From lavish food and drink spreads to ultra-specific room arrangement requests, rockstars have a reputation of going a little overboard on their tour riders—for Roger Waters, his one rule while touring is a bit more personal.
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In a way, Waters’ request is also a testament to his aversion to the idea of celebrity, something his former band, Pink Floyd, talked about frequently in their music.
Roger Waters Has One Hard and Fast Rule While Touring
Anyone who has seen Roger Waters perform live, whether with Pink Floyd or as a solo artist, can testify to the sheer production value of his concerts. Speaking as someone who has seen Waters solo twice during his “Us and Them” and “This Is Not a Drill” tours, I can’t begin to imagine the logistical nightmare that it takes to get all the massive moving set pieces, large band, all their gear, and the star of the show in the right place at the right time. Both times I’ve seen Waters and his crew, they’ve pulled off this astronomical feat flawlessly.
A behemoth stage show like the one Waters prefers needs discipline, focus, and rigidity. Everyone needs to know their role and execute it well so that every other puzzle piece down the production line can fit into place, too. But Waters has one hard and fast rule while touring that has nothing to do with the show’s production at all, except maybe keeping him in a good mood before he walks out on stage. Under no circumstances should anyone on the crew acknowledge Waters’ birthday.
“I don’t do birthdays, by and large,” Waters said in a fan Q&A video on his YouTube channel. “As anybody who’s toured with me will know, when I have a birthday on the road, not just the band but the crew and everybody and all the truck drivers and bus drivers and the catering, they’re all under strict instructions that nobody mentions my birthday.”
The Production Crew Didn’t Always Follow This Guideline
To Roger Waters’ credit, pretending not to care about your birthday seems like a properly polite and British thing to do. But that doesn’t mean everyone around him was always willing to comply. In the same fan Q&A video from 2023, Waters recalled a date on “The Wall Live” tour, which ran from 2010 to 2013, which fell on his birthday, September 6. Waters and his band were performing in Düsseldorf, Germany, at the Esprit Arena, to just under 34,000 people in 2013. Waters was turning 70 years old that day, which, in the crew’s defense, is a big milestone.
In the spirit of celebration, they broke the bandleader’s rule. Waters described beginning the second half of the show behind a wall with the rest of the band as they prepared to start their first number, “Hey You.” “I walked onto the stage…and of course, written in letters about 15-foot high on the back of the wall, ‘Happy Birthday, Roger,’ blah, blah, blah. So, nobody takes any notice of the gaffer.”
To be fair, I would have been itching to wish him a happy birthday, too.
Photo by Roberto Ricciuti/Redferns
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