Roger Waters gives students The Wall experience
Students from Ipswich West State Special School choir join Roger Waters onstage in Brisbane for Pink Floyd’s biggest song.
In a small room on the fourth floor of the Brisbane Entertainment Centre, a dozen schoolchildren are rehearsing walk-on roles for one of the world’s biggest touring rock productions. Before them stand several of their teachers, as well as an energetic young American woman who is instructing the group. The song playing from one of the teachers’ mobile phones is recognisable to most adults in the English-speaking world as the children revise a dance routine they’ve been diligently learning for days. Soon they will perform this routine in front of thousands of people while wearing orange prison jumpsuits, with black hoods covering their faces.
From time to time, the walls vibrate with deep bass frequencies as Roger Waters — singer, songwriter, bassist and co-founder of British rock band Pink Floyd — runs through a soundcheck with his band downstairs. “When you’re out there, it’s going to be really loud,” says Kate Izor, tour photographer and part-time children’s dance choreographer, as the children stand in silence, heads bowed and hooded.
“I know it’s hot and it’s dark but you’re doing great.”
At each stop on his Us + Them world tour — which has included 146 shows in North America, Europe, South America and Oceania — Waters has requested that a dozen young people appear on stage during the performance of Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2), Pink Floyd’s best-known song and the lead single from its 1979 album The Wall. Its famous refrain — sung by a British school choir — includes the lines: “We don’t need no education / We don’t need no thought control.”
For the two Brisbane shows on Tuesday and Wednesday this week, several layers of decision-making had brought these 12 children to the venue. First, concert promoter Live Nation asked children’s charity Variety to source local performance groups in each city. Variety approached Ipswich West Special School, offering the two Brisbane dates, and principal Renae Somerville gladly accepted.
“Roger was looking for young people that faced some disadvantage,” Somerville says. “The request was for students aged between 10 to 15 years to perform on stage. All of the students have an intellectual disability and face many challenges as a result of that. But we think every one of our kids is a superstar, and now they’ll get the chance to be just that.”
Waters is donating $500 from each show to Variety, which will pass the money on to the Ipswich West Special School parents and citizens’ association. That $1000 will help with the purchase of a bus for the school’s 88 students, which in turn will assist with their transport to work placements, to ensure they’re prepared for employment after their education.
At 5.30pm, Izor leads the group downstairs, and as the orange-clad troupe passes through the busy backstage area, Samantha Brooks — school P&C president and the mother of one of the performers, 10-year-old Kiara — confides: “I’m starting to get nervous for them.”
Inside the concert arena, they are greeted by the sight of thousands of empty seats, dozens of black electrical cables snaking from ceiling to floor and a white-haired 74-year-old centrestage. Waters wears a black shirt and grey slacks, with a black bass guitar slung so comfortably over his left shoulder that it seems he was born wearing the instrument.
His band is absent as they run through a few rehearsals to a recording of the song, with Izor and the teachers dancing along to the routine from the pit at the foot of the stage. Despite the backing track, Waters sings and plays along to the notes that propel a timeless rock anthem he has performed hundreds of times before.
Having stood on stage before millions of people during his five-decade career, this man knows a bit about stagecraft and about throwing shapes that can be seen by everyone in the venue. He mentions the importance of the children raising fists at a 45-degree angle, for instance, rather than straight above their heads.
“Would it be possible to be a bit more animated,” Waters says into the microphone after the first run-through, “ ’cause there will be 9000 people in here, watching?” He smiles. He must know how overwhelming this experience is for a bunch of schoolkids from Ipswich. One of the boys closest to Waters keeps looking over his shoulder in disbelief, clocking the biggest screen he’s ever seen.
Later, after a final rehearsal of the full performance — a seven-minute medley of three tracks, The Happiest Days of Our Lives and Another Brick in the Wall, parts 2 and 3 — he instructs them to wave to the upper sections before leaving the stage. “Don’t forget them, they’re in the cheap seats,” Waters says. “They deserve your attention.”
During soundcheck, Waters is patient with the children, even though their timing and co-ordination are less than perfect. He has collaborated with young performers on many previous occasions, including on his three-year world tour of The Wall, which visited Australia in early 2012. He knows the power of their presence and reminds them of that fact. “They will love you,” he says into the microphone. “You’ll be the hit of the night, I promise you.”
As an intermission is scheduled immediately after their performance, Waters tells the children that he’ll take a moment to pose with them offstage for some “photos for the family album”.
As the students exit stage right, a small boy with spiky hair high-fives Waters with some force, and the artist shakes his hand with a grin, feigning injury.
With several hours to fill between soundcheck and showtime, the children return to their fourth-floor room to change out of their stage costumes and eat snacks, play with iPads and calm their nerves. “It’s a mixed bag of kids,” says senior teacher Laura Bucciarelli as she casts her eyes across her young charges. “One of the girls was petrified and teary putting on the hood at first — but now a lot of them have come out of their shell. Some of them are autistic; some are just intellectually impaired. They’ve all got their own little quirks.”
Bucciarelli says their parents are more excited than the kids, which is not surprising given the vintage of the artist in question. “I was trying to let them know how big Roger Waters is,” she says. “I asked, ‘Who are your favourite singers?’ They said (Justin) Bieber and Eminem. I said, ‘OK, well, they’re not even as famous as this guy.’ But they just have no idea.”
The students are the lucky ones whose names were drawn out of a hat for the 12 spots available. Seth, 15, was a late addition after he badgered his teacher to be involved. “Mum told me to go,” says Seth, laughing. “I’m doing whatever my mum tells me.”
At 9.10pm, 50 minutes into the visually spectacular concert, the children in orange jumpsuits are led to the side of the stage during the final minutes of Wish You Were Here, another of Pink Floyd’s well-known songs. As they walk on to take their places under the cover of darkness, a classic bit of misdirection is under way: the sound of a helicopter fills the arena, before a wandering spotlight settles on a random audience member. “You! Yes, you!” says the voice of an angry schoolmaster, while Waters points down at them. “Stand still, laddie!”
For three minutes, the children stand perfectly still amid the flashing lights, heads bowed, as one of the most distinctive songs in the history of rock music unfolds at high volume around them. Then, on cue, they remove their black hoods to show their faces.
One of the smaller performers misses the cue, only to be gently prompted by the next child. On the big screen, the camera slowly pans from left to right of stage to give each student their moment in the spotlight.
The children remove their prison jumpsuits to reveal black shirts emblazoned with the word “Resist”, then begin dancing to the beat. Confusion reigns: a couple of the kids are locked into the moves they’ve been practising, with eyes on Izor and their teachers at the foot of the stage, while others appear overwhelmed. David Gilmour’s distinctive guitar solo — played note-perfectly here by long-time Waters collaborator David Kilminster — dominates the sound mix while Waters grooves along on the spot, driving the rhythm with his bass guitar.
As a group, the dozen kids are out of sync. Some go left when they’re supposed to be going right and vice versa, but it doesn’t matter. No one in the audience cares because, for the seven minutes they’re on stage tonight, these children are the stars.
Waters was right: 12 ordinary students from a special school south of Brisbane have become the hit of the night. Hundreds of smartphones are raised by the audience to capture their appearance, and as the children bow and wave from centre stage, both the crowd and the band members are on their feet, cheering. “Bravo, bravo, bravo!” says Waters, who trades a few fist-bumps with the children as they exit stage right.
Backstage, Izor picks up her camera to capture some snapshots for their family albums. One child asks about his in-ear monitors while another tells Waters that he likes the song. “Oh, thank you,” replies the former Pink Floyd frontman. When the kids return to the room on the fourth floor, sweating and elated in their “Resist”shirts, Bucciarelli announces with a grin: “You guys were awesome. Give yourselves a clap.”
Inside the Brisbane Entertainment Centre, the show’s second set must go on. But for the performers from Ipswich West Special School, reality quickly intervenes: Bucciarelli negotiates bathroom visits before getting behind the wheel of a 12-seater van to deliver everyone home to their families. Replaying in their minds on the journey to their beds will be the unforgettable sights and sounds of their bit parts in a gigantic, world-spanning concert production.
In a small but significant way, Waters has altered the lives of these children, and of every child who has ever appeared on stage with him.
If nothing else, thanks to their seven minutes in the spotlight — as well as a repeat performance the following night — these children now take ownership of a story that few others can tell.
Roger Waters’s Us + Them national tour continues in Melbourne (Saturday, Sunday and Tuesday), Adelaide (February 16) and Perth (February 20).
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