A “problematic” performance by Roger Waters on Sunday at the London Palladium recently drew criticism. Although Waters’ concert was advertised as a “Dark Side of the Moon Redux” performance, the former Pink Floyd bassist allegedly arrived 15 minutes late. He then began reading passages from his upcoming book, “Dark Side of the Moon: Memoirs of a Lanky Prick,” rather than commencing to play the set list. The fans, it seems, began to become apprehensive after these chapters took longer than anticipated. Even a music journalist who was there at the performance, Will Hodgkinson, commented in The Times on why the audience became “bored”: “In one tale, a duck settled in the house of the family.
Another started off with the promise of remembering Syd Barrett, the band’s first leader, but ended up saying nothing more than that Barrett composed a lot of songs and had a childlike demeanor. Fans reportedly began to protest Waters by leaving the concert when the reading session about his dogs continued uninterrupted for more than twenty minutes, according to the Daily Mail. After finishing his reading session, Roger reportedly responded to the angry fans by saying, “F*ck off,” and the night continued with the rocker’s scheduled setlist. The bill had explicitly indicated that the first half would be devoted to Waters’ reading and the second 50-minute half would be the real musical performance, according to reports from Pink Floyd news outlet Brain Damage.
