Rockonteurs is a podcast all about the real stories behind real music.
Presented by Spandau Ballet’s Gary Kemp, who wrote and performed megahits like ‘Gold’ and ‘True’, and Guy Pratt, a bass player who shaped songs for the likes of Madonna and Pink Floyd, you’ll hear exclusive stories of life on the road, in the studio and what really happened behind the scenes from artists who wrote, performed and produced the some of the biggest classic rock and pop tracks of all time.
Rockonteurs is a podcast all about the real stories behind real music.
This weeks upcoming episode is Number 50 and features guest Gaz Coombes of Supergrass
Rob Verhorst’s career spans well over four decades. David Gilmour, Roger Waters, Rick Wright and Nick Mason have been a common thread in his working years. The gentlemen of Pink Floyd, as a group but later also solo, often appear before the lens of the Rotterdam (pop) photographer. A first encounter in Sportpaleis Ahoy’ in Rotterdam in 1977 makes Verhorst decide to combine his two passions – photography and music – and to make it his profession. His picture of a deflated pig in Ahoy’ also inadvertently reveals a unique way of working. Verhorst not only goes for the big picture, but knows – like no other – how to capture details that only someone with an eye for detail and a strong urge for perfection can capture.
His photos do not remain unnoticed for long and soon start to appear in newspapers such as Rotterdams Dagblad and renowned music magazines like Muziekkrant OOR, Muziek Expres, Hitkrant and Music Maker. In the years that follow his photographs of the 1980 Pink Floyd shows at Earls Court in London to promote The Wall go global. In the 1980s, Verhorst is always there, everywhere. He ends up with David Gilmour in Muziekcentrum Vredenburg Utrecht in 1984 and Roger Waters in Sportpaleis Ahoy’ that same year. He documents Pink Floyd’s comeback in Rotterdam in 1988 and a year later in Werchter and the Goffertpark in Nijmegen. A picture of Pink Floyd in front of a battery of his colleagues during a photo session in Versailles in 1988 is a classic, just like so many others. Rob Verhorst’s photos of Pink Floyd – but also those of dozens if not hundreds other world acts – have become a staple of the renowned Getty Images catalogue.
In 1990 Verhorst photographs The Wall for a second time – this time Roger Waters’ performance in Berlin – and frequently captures the former Pink Floyd bassist in the new millennium, in 2011 in Arnhem for a third time performing The Wall. He is one of the few – and perhaps the only one professionally – who has shot the three tours of the concept album in as many decades. For this book, Rob Verhorst (1952) made a selection of no less than three hundred iconic Pink Floyd photos, many of them previously unpublished. Together with memories and additional visual material from his archives they form an impressive collection and legacy
Spanning more than half a decade Pink Floyd has rightly earned its place as one of the greatest rock bands of all time. From the early, experimental ando ften whimsical days with band leader Syd Barrett to them ore expansive style with Dave Gilmour onboard, leadingt o the masterpiece Dark Side Of The Moon that elevatedF loyd into the stratosphere. But success came at a price as personal relationshipss uffered, culminating in break-ups as eventually Roger Waters departed. Buts tadiums and huge arenas continued to welcome Floyd through the eighties andn ineties with a brief reunion with Waters for 2005’s Live 8 event. Captured Through Time is a photographic celebration of this truly iconic band thatt akes you on a journey from the psychedelic, avant-garde sixties to the present dayi ncluding off stage shots of all band members during the 2000s including Syd Barrett!
Many of the photos have never been published in print before, including a sequence of shots from the Animals tour in 1977 that have only just been developed from the original negatives and digitally restored for this publication.
In total, over 100 glorious images of Floyd both on and off stage through the
decades are included in this large format book.
Rockonteurs is a podcast all about the real stories behind real music.
Presented by Spandau Ballet’s Gary Kemp, who wrote and performed megahits like ‘Gold’ and ‘True’, and Guy Pratt, a bass player who shaped songs for the likes of Madonna and Pink Floyd, you’ll hear exclusive stories of life on the road, in the studio and what really happened behind the scenes from artists who wrote, performed and produced the some of the biggest classic rock and pop tracks of all time.
Rockonteurs is a podcast all about the real stories behind real music.
This weeks upcoming episode is Number 49 and features guest Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull
Radio K.A.O.S. is the second solo studio album by English rock musician and former Pink Floyd member Roger Waters. Released on 15 June 1987 in the United Kingdom and June 16 in the United States, it was Waters’ first solo album after his formal split from Pink Floyd in 1985. Like his previous and future studio albums and many works of his during his time with Pink Floyd, the album is a concept album based on many key topical subjects of the late 1980s, including monetarism and its effect on citizens, popular culture of the time, and the events and consequences of the Cold War. It also makes criticisms of Margaret Thatcher’s government, much like Pink Floyd’s The Final Cut, another album conceived by Waters.
The album follows Billy, a mentally and physically disabled man from Wales, forced to live with his uncle David in Los Angeles after his brother Benny was sent to prison after an act intended to support striking coal miners results in the death of a taxi driver, following his dismissal from his mining job due to “market forces.” The album explores Billy’s mind and view on the world through an on-air conversation between him and Jim, a disc jockey at a local fictitious radio station named Radio KAOS.
In our six part celebration we will be speaking to members of the recording and touring band, The producer of the album aswell as showcasing never before seen photography from the supporting tour, along with a few surprises thrown in aswell.
In this this instalment we are showcasing never before seen photographs from Roger Waters Radio KAOS tour live on November 14th 1987 at Arie Crown Theatre Chicago, Illinois, USA.
There is currently only 6 photos from this tour published on the world wide web as featured in our tour rooms by clicking here.
Thanks to the appeal we put on in preperation for this celebration we were sent a stunning collection that has not been shared to the public masses before.
Due to the exclusiveness of this collection these ‘protected” images will be available until 20th september 2021 where they will then be available to view in full high definition in our dedicated tour rooms.
Photos by R. Vajagich, prints scanned by W. Taber.
Roger Waters 14 Nov 1987. Radio KAOS. 2nd Exhibition.
Radio K.A.O.S. is the second solo studio album by English rock musician and former Pink Floyd member Roger Waters. Released on 15 June 1987 in the United Kingdom and June 16 in the United States, it was Waters’ first solo album after his formal split from Pink Floyd in 1985. Like his previous and future studio albums and many works of his during his time with Pink Floyd, the album is a concept album based on many key topical subjects of the late 1980s, including monetarism and its effect on citizens, popular culture of the time, and the events and consequences of the Cold War. It also makes criticisms of Margaret Thatcher’s government, much like Pink Floyd’s The Final Cut, another album conceived by Waters.
The album follows Billy, a mentally and physically disabled man from Wales, forced to live with his uncle David in Los Angeles after his brother Benny was sent to prison after an act intended to support striking coal miners results in the death of a taxi driver, following his dismissal from his mining job due to “market forces.” The album explores Billy’s mind and view on the world through an on-air conversation between him and Jim, a disc jockey at a local fictitious radio station named Radio KAOS.
In our six part celebration we will be speaking to members of the recording and touring band, The producer of the album aswell as showcasing never before seen photography from the supporting tour, along with a few surprises thrown in aswell.
In this second installment we are particularly excited to be able to share an exclusive interview with recording and touring guitarist Jay Stapley who was the lead guitarist from 1985 – 1987 in Roger Waters K.A.O.S line-up “The Bleeding Heart Band”
We really must send a special note of thanks to Jay for finding the time during his busy schedule and wish him all the best on his run of Tubular Bells shows.
AFG :You first became invoved with Roger during the Pros and Cons tour in which you took over lead guitar duties in 1985, How did this come about, Ive read that this came about through the reccomendation from the great Dave Dundas.
Jay : Yes, I used to do jingles and film sessions for David Dundas and one day he asked me “Did Roger Waters call you?|
“No,” I replied, “Should he have?”
David explained that Roger was David’s wife’s cousin and had asked David at dinner one night if he could recommend a guitarist. It was suggested to me some years later that, having just toured “ The Pros and Cons of Hitch-hiking” with Eric Clapton on guitar, Roger wanted to prove that he could sell tickets without a ‘name’ guitarist in the band so was looking for an unknown player who could do the job.
AFG :Where you a fan of Rogers work prior to this tour and aware that there would be significant pressure for the band and roger to prove themselves worthy on his first live solo debut.
Jay : No and no. One of the secrets to survival as a performer is to learn to ignore pressure. As I was stepping into both Eric’s and David Gilmour’s shoes, I probably should have been scared witless but I was still a young man and arrogant enough to believe that I could do it. Roger also specifically instructed me NOT to copy Dave’s solos but to do my own thing in that style, which is how I play anyway.
AFG :You were brought towards the end of the tour to continue lead guitar duties after the departure of Tim Renwick and Eric Clapton, What gear were you using at the time, did you feel you had to be faithful to tonalites of your predecessors.
Jay : Hmm. That’s an interesting point. Roger was very particular about sound and it led to some friction, as I describe in my forthcoming book. Here’s the excerpt.
Whereas for the previous Pros and Cons tour we had rehearsed in a large sound stage at Shepperton, this time (the Radio KAOS tour) we rehearsed at the billiard room in Roger’s house. The secret to a great electric guitar sound like Gilmour’s is simple: sheer volume. If you play at the right volume, the speakers and the pickups interact to give smooth sustain without too much distortion being necessary. In the enormous sound stage at Shepperton, this was possible: in Roger’s billiard room, it was not. He started talking about my sound being “naff, cheap and shitty” because I was playing at low volume. I knew it would be fine when we got onto large stages, but was unable to convince him, and he and Andy Fairweather-Low persuaded me to hire a vintage Fender Twin, which they immediately said sounded better, though I wasn’t convinced. In the first 2 minutes of the first gig in America, this vintage piece of equipment blew up. Fortunately, I had my old rig on stage because I was using my guitar-synth to play a couple of keyboard parts (which saved Rog having to hire another keyboard player just for two songs) and my tech switched to that rig and let the monitor and front of house engineers know. In the interval, Rog said “The guitar sounds great: see? I told you those old amps are best.” I didn’t say anything at the time, but I still wonder whether I should have spoken up…
Rog was also different on the KAOS tour: maybe his personal life was difficult, the ticket sales weren’t impressive, and I know from conversations with the record company overheard in the dressing room that sales of the record itself were poor…Roger didn’t help that situation by being nasty and vitriolic about his old band mates in the press, and by coincidence they were touring at the same time as us, which must have split ticket sales. Anyway, for whatever reason, the side of him that was charming and funny was less in evidence and the other side of him which took its place is probably best described by an event that happened early in the tour. We got off the plane and were taken to a waiting people carrier for the trip to the hotel.
The driver greeted us:
“Good morning, Roger, and welcome to Chicago.”
Roger replied with a snarl:
“Just shut up and drive.”
AFG :You went on to record on record for the 1986 When The Wind Blows soundtrack in the aftermath of your time on the road, one can assume that you had signed up to the tour knowing there was a record on the cards or was this only discussed after completion of the tour.
Jay : Rog had started talking during the Pros and Cons tour about an idea for a new album based on the idea of Radio: purely aural entertainment as opposed to audio-visual but there was no indication of whether I’d be hired to do it. Although he liked to present us as a band, it was no such thing. We were hired guns who had no say in the creative process apart from our own instrumental parts. He said in an interview before the KAOS tour that he was enjoying being in a band where he didn’t have to pretend that everyone else was as good as him: how to alienate both your old and current band-mates in one fell swoop!
This is the natural state of affairs for us freelancers: the employment morality of rock’n’roll makes mediaeval serfdom look like enlightened social democracy. There is no job security, no sick pay, no guarantees of employment: one day the phone rings and you step into the best gig of your career to date, a month later the phone doesn’t ring anymore and there is no explanation, no compensation, nothing. I must say that on the financial side of things, Roger was the perfect employer. Good money, always paid on the nose. But like most artists, when he takes fresh horses, he shoots the old ones.
AFG :How did the writing process for this work, where you given a guide track or a demo of the material to develop and add your own flare, Certainly listening to the track the Towers of faith there is a clear indication of where the next album was going
Jay : I heard nothing until the call came to go to the studio. That’s normal as well.
AFG : When one listens to your solo track “A Diffrent God” there is a distinctiveness within the rythmn playing that shows similarites with Radio Waves from the 1987 Kaos album, which would suggest that you had a vision and significant ideas in how to construct your guitar parts to drive the songs forward.
Jay : The rhythm guitar on Radio Waves was actually played by Andy Fairweather-Low, I played the lead part. I learned more from Andy than any other guitarist I’ve ever payed with., about sound and space. A fine player and first-class gentleman and definitely an influence on my playing to this day.
The notion of ‘constructing’ parts with some sense of deliberation is not a description of the process which I recognise. It works more like this: I play along with the track and insist that the engineer records my first run at it because I’m flying blind, playing by instinct and reacting to the track. I can rarely remember what I play on these passes, so having it recorded makes it easier when the artist and/or producer say something like “OK: I love what you did in the second verse but the chorus didn’t work for me.” If it’s recorded, I can listen back and learn it.The process continues in this way, gradually finding what works and recording it with the mixture of precision and feel which is needed in recording. Sometimes the artist/producer has their own pre-conceived idea of a part they want so I try to fulfill that brief but also offer my own ideas if it seems appropriate.
Sometimes they think they know what they want, but don’t really know at all. Sometime in the mid-1980s, I was doing a session for Roger at a studio in West London. I don’t remember the track, it may have been a demo of something that appeared on a later album, but he wanted some lead guitar fills. The style was crying out for some Country-style licks but he said even before we started working on it “anything but Country” (my reputation as a Country specialist had preceded me.) I tried a few things: gentle Steve Cropper style soul licks, English folk-tinged stuff, blues… nope. None of it worked. Finally in desperation I played a Country-style fill: his hand shot up and he cried “that’s it! Perfect. More like that!”
AFG :How does it work for yourself in terms of playing, do you approach a session with a vision in your head of what your going to lay out on the arrangement or do you have more than one idea in your head, how do you elimnate ideas to get to the final take.
Jay : See above. It’s also common, as Gilmour describes his solo on “Comfortably Numb,” to do several solo takes on different tracks on a song and then compile the final solo from these takes. I don’t know if other musicians take the same approach: I’m sure some do, but there is very little pre-deliberation in the process. What we do is simple; in mechanical terms we move our fingers around on bits of wood and metal but the real secret and value of what we do is to add emotional energy to that of the other performances. The best session musicians play the song, not their instrument. For a better explanation of what I mean, see my blog post here http://jaystapley.co.uk/how-to-play-the-song-not-your-instrument/.
AFG :You were the primary guitar player on the 1987 Radio K.A.O.S album and subsequent tour, within this period of Rogers career you are very much complimentary with your playing in that your allowing space for the narrative and other instrumentation, Something which doesnt appear as prominent musically on any releases after your departure, Is this a concious descision, could you possibly explain the lengths of control that you have over the parts you have written and recorded
Jay : The secret for me: everything is built around the vocal and if you serve the vocal, you serve the song. I was not the primary guitarist: Andy and I shared (in my view) equal billing. The decisions about where space is left is made by the producer, in this case Ian Ritchie, who still plays sax in Roger’s band and who co-produced two of my solo records in the 1990s.
AFG :How do you decide what your tone is going to be like for each tour and session predominately we are talking about 1985 – 87 but this question isnt specifically about just that period, How do you decide wether this needs more gain or this needs a cleaner sound. You always seem to just nail the balance right on the head.
Jay : Some of it depends on what gear I have at the time. The lead guitar sounds on “Home” are a Roland GR100, a great piece of kit which is sadly not available any more.
AFG : Certainly when listening to the studio recordings of Kaos and comparing them to footage that circulates of the subsequent tour there is a rawer live energetic feel, This may be a perfect example of production techniques within the studio and the recording aspect but on a generality do you tweak things diffrently or play with more attack and aggresion when live, Is it a diffrent mindset.
Jay : It is a different mindset to some degree. We are always aware of the impossibility of reproducing the painstakingly polished sound of a recording made in an acoustically-perfect environment in a hall designed for ice-hockey which echoes like a swimming-pool. I learned from Rog that playing fast in an arena or stadium is a waste of time; all the audience will hear is a blur of noise because the detail gets swamped by the natural reverb of the hall. I discovered over the years how to find out what makes the hall ‘sing’ Long bent notes are ideal, and different halls have different resonances so in one room a note of A will last longer than in another hall where notes of C for example might be more resonant. Most guitarists love the Westfalenhalle in Dortmund, Germany, whereas drummers hate that room.
I personally dislike playing London’s Albert Hall, and I’m currently learning how to make the Royal Festival Hall sing as I’m performing the Tubular Bells Anniversary Experience shows there. The best sports arena I know of for amplified music is the SAP Arena in Mannheim. When it was commissioned, the owners knew that gigs would provide regular income so the architects we instructed to treat the hall acoustically with this in mind. It’s the only arena I know of in which the bass doesn’t sound like a toneless rumble. The situation in live music venues is not helped by engineers who start by making the kick drum sound like a small thermo-nuclear device going off and then shoe-horn everything else in around it.
AFG :What equipment did you use during the recording of Kaos did you take any of the studio rig on the tour.
Jay : See above comments on equipment. When the vintage Twin amp blew up my old rig was a Roland JC120 with a Roland GP8 effects processor. The most unusual thing I took was my guitar-to-MIDI system which enabled me to play the synthesiser pads on “Four Minutes “ which saved Roger having to hire another keys player.
AFG :Do you have any memorable positive reflections on your period with Roger, do you have a highlight, would you have done anything diffrently.
Jay : It was the opportunity of a lifetime for a young player like I was at the time. Would I have done anything differently? Yes: when his bullying started to be directed at me I should have taken a quiet moment to ask him to give me a break for a week or so to regain my equilibrium because it started to affect my playing.
Another excerpt from my book:
This is hard to write about: it was the first and only time the dream turned sour for me, and I still occasionally dream about having the opportunity to put it right. It started out badly (with the matter of my sound), and deteriorated from there.
As the tour progressed, his mood seemed to worsen and as an eager young pup only too ready to put his head above the parapet, I became the target of his bullying. Having someone flick a wet towel at you in the dressing room doesn’t really help your self-esteem, though it’s entirely possible that mine needed deflating a bit by this time, but it was the verbal treatment which got to me. One of his favourite themes was my love of technology: I’d bought a Tandy laptop, on which I kept a tour diary (of which nothing survives) and used a programmable effects unit instead of traditional pedals, which were both targets for his scorn. I forbore from mentioning that I’d saved him having to hire an extra musician by covering some synth parts on the guitar synth.
I subsequently came to understand that his record company had put pressure on him to make a more “modern” sounding record than “Pros And Cons” so Ian Ritchie, who was one of the earliest adopters of computers in music, had been hired to produce the “Radio KAOS” album. He brought his Acorn (BBC) computer into the Billiard Room control room and made an excellent record, contemporary-sounding but showcasing Roger’s usual brilliant lyrics and weaving together the thread of the story of a young paraplegic boy who discovers how to tap into the world’s military computer systems from the confines of his wheelchair. Rog often said how much he hated its technological bias, and I must have been a constant reminder of it.
To be fair, I didn’t handle the situation as well as I could have done: I should have talked to him and said something like “Rog, I know you mean it as banter, but I’m finding this a little hard to deal with and I don’t want it to affect my playing on stage, so could you leave me alone for a week or so while I regain my equilibrium, please?” But I didn’t: I tried to give as good as I got, which of course only made it worse, and occasionally self-medicated with the endless free beer in the dressing room (though only ever after the show, never before.) It got to the point where a couple of the other band members expressed their sympathy for what I was suffering, but no-one spoke up on my behalf, and I can’t really blame them: it would have drawn his fire onto them instead. I was somewhat comforted some years later to read Nick Mason’s book in which he said himself that Roger could be a shocking bully, but at the time I was in a lonely place far from home.
My favourite anecdote from the tour was this:
The stage set was minimal: black drapes, black risers.. I mean, how much more black can you get? There was a door in the middle of the backdrop through which we would enter and leave the stage, but it had another use…
Every night at a particular point in the show, a video of “Arnold Layne” (the early Pink Floyd hit) was played on the round screen, and we would go to sit at a cafe table complete with a sunshade and chairs in one corner of the stage. The tour manager, Dave Russell, would bring a tray of drinks to us through the stage door, serve them, and depart the way he’d entered. One night, we sat down at the table, the door opened and a Dominoes Pizza delivery man emerged blinking into the lights, froze momentarily as 20,000 fans screamed their approval, then gathered himself, walked to the table and delivered his pizzas with aplomb. He even found his confidence sufficiently to wave to his adoring public as he left through the stage door.
As for more general observations:
The stories of Roger’s difficult relationship with fans are well-documented elsewhere, and I can’t add to them except to say that maybe wearing mirror sunglasses and yelling at the audience to be quiet when they started screaming and whistling in the quiet songs may not have been the best approach. I also came to realise something about American audiences: in the smaller towns the punters didn’t come out to see a particular artist, but simply went to “the rock show” on Saturday night, regardless of who was playing, so instead of playing to fans who knew what to expect, we were playing to fans who wanted what they got every Saturday night from touring acts like George Thorogood, either of the Winter brothers, The Doobies, etc.: good rocking for two hours with questions from the artists no more challenging than “are you having a good time?” This discrepancy became especially clear in towns where there was a large military tech employer, such as Lockheed, because there was a section in the show where Roger railed against Reagan and the military-industrial complex.
I remember being somewhat shaken when one night in one of these towns empty Wild Turkey bourbon bottles started arriving on the stage with some velocity. I abandoned my usual position at the front of the stage to take refuge behind the drum riser.
But it was a marvellous experience on the whole. I learned that I could play with the big boys. A favourite moment of the tour was stepping onto the stage at Madison Square Gardens. One of my play-every-day records as a kid was “Get Yer YaYas Out” recorded live at the venue by The Rolling Stones, and I was moist-eyed as I took the same stage.
This show at Madison Square Gardens was also memorable because it was the first time Clare Torry reprised her recorded vocal improvisations on “The Great Gig In The Sky” live on stage: goose-bumps all round.
Our heartfelt and sincere thanks go out to Jay for contributing in our celebration of K.A.O.S.
Radio K.A.O.S. is the second solo studio album by English rock musician and former Pink Floyd member Roger Waters. Released on 15 June 1987 in the United Kingdom and June 16 in the United States, it was Waters’ first solo album after his formal split from Pink Floyd in 1985. Like his previous and future studio albums and many works of his during his time with Pink Floyd, the album is a concept album based on many key topical subjects of the late 1980s, including monetarism and its effect on citizens, popular culture of the time, and the events and consequences of the Cold War. It also makes criticisms of Margaret Thatcher’s government, much like Pink Floyd’s The Final Cut, another album conceived by Waters.
The album follows Billy, a mentally and physically disabled man from Wales, forced to live with his uncle David in Los Angeles after his brother Benny was sent to prison after an act intended to support striking coal miners results in the death of a taxi driver, following his dismissal from his mining job due to “market forces.” The album explores Billy’s mind and view on the world through an on-air conversation between him and Jim, a disc jockey at a local fictitious radio station named Radio KAOS.
In our six part celebration we will be speaking to members of the recording and touring band, The producer of the album aswell as showcasing never before seen photography from the supporting tour, along with a few surprises thrown in as well.
In the first installment we have an article written by AFG Correspondant Richard Hobo. Richard is a freelance journalist and writer and has contributed to the site with various articles over the last year and in this brand new article which has been named “Getting Back To Radio Kaos” which is his personal view of on the impact of the album.
This is one celebration not to be missed, Keep your eyes peeled for our second instalment.
GETTING BACK TO RADIO KAOS
By Richard Hobo
I remember the summer of 1987 pretty well, even now. I had a twenty-year old Volkswagen Type 3 with a Blaupunkt cassette player, the sun was always shining and there were plenty of parties to go to. All the big albums of the time were on heavy rotation at said parties and my hometown’s burgeoning FM radio station; Def Leppard’s Hysteria, Michael Jackson’s Bad, Diesel and Dust by Midnight Oil, even Out of the Blue by Debbie Gibson. My brother was obsessed with Guns and Roses’ Appetite for Destruction, but I was obsessed with something altogether different, something that wasn’t even on the radio, even though it was about radio. I’m not sure of the exact release date of Radio KAOS in New Zealand, but a friend of mine played a prank on me, saying he had seen it in our local record store, but they only had a couple of copies and if I wanted one, I’d better get there quick. I made a special trip, only to find nothing. I found Pink Flag by Wire, Dionne Warwick and whatever else was categorised under W, but no Radio KAOS. I was too shy in those days to ask the staff when I might be able to buy this album and I was so incensed, I played a prank of my own as payback to my friend, which is still spoken about today.
What I did have though, was the twelve-inch single of Radio Waves, complete with the non-album track Going to Live in LA on the flip side, which still contains some of my favourite Roger Waters lyrics;
Wave said Molly
Ben waved his cap
At two eyes looking through a little slot
Like someone dying in a letterbox
I liked it, it was modern and different and what’s more, it was of the time. Growing up, I’d heard plenty of stories from older relatives and their friends about how they remembered when Wish You Were Here had been released, the tales of the impact of The Dark Side of the Moon, all of which I had been alive for, but not been aware of. I had just turned nine years of age when The Wall had been released, so Radio KAOS was MY big album moment. The sound was modern and more accessible than The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking and Roger himself had a whole new image to present. Gone was the long, greasy hair of the seventies, replaced by a much shorter cut, but still with a bit of length at the back. His wild, staring eyes were now hidden by a pair of sunglasses that seemed to be perpetually locked onto his face in every press photo and the jeans and T-shirts had been replaced by a sharp suit. I followed suit and had my long locks snipped off, (after all, Peter Gabriel was sporting a similar look) and I seem to remember buying a pair of black trousers with a little bright green fleck through the material, just like the morse code pattern on the Radio KAOS cover. I found a cheap pair of fake Ray Ban Aviators, (later upgrading to the real thing) and had more than one person tell me I looked like a young Roger Waters.
I was saving up for a hi-fi system of my own, but I played a lot of music on my car stereo system. I religiously scoured music magazines for mention of Radio KAOS and Roger Waters. I particularly liked one pic I found of Roger, posing sternly in front of a speaker cabinet, Ray Bans locked in place, as po-faced as the twelve-inch subwoofers looming behind him. This was serious music, nothing at all like the bright, splashy hair metal being churned out of Los Angeles that all of my friends were into. I found an advert for Roger’s upcoming KAOS show at London’s Wembley Arena on November 21st in the NME Magazine that my local record shop had out for customers to read. I excitedly told my sister about it and she secretly got hold of the paper and had the ad blown up, retouched and framed just in time for my seventeenth birthday. I still have it today.
My sister had just returned from Los Angeles and knew who Jim Ladd was and all about the demise of the KMET radio station which forms part of the story of Radio KAOS. She was also starting a magazine and we had a large graphic arts camera in the basement which I utilised to create a Radio KAOS logo on clear plastic to go over the non-functioning clock in my VW. I even coloured it in with a green felt tip pen so that it glowed green when I switched the lights on at night. I bought the video EP of Radio KAOS, so that I no longer had to wait patiently through all the eighties video dross to catch of glimpse of Roger Waters in his latest video and a glimpse was all we got too, as in the video for Radio Waves, old Rog’ is occasionally seen in the background of his video, sitting in a plush leather chair, poorly lit in a pale green glow while a gaggle of much younger musicians and actors prance around a recording studio. Well, he was the grand old age of 43 at the time.
One friend of mine knew a bloke who had a DJ spot at a local pub/nightclub. One night, we eagerly presented him with the twelve version of Radio Waves. He played it to himself on his headphones, jumping ahead through the song three or four times. “Ok everybody, here it is, the new single from one of the guys out of Pink Floyd, Roger Walters, (yes, he got his name wrong) and Radio Waves…” The patrons of the Westown Bar and Grill stayed glued to their chairs as the pumping bass line and pulsing beat of Radio Waves rung out across the empty, illuminated dance floor. I suspect that they were far more concerned for the welfare of their fresh perms and crumpled pastel fashions than the new song from Pink Floyd’s former bass player. Once the record was finished, it was slid back into its sleeve and handed back to us. “Here you go boys, unless you’re going to start drinking a lot of beer, you should probably leave.”
There were a few excerpts from Radio KAOS that did however find their way into the vernacular of our clique; “I’d like to be home with my monkey and my dog,” “Sole has no eyes,” “Four sledge hammerhead sharks, and what a surprise, eighty-four crabs no red snapper!” “They don’t care, shut up, play the record.” I used to say that last one a lot when listening to FM radio DJs who always insisted on talking over the introductions of songs. My brother surprised me by wanting to recreate The Triumphant Return of the Fish Report With a Beat as part of an audition tape he was making to apply for a radio station job.
I read everything I could find about Radio KAOS, although the concept did remind me of two films; War Games and True Stories. The first one was a story about a kid who hacks American military computers and almost launches a real nuclear attack, while the Talking Heads movie True Stories featured a character called Radiohead who hears radio waves in his head, just like Billy, the main character of Radio KAOS. I had been to Los Angeles and loved it and had also spent time in Cambridge, England, living my aunt and uncle, so the story certainly had a resonance with me.
I was also reading as much as I could about Roger’s activities, the demise and resurrection of his former band and his role in the Floyd Wars. I was firmly in the Waters Camp and was pissed off with Gilmour, Mason, Wright and Associates and their apparent cynical, commercial hijacking of Pink Floyd’s back catalogue. I still bought A Momentary Lapse of Reason, (mainly so I could say that Radio KAOS was obviously better), and I hitched an overnight ride in a truck to go see them play at Western Springs stadium in Auckland in February 1988, their one and only visit to New Zealand.
Roger himself has since dismissed Radio KAOS and said that he and producer Ian Ritchie, “Really fucked that record up. We tried too hard to make it sound modern. I allowed myself to get pushed down roads that were uncomfortable for me. I should never have made that record.” I remember reading that Roger had wanted to use a particular guitar sound and that Ian Ritchie had dismissed it as sounding “Too old-fashioned.” Things like that had caused Roger to hear alarm bells, which he sadly ignored, although Radio KAOS still has some great moments. Roger toured the album around America and Europe, but apart from closing his performance of The Wall in Berlin in 1990 with The Tide is Turning (After Live Aid), has never played any of the songs since. I recently listened to an interview Roger did around the time of the release of Radio KAOS and he refused to discuss what the album was about. The father of the concept album refusing to discuss his latest concept? What the hell? At least for one kid living thousands of miles away on the other side of the world, Radio KAOS had a big impact.
Curated for your reading pleasure, we are pleased to announce the addition of nearly 50 new interviews and articles to our already extensive library.
From 1967 right through until recent years, you can read interviews with Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Nick Mason, Rick Wright & Syd Barrett.
In addition we feature dozens of interviews from some of those associated with Pink Floyd, such as Peter Watts, James Guthrie, Alan Parsons, Venetta Fields, Davy O’List, Clive Metcalfe, Harry Waters, Durga McBroom, Snowy White, Jon Carin, Dave Kilminster and many many others.
Go on, knock yourself out and be prepared to settle down to many hours of reading pleasure! Open Sesame
Rockonteurs is a podcast all about the real stories behind real music.
Presented by Spandau Ballet’s Gary Kemp, who wrote and performed megahits like ‘Gold’ and ‘True’, and Guy Pratt, a bass player who shaped songs for the likes of Madonna and Pink Floyd, you’ll hear exclusive stories of life on the road, in the studio and what really happened behind the scenes from artists who wrote, performed and produced the some of the biggest classic rock and pop tracks of all time.
Rockonteurs is a podcast all about the real stories behind real music.
This weeks upcoming episode is Number 46 and features guest Joe Elliott
Rockonteurs is a podcast all about the real stories behind real music.
Rob Verhorst’s career spans well over four decades. David Gilmour, Roger Waters, Rick Wright and Nick Mason have been a common thread in his working years. The gentlemen of Pink Floyd, as a group but later also solo, often appear before the lens of the Rotterdam (pop) photographer. A first encounter in Sportpaleis Ahoy’ in Rotterdam in 1977 makes Verhorst decide to combine his two passions – photography and music – and to make it his profession. His picture of a deflated pig in Ahoy’ also inadvertently reveals a unique way of working. Verhorst not only goes for the big picture, but knows – like no other – how to capture details that only someone with an eye for detail and a strong urge for perfection can capture.
Curated for your reading pleasure, we are pleased to announce the addition of nearly 50 new interviews and articles to our already extensive library.