Shortly before Christmas 2016, Roger Waters visited his firstborn son, Harry, at his Santa Monica, California, home to deliver some rather bad news. Harry had spent the past 14 years playing keyboard and organ in his dad’s band, which included three extensive world tours, but Roger was making changes for his upcoming Us + Them tour. “I was fired,” Harry tells Rolling Stone. “It was pretty miserable.”
Harry claims he doesn’t know why his own father let him go. “I think he just wanted a change of blood, something new, something fresh,” Waters says. “I’m not sure of his exact reasoning, but everyone except two people [keyboardist Jon Carin and guitarist Dave Kilminster] got fired. But the other guys that got the sack weren’t his son, so it was doubly hurtful for me.”
It would be quite understandable if Harry Waters never wanted to perform his father’s music again after this hurt, but that wasn’t his attitude. He recently wrapped up a 57-date tour with Les Claypool’s Fearless Flying Frog Brigade where he played Pink Floyd‘s Animals in its entirety every night with Claypool and Sean Lennon. And shortly before his interview with Rolling Stone, he agreed to play three shows with Brit Floyd, the world’s premier Pink Floyd cover band, alongside ex-Floyd background singer Durga McBroom and former Floyd saxophonist Scott Page.
“Their manager emailed me just a few days ago and asked if I wanted to sit in on some gigs,” Waters says. “I’ve never met any of them, but I’ll just turn up and play. I’ve been playing this music for 30 years or so. I think we’ll be OK without rehearsal. I think we all know the material pretty well.”
Many of Waters’ earliest memories revolve around Pink Floyd. When he was just two years old, his father brought him into the studio while they were recording The Wall to read the line “look mummy, there’s an aeroplane up in the sky,” which kicks off “Goodbye Blue Sky.” “I certainly remember sitting there with a microphone and being asked to say some things,” he says. “Whenever I hear it, I go, ‘Oh God, that’s me.’ It’s quite weird.”
Read more at RollingStone.com.
