. In fact, in my sketches, um... it's a television set that's in the bedroom, that all the story takes place in, is/was actually three dimensional, so the clever thing that they did was say, well this is not going to be easy, cause this television set's sort of 45 feet by 30 feet, how are we gonna build it? You know, so what they did was to say, "How about if we try and create a sense of 3D with it working with flats which we can store on rollers because you can't... what you've drawn, you can never truck it round, it'd look great but you'd never get it round the cities." So that, that's their job, is to take it from there. And then there's a window in it which I... my window was in a different place. They reorganized my sketches to work much better than I could ever have done.
Nina:
How much involvement do you have with the actual design of the set.
Roger:
Oh, the actual drawing board work? Not at all, but they will come back with some drawings and say; "look we think it might work like that." and in the first set of drawings they brought back to me they had an idea where the screens were separate... there was like a screen here and screens on either side that came down separately out of boxes in the ceiling. And there were other screens in front, you know, so they came with an idea of multiple screens. And it took a number of meetings back and forth before we realized that we had to rationalize it down to it being one big screen, and we had to create the illusion of depth by the way that we made the film and the way that we used the scenery in front of the screen.
So it's uh, you know, it's a whole process. It's like any... it's like any other kind of theater. It's a process of meetings and thrashing things out and then, you know, the trick is to sort of half close your eyes and look at a drawing and really imagine what it might look like in an auditorium.
Nina:
Do you find it difficult to trust work to other people?
Roger:
Um, not to them, some people I do, ya, some people. I mean the film stuff, for instance, obviously an editor has to do an awful lot of work so... And I didn't shoot any of the film myself but, I...I would go, ...Nick Thompson is the film editor, and I'd go ...say, " As soon as you've done something, you ring me up," then I'd go down and look at it, and we change it all, or change some of it, or start again, or scrap it, or say, "Christ, how are we gonna make this work?" Or whatever it is, you know, and you go on and on until...until it's done. And it's not done now cause this is only the third show. And so everyday we're having meetings and we're improving it and improving it. I think by the time we get to New York it'll be done. I think it'll be finished cause we've got another three weeks or something.
Nina:
Yeah, that's actually what I was gonna ask you, about how has the show changed once it's gotten on stage?
Roger:
Well, um... very little as yet, but the stuff is in the pipeline. When you're working with film, you can't just go, "We'll change that," and it changes. If youÔve got to re-shoot something, I'm sure you know, you've got to re-shoot it and then it has to go to the labs, then you have to get an answer print back, then you have to go back to the cutting copy and work out where you're gonna slot it in, then you have to look at the re-cut copy that you've made, then you have to think in terms of re-cutting the negative if that's possible and so on and so forth. It's a very long process, and so the changes that were um, that we decided to make after uh, Stockholm, we won't actually get until Birmingham, which is in another 3 or 4 days time.
Nina:
And so um, has your show differed from that tonight?
Roger:
Yeah, oh yeah. Yeah.
Nina:
In what way?
Roger:
Um..., Well, each night a different percentage of all the technical things go right. And eventually, I hope, as with The Wall, I hope that eventually everything will go right every night. The machine will start to work, and also of course, the musicians play differently every night. From night to night we're all different.
Nina:
This is actually going to be your first solo show...
Roger:
Yeah.
Nina:
...in London, do you feel a little bit nervous playing for this audience?
Roger:
No, I will by 5 (minutes) to eight (o'clock), but it's only, (whispers) quarter past seven now! I've got another 40 minutes before I start really going to pieces.
Nina:
Are they (the audience) particularly critical here, do you find?
Roger:
Um, no, I don't think the audience is, I think they'll be, I think they'll be right there, the, the English press are unbelievably, they're really savage, silly people.
Nina:
Yeah, uh now I'd like to get back to the music itself. The live musicians in your band are playing with pre-recorded (Click tracking)...
Roger:
There are no... sorry...
Nina:
Pardon me?
Roger:
I was going to say there are no dead musicians in the band.
Both Laugh
Nina:
No dead musicians, they're only live! Anyway, um, does that go on for the whole show, them playing with the track in their head?
Roger:
Um, no. No, they play um, wherever we have film that needs to be in sync, we have to play to a click track, all right, we have a SMPT code coming off the dubbing head of the projector and that drives the 24 track tape which gives us a click and sound effects, and then we have to play to a click. In the first half there were three tunes like that, I think out of eight. Three or four out of eight. The second half is all done to click, except for two tunes, "The ProÔs and Cons of Hitch Hiking," the title track we do free of click and we do "Sexual Revolution," free of click as well. Everything else is done to click because everything else is married to picture.
Nina:
Was that a challenge, for everybody to get used to doing that? Or was it just, you know, like nothing.
Roger:
Um yeah, it's difficult. It's a very difficult discipline to work with. The real challenge, actually, was getting through the first gig in Stockholm three days ago, because we were supposed to be rehearsing for a week with the projectors in England, and the projectors never worked the entire week. So for that whole week I was getting tenser and tenser and paying less and less attention to the band as I raved and ranted around the building screaming at people. So we, by the time we actually got out on the road we were pretty fragmented. And we had no idea whether anything was going to work. But that first night was just an amazing revelation. Everybody just went (Roger snaps his fingers Ôsnap') because they're all brilliant ,and they're all wonderful musicians. And they all just snapped into top gear and it all happened. It was great.
Nina:
Do you produce the tapes yourself?
Roger:
Yesss!
Nina:
What sort of reaction do you expect when you take this tour to the United States.
Roger:
Um, I think they'll go absolutely berserk with delight. (laughs) I really do. I just think American audiences, I think are just going to go completely crazy.
Nina:
Now I understand that you are quite a private person also, and um, that maybe the real Roger Waters, might have been in back of The Wall with Pink Floyd. But now you're going out and you're playing solo. How do you feel about that? Do you feel...
Roger:
Wonderful. I feel great about it.
Nina:
Do you miss the band mates.
Roger:
No.
Nina:
Not at all? Um, when you walk out on stage a lot of the people that have gone to the shows are Pink Floyd fans. How do you find that they are reacting to you, you know, buying tickets...?
Roger:
We've only done... Oh they're not buying tickets... well, they are, in New York. Actually New York's the only town in the world where they've bought tickets, bless them, which is great. Everywhere else they're not buying tickets at all. I mean, these shows here are actually sold out. But, God it's been a struggle, it's been terrible. That's why I've started doing... like little things, like this. Because suddenly, the realization has come home to me that nobody made any connections to me and those old Pink Floyd shows. Otherwise they'd be buying tickets for this.
Nina:
From what I understand also too, this particular show is one of your most expensive productions?
Roger:
It is terribly expensive, yeah.
Nina:
Are you finding that you are feeling pressure from the promoters, the business people etc. to make money from this tour?
Roger:
No, no, they're making money! I'm the one who's losing all the money, you know, I'm the one who's underwriting it. But in a way, I just, I don't know, I have a feeling it was something I wanted to do, I needed to do. So if in the end, I lose some money, I lose some money. I've made a lot of money out of rock & roll, if I lose some doing it, so what.
Nina:
You seem to be doing more of an elaborate production now, given the fact that you're getting more money. And given that fact that you're getting more money and more technology, do you find that that makes you more creative?
Roger:
I'm getting more money? What do you mean?
Nina:
Well, with your success and all that, that maybe you're making a little bit more money and you're able to use that for technology in other words.
Roger:
Oh, The technology doesn't interest me in the slightest... I'm completely disinterested in all matters technical. I've never been interested in technique. What I'm interested in is, is making something happen that moves people. You know, I want to give people chills up their spine. That's all I'm interested in. Hell, I wanna give myself chills up the spine. Like when I, I can run the stuff and go out and watch it from the hall or listen to it from that perspective. That's all I'm interested in doing.
Nina:
What are you enjoying most, so far, about this solo tour.
Roger:
Um, it's only just started. We've only been, I don't know, it's, it's um... (pause) It's very relaxed, only it's not, everybody's... That sounds like a stupid thing to say because of course everybody's wired, completely wired, because at any moment it can all collapse. But it's, oh, there's a good feeling developing in the band and in the crew. Although everybody's pretty shattered, particularly in the crew. There's a lot of walking wounded out there.
Nina:
Already, but it just...
Roger:
Oh, the, you know ,the work for us is hard, but for them (the stage crew) itÔs unbelievable! To put this up, you know, drive from Stockholm to Rotterdam and then put that up when you arrive, is unbelievably hard work because they're working the bugs out of it all the time, and the effects truss only has to be 18 inches out in one direction or another and that's... and it doesn't work, so then there's terrible panic to get it in the right place an you're moving something the weighs several tons about, and so it's, it's difficult...
Nina:
What are you looking forward to most, going to the United States?
Roger:
The States? Um, just the shows. Assuming we've got it right by then. I think the shows will be wonderful, really enjoyable for all of us.
Nina:
I understand also, that the making of the film The Wall, wasn't quite....
Drummer Andy Newmark, not realizing Roger is doing an interview, walks into the dressing room unexpectedly.
MTV film Director:
Newmark! how are you?
Andy:
(Surprised) Great, Hi!
Roger:
Hi.
Nina:
Hi.
Roger:
Andy Newmark!!
Andy:
(Embarrassed) Sorry, carry on.
Roger:
That's alright Andy, see ya later
Andy leaves.
Roger:
You wanna talk about that as well...
MTV film Director:
Yeah, just what it's like having Eric Clapton in your band and how much fun it is, OK, (mumbling -Ok, so why don't we do that first, ready Jon, we got speed...)
Nina:
So what's it like playing with Eric Clapton.
Roger:
It's great.
Nina:
And how did you get together with him?
Roger:
I rang him up. I said, "I'm making this album, would you be interested in playing guitar," and he said "well, yeah. I'd like to come and hear it." So I played him the demo I'd made, and he liked it, and that was that.
Nina:
Is he and old friend of yours?
Roger:
No, I mean, I knew him, you know, if we passed back stage we'd say alright-yeah, but we were never friendly.
Nina:
How much an input does he have into the music?
Roger:
Um, well, he gives it that... he puts his guitar playing into the music, that's what he puts into it, you know, which is quite different than anyone else's in the world. He... I mean, when he came in to make the record, he very much said; "look," you know, um... "just tell me what you want me to do, and I'll try and do it," you know, "and if I can't, let's leave it out, and not..." I think he thought I was gonna try and get him to play outside styles that he wasn't used to playing in. But I didn't want him to (play other styles), I wanted him to play with that pure intonation and feeling which he does better than anybody else. And uh... and he did. And he... what did he do? Oh ya, he would suggest instruments as well. For instance, on the album, at the end of side one, there's a dobro solo, and that goes into side two as well, which he was just listening to it (the song) one day and said, "Why don't I play dobro? And I said great bring it in... So, there's that kind of input as well, which is terrific.
But he's been a tower of strength, you know, he's just... he's been very um... supportive of the whole thing, Cause it's been uh... it's been difficult really... particularly putting the show together, cause where we've been rehearsing the band, you know, I've been able to do all the moving and everything as well. I've been in the car, and he's been extremely supportive. It's been quite wonderful.
Nina:
(This is the last one.) I understand that uh... the making of The Wall, wasn't really a very happy experience for you, now uhhhhhh, was that true first of all with.....
Roger:
Yeah, this is an area I don't want to go into. I'll tell you why. I've done a long, long, long, interview with a great friend of mine called Jim Ladd, who's trying to sell it at the moment, and I, and so...
Nina:
Ok.
Roger:
I just want to stick to this stuff, which is something that I've never discussed with him.
Nina:
Yeah.
Roger:
And, The Wall movie, and sex and drugs, and religion, and nuclear war, and Ronald Reagan and all that, I've...
Nina:
That's fine.
Roger:
I did five hours with this guy, and it's there if anybody wants to know about it...
Nina:
That's fine.
Roger:
...he's got it.
Nina:
That's Ok.
Roger:
Ok?
Nina:
That's Ok, yeah, great
MTV film Director:
(I'll do it), Thank you for .... anyway...
The End

Dodano:  12.9.2015