Roger Waters lambasted President Trump during a rehearsal of his forthcoming ‘Us + Them’ tour last night (May 21).
The Pink Floyd co-founder showed doctored images of the president in bright, Warhol-like colors depicting him with lipstick, with breasts, with a Klan hood, without pants (showing a tiny penis), with his head on a pig and with the word “charade” (referencing a lyric in the song) written over his face, during his performance of his former band’s ‘Pigs (Three Different Ones)’.
As it continued a giant, flying, drone-controlled pig flew around a giant screen with the words “welcome to the machine” written on it juxtaposed by an image of Trump with dollar signs over his eyes and a word bubble saying, “I won!”.
The other side of the pig simply read: “piggy bank of war.” Later, the screens displayed some of Trump’s most heinous quotes about his proposed border wall, 9/11, taxes, women and his daughter Ivanka followed by the words “fuck Trump”. He also continued with Trump-related imagery in ‘Money’, and used ‘Us And Them’ to showcase a world at odds with each other. You can watch the footage below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4zUceH9ZsQ
To coincide with his forthcoming tour, Waters will release ‘Is This The Life We Really Want?’ on June 2. It is his first LP since 1992’s ‘Amused To Death’. The album, which has been produced and mixed with Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, will be released as a 180-gram vinyl LP, on CD and digitally.
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The former Pink Floyd man has apparently drawn inspiration from the antipathy he feels toward the Trump administration, as well as a dramatic radio play he had been writing before working on the LP about a man and his granddaughter investigating why children were being killed in faraway lands. “Two or three of the songs from that idea are on this album,” he said. “Nigel Godrich persuaded me that for the purposes of a rock & roll record, which is what this is, he felt my theatrical idea – I’d written the whole thing as a radio play – was less than ideal.”