"When you lose someone you love," Waters said in the narration, "It does serve to remind you this is not a drill," (The 2022 tour is called This Is Not a Drill.) Waters, strumming acoustic at a far end of the stage, soaked it in as fans loudly sang a verse of "Wish You Were Here." Waters' pre-recorded narration, matched with words scrolled onto the video screens with a typewriter sound effect, alluded gently to Barrett's mental issues, escalated by psychedelic drug use, which drove him out of the band. Waters said they decided to form the band after witnessing a Rolling Stones performance. "Wish You Were Here" brought touching memories via video screen of Waters' Pink Floyd co-founder, the late-Syd Barrett. "The Bar," and its sentiments, earned a loud audience cheer.
Still at the piano, Waters emotionally sang lines like "we're trading the family farms for some snake oil," as the video screens transitioned to support of Native Americans being pushed from their land. Waters introduced a new, pandemic-spawned song "The Bar," joking it wasn't the same bar that fans had fled to "because they don't like my politics." (I didn't see anyone Wednesday get up and leave in a huff, as reportedly happened on early dates of Waters' 2017 tour nor did that conspicuously occur at his 2017 PPG Paints Arena concert,)
President Biden's face popped up, with the pessimistic message "he's just getting started." At the end of that song, Waters, playing piano, let out a sigh of relief and pounded his chest with his right fist, in a "thank you" gesture to fans for their support. Many spectators booed as Ronald Reagan popped up on the screens as part of the preface to "The Bravery of Being Out of Range." By song's end, the English-born Waters, via video screen messages, would denounce as a "war criminal" every full-term U.S. Waters' backup singers, Amanda Belair and Shanay Johnson, gave the song extra emotional heft. Waters then picked "The Powers That Be" as the video screens referenced victims of police brutality. With helicopter sound effects blasting from the surround-sound speakers, the wall then lifted and turned into four gigantic video screens as Waters emerged, wearing head-to-toe black, joined by nine bandmates all identically mono-chromed, ripping into "Happiest Days of Our Lives," "Another Brick in The Wall, Part II" and "Another Brick in The Wall, Part III," a beloved mini-suite from Waters' largely autobiographical Pink Floyd masterpiece, "The Wall." Dark lighting and a gigantic perpendicular wall with dystopian imagery filling the stage made it tough to tell how much of that song was performed live. The concert, with an in-the-round setup, commenced with one of Waters' biggest Pink Floyd songs, "Comfortably Numb," sung in a heavy, far-away tone, with the melody more stripped down, gradually intensifying the guitar and keys ambience.
Many in the decent-sized, but nowhere near sold-out PPG Paints Arena crowd laughed and cheered. "If you're one of those 'I love Pink Floyd, but I can't stand Roger Waters' politics' people, you might do well to, (swear word) off to the bar right now."
Even before taking the stage, he beat critics to the punch. PITTSBURGH − Roger Waters came out swinging Wednesday, at his big and bold tour opening show in Pittsburgh.
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