Roger Waters veröffentlichte 2004 „To Kill The Child & Leaving Beirut“ auf seiner Website

Es war eine angenehme Überraschung, als Roger Waters am 7. September 2004 auf seiner Website zwei neue Songs zum Download veröffentlichte. Ja, so was gab es. Leaving Beirut war Bestandteil der Songliste im ersten Teil seiner Dark Side Of The Moon Tour von 2006 bis 2008.

In einem Radio-Interview, das Waters am 8. September 2004 gab, sagte er folgendes über seine neuen Songs.

TO KILL THE CHILD

Bob Buchmann: OK, how ’bout we play one of the two new Roger Waters songs in just a moment.

ROGER WATERS: Sounds good to me.

Bob Buchmann: This is New York’s only classic rock station, Q104.3, I’m Bob Buchmann, and our special guest is Roger Waters, co-founder of course of Pink Floyd and a solo artist. And as the latter he has just created two new songs; Leaving Beirut and this one, To Kill The Child, in response to the invasion of Iraq. When did you do this? When did this hit you? When did you create these songs Roger?

ROGER WATERS: Well immediately after the US and Great Britain invaded Iraq, I was so disturbed by that kind of lack of concern for international law and also for the people on the ground. Clearly I disagreed with the invasion. I’ve always emphasized with the innocents who get caught-up in these conflicts around political and religious ideologies. And so this song I wrote is about both fundamental religious and political extremism and how much I disapprove of both those things and how spurious sometimes our motives are for political acts in general and military acts in particular. How what we blithely refer to as collateral damage very often is actually the killing of innocent children.

Bob Buchmann: It is New York’s only classic rock station, Q104.3, of course that is Pink Floyd on the Billboard charts of course with, you know, that unbelievable Dark Side Of The Moon album for more than 15 years and before that Roger Waters solo To Kill The Child. With Andy Fairweather on guitar what a tasty song that is and obviously lyrically there’s a powerful message, but musically that’s a tasty song.

ROGER WATERS: Well, thank you.

LEAVING BEIRUT

Bob Buchmann: And if you’d like to hear how Roger expresses that musically you can go to Roger “dash” Waters.com and hear these two new songs. In fact Roger, how ’bout we play the second of them right now?

ROGER WATERS: OK, why not. Do you want a preamble on that?

Bob Buchmann: Please.

ROGER WATERS: It’s a short story that I wrote about 20 years ago that describes a journey that I made from Beirut back to London. Well it describes the first night of me hitch hiking. I was taken in by an Arab couple who were extraordinarily hospitable and kind to me and I’ve thought of them often, since, in the intervening years with all the trouble that there’s been in the Middle East in general and in The Lebanon specifically, and it struck me that after we invaded Iraq that we are tending to demonize the Arab in a general way, and I’ve met a lot of these people and I think it’s really important that we try and accept people as human beings not withstanding, you know, what their ethnical cultural background might be. So this is kind of what that songs about.

To Kill The Child & Leaving Beirut

Label: Columbia
Veröffentlichung: 7.9.2004
Format: CD Single, Stream

Tracks

1. To Kill The Child 3:31
2. Leaving Beirut 12:30

Musiker:

• Roger Waters: Vocals, Guitar, Bass, Keyboards
• Andy Fairweather-Low: Guitar
• Graham Broad: Drums
• P.P. Arnold: Vocals
• Katie Kissoon: Vocals
• Carol Kenyon: Vocals

Produktion:

• Roger Waters: Producer, Writer
• Nick Griffiths: Producer, Engineer

Order From:

Amazon: To Kill The Child & Leaving Beirut