The scurvy fucker wobbled next to the rails of the highest tier of the amphitheatre, lips pursed into a teased crevice that looked suspiciously like a smile. Yes. The crazed bastard was definitely dancing.
This sort of behaviour may be acceptable in the street, in a roller disco, or even in a zany advert for chewing gum or tampons. But in the honeycombed outpost of sponsored pop that is the modern arena, it’s the sort of scurrilous incitement that’s likely to get you dragged off and beaten with rolled-up £15 posters behind a £4 hot dog stand.
The citizenry would no doubt awake the next morning to vague bulletins denouncing the odd interloper as a throwback to the Arena Wars, an isolated pocket of resistance in a battle that ended after Carling outlawed the festival picnic basket and the government’s licensing stormtroopers squeezed the pips out of the landlord’s Bands Night kitty. In their wastebaskets, they’d find the protest flyers they’d gingerly accepted the night before, full of stark images of boarded-up music meccas stained with planning applications for flats and pictures of parka-coated urchins starving for gigs outside DJ-automated locals.
They’d see Photoshopped hell-visions of the privileged few, the Scissor Sisters, James Blunts and Girls Alouds, the mulch-powered poster children of the revolution, spooling their back catalogues into a sea of merchandised £22 t-shirts, £3.70 Becks beakers and glimmering multi-mecha-megapixel picture phones.
But you’d never see Pink Floyd or ROGER WATERS on these flyers. Because the psychedelic British divorcees don’t merely fill an arena but bloody well go and justify its existence as well. The Floyd’s albums are made for spaces bigger than God, lacquered with more flashing lights than a planetarium light show manned by the Tasmanian Devil. The robotic replication of each soaring solo may have justifiably inflamed a generation of ‘70s teens into sporting safety pins on their noses and thrashing in “I Hate Pink Floyd” t-shirts, but once you’re in the orbit of The Dark Side of the Moon you’ll be howling at the domed ceiling like a captive yeti.
The 1973 concept masterpiece will surely always be remembered as one of the most beautiful creatures ever birthed from progressive rock’s swollen belly. But while its creator Roger Waters can do epic better than Ben Hur, he does subtle like The Hulk drunkenly trying to play Jenga. The first half of Roger’s “solo” O2 arena show features precisely one floating astronaut, one shower of green confetti, one giant stage-mounted screensaver and one air-loitering pig daubed with slogans such as “All Religions Divide” and a voting box for presidential hopeful Barack Obama.
There’s also a treacle-clogged 2006 creation called Leaving Beirut, in which Roger spews the heart-wrenching tale of his hitch-hiking adventures in Lebanon with enough vigorous hand-wringing to take at least three centimetres of bone off the palms. But there’s a method behind the formula. Anyone left dry-heaving from Roger’s teen warzone escapades – complete with their own off-colour comic strip spread – would be buoyed by the genius of Wish You Were Here and the poignant reminder of former band member Syd Barrett scratched into Shine On You Crazy Diamond.
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The inevitable floating pig closed the first half of the set, bathed in the glow of a hundred cursed mobile phone screens. But it would take the worst kind of cultureless swine to tap buttons through the second half, in which Roger unveiled his holy Death Star of an album in full.
From the first strains of Speak To Me, the live sermon of The Dark Side of the Moon is a performance you can enjoy with your eyes crammed full of visual swirls and floating prisms, or just swaying with your eyes shut like a tree in a light cyclone. None of Roger’s massed musicians meander from the chosen path, playing each note as God and The Floyd intended. But there’s a holy war in block 101 over how to receive the word. One young disciple rises from his seat with outstretched hands, jars at the angry yells of the seated throng behind, whips out two fingers and is nearly struck down by several silent prayers willing him to be taken away by uniformed enforcers.
But it’s impossible not to be moved by the encore, when the strains of Comfortably Numb finally flood through The O2’s crisp, clean speaker system. It’s a beautiful, glorious, fucking celestial moment, where nearly all of this shimmering church rise to their feet. Pointing, waving, singing, swaying to this bloody monstrous tune. This ten-minute tear-syringing awakening in which Greenwich’s new arena reminds everyone who’s bitterly parted with around £50 for a ticket that there are astounding moments that only a huge, polished, grand and modern arena can give you, just as there are bands that can only thrive in vast spaces rather than tiny atmospheric Clubs, Caverns and Underworlds.
And then you open your eyes for a second, and you see some rats taking advantage of the solo to beat the traffic home. I hope the arena footsoldiers shot every last one of them.
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