Roger Waters took the stage at London’s Palladium on Sunday, October 8, to perform The Dark Side of the Moon Redux, his recently released reimagining of Pink Floyd’s classic album, but it turns out he had more in store for his audience.
According to a review of the show by The Times of London critic Will Hodgkinson, Waters spent the first 30 minutes of the show ranting about Julian Assange and reading from his unpublished memoir.
“One story involved a duck that came to live in the family home,” Hodgkinson wrote. “Another began promisingly as a memory of Floyd’s original leader, Syd Barrett, but revealed nothing more than that Barrett wrote a lot of songs and had an innocent air about him.”
Hodgkinson noted that Waters only played two songs during the first half of the show and wound up getting heckled by the audience for his lack of performing, to which he responded like “a scary headmaster shouting down naughty kids at assembly, which simply had the effect of making everyone feel nervous and awkward.”
In addition to the readings, the show included a 20-minute film in which Waters described making The Dark Side of the Moon Redux.
“Roger Waters has suffered for his art,” the critic concluded. “That didn’t mean that the audience at the Palladium had to suffer for it too.”
Waters returns to the stage for a second show at the Palladium on Monday, October 9.
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