Roger Waters wants you to see him from all angles when he brings his new tour to Miami
Roger Waters has played behind a wall. He’s played with and without Pink Floyd. He’s even played Miami amid protests.
One thing he’s never done is play a concert tour in-the-round.
So that’s what Waters has planned for his new 2020 tour, Roger Waters: This Is Not a Drill.
The 31-city tour, which pulls into downtown Miami’s AmericanAirlines Arena (or whatever it will be called soon) on Aug. 15, will be staged in-the-round to give concert goers a central focal point from wherever they are seated in a venue.
“It’ll be a new show. It will be no-holds-barred. My work is to think, ‘Well, how can I make rock & roll more interesting or theatrical or exciting or visual or musical or whatever?’ That’s what I’ve spent the last 50 years doing, expressing myself,” Roger Waters told Rolling Stones of the upcoming This Is Not a Drill tour.
The North American tour opens in Pittsburgh on July 8, takes in several Canadian dates, and closes in Dallas on Oct. 3.
Tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. Friday, Jan. 31 at rogerwaters.com.
There is one other Florida date — Aug. 13 at Orlando’s Amway Center.
Bet on the concert being colorful.
Waters, for instance, was among the first to employ three-dimensional sonics on a vinyl recording when he masterminded Pink Floyd’s 1983 album, “The Final Cut.” The work, which was highly critical of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher — not unlike the anti-Trump stance the rock star takes today — was his sequel, of sorts, to “The Wall.” “The Final Cut” was also his last album as a member of the group.
For his last tour, Us + Them in 2017, which supported his last solo album, “Is This the Life We Really Want?,” Billboard opined: “the most striking cinematic theatrics ever employed on a rock stage. There should be Oscars for this kind of work.”
Not everyone was so thrilled, though.
When Us + Them played the AmericanAirlines Arena in July 2017, the Greater Miami Jewish Federation took out an ad in the Miami Herald urging sponsors to pull out of supporting the tour over comments Waters made that compared Israeli treatment of Palestinians to both Nazi Germany and South African apartheid.
Waters, whose music, both solo and with Pink Floyd, often veered political, addressed previous controversies on a Facebook post in August 2013.
“I am anti-war, anti-apartheid, anti-racist, pro human rights, pro peace and pro self-determination for all peoples,” Waters wrote. “I am not anti-Israel or anti-Semitic.”
