Great Moments on Video №11: Roger Waters - Pigs (Three Different Ones)

(Zócalo Square, Mexico City, October 1, 2016)

Roger Waters – Pigs (Three Different Ones)

(Zócalo Square, Mexico City, October 1, 2016)

I must confess that my conscience has never seriously bothered me on the issue of «can we separate the art from the artist?», or, more accurately, «can we separate the artist from the human being?» as it seems to seriously bother some people today — to the extent that they eould probably have to order an FBI background check on any single artist before reading, watching, or hearing their work. Most people are flawed beings who constantly do the wrong things, say the wrong words, and think the wrong thoughts, and the most reasonable position here is to try and admire them for the good things they did while being aware of and refusing to ignore their wrongs — a bit of a simplistic philosophy, perhaps, but generally works for me.

Things, however, get a little juicier and more provocative when you start thinking about the interdependencies of a person’s art and a person’s character — what if those guys really sold their souls to the Devil at the crossroads? What if the rage and anger, which feels so authentic and genuine in so many of John Lennon’s songs, is really inseparable from his violent behavior in real life, including the infamous wife-beating incident? What if the sexual ecstasy of classic era Led Zeppelin, charging us with (usually) positive vibes, could not have ripened and matured without a lot of personal experience with underage groupies? Would the seductive darkness and terror of Howlin’ Wolf’s blues anthems be exactly the same if he hadn’t killed a man (allegedly in self-defense, but who really knows)? Wouldn’t Lou Reed’s music be blander and more forgettable if he’d been a bit less of a prickly asshole in real life? Would we still marvel at Keith Moon’s inimitable drumming style if he didn’t trash his hotel rooms on a regular basis?

This is the little something which requires a bit more effort to accept — but ultimately, I see no other way out of here than to accept it. In fact, the most memorable and impressive art rarely stems from purely positive vibes (more often than not, the «100% positive» attitude translates into suave banality rather than anything truly captivating), and whenever we gleefully retranslate conceptions such as «with their dark and evil vibes, Black Sabbath were the perfect antidote to the naïve hippie idealism of the Summer of Love», we are already accepting the idea that being an asshole gives you an extra advantage over being a nice guy. Sure, you don’t necessarily have to kill, rob, or molest anyone, but still, try to work hard on your antisocial behavior in some ways at least. Oh, I dunno — spit on your fans at a concert or something. It helped one guy to write one of the most famous concept albums in the world, no?

About forty years later, on October 1, 2016, the same guy gave this stunning performance at Zócalo Square, Mexico City — almost at the exact same place where, five hundred years earlier, the Aztecs would sacrifice their prisoners to Huitzilopochtli inside the grounds of the Templo Mayor. Roger Waters, in a subtle act of sublimation, would use his classic ‘Pigs (Three Different Ones)’ to make a symbolic sacrifice of Donald Trump to the Mexican people. (To be fair, he would later offer the same sacrifice to everybody else on his Us + Them tour, but one can understand just how much more it means to the general Mexican public!).

As deeply conflicted as I am about Roger Waters’ extreme political views, mixed with extreme arrogance, extreme belief in his own moral and intellectual infallibility, and extremely assholish behavior toward his former bandmates — I have to admit that the man gave a hell of a great show on that night, and that this particular performance of ‘Pigs’ (which has always been my personal favorite track on the Animals album) is dang near impeccable in all of its aspects. It looks impressive, it sounds awesome, and, most importantly, I feel like watching it does a pretty good job of recharging my batteries — which, honestly, are in need of near-constant recharging at this particular stage in my life.

One might strongly disagree about the artistic and aesthetic value of recasting ‘Pigs (Three Different Ones)’ as essentially ‘Pig (Three Stages Of The Same One)’, fully re-dedicating it to the one and only «The Donald». (Amusingly, Roger didn’t even have to change the lyrics that much — the "hey you, Whitehouse!" line just automatically gets converted into "hey you, White House!", although, admittedly, Trump was still not in the White House at the time... hmm, did that guy know something? was he in on the deal? QAnon alert!). However, that would be just a minor quibble, and easily repudiated by pointing out that, at the time, Trump’s public persona did essentially mirror each of the three aspects lambasted in ‘Pigs’ — financial greed, tough-guy attitude, and moral hypocrisy. More aesthetically problematic for me is the abuse of insulting, Charlie Hebdo-style, caricaturesque visual imagery — D.T. with a pig’s body, D.T. with a small dick, D.T. as a drag queen (wouldn’t that offend the LGBTQ community?) — but if these childish pics are Roger’s significant sources of inspiration, well then... whatever makes him tick, as long as he delivers.

And does he ever deliver. I have heard a couple of live performances of ‘Pigs’ from the 1977 Floyd tour — unfortunately, no decent quality video footage was ever shot on that one — and while Roger’s current guitarist (Dave Kilminster) sounds more like a faithful by-the-book apprentice of Gilmour than Gilmour himself (which is not really a problem for this particular performance), in just about every other aspect the performance equals, and occasionally surpasses, the quality of the original. How is that at all possible, forty years on?

The answer, I think, is given to us all around 1:56 into the performance, at the "with your head down in the pig bin, saying ‘keep on diggin’" lines. I don’t really remember the last time I saw an artist on stage contort his facial expression into such a perfect textbook illustration of utter, thorough hatred, contempt, and disgust — if this is the same kind of emotional state into which Roger could whip himself forty years back as well, then the fan-spitting incident becomes clear as day; the man is a live wire at this moment, physically dangerous to be in proximity with. And if the accompanying music weren’t so great, you could throw around accusations of overacting and making an evil clown out of oneself; but the facial expressions are a perfect match for the menacing bluesy chords of the song, which even in 1977 was every bit as viciously aggressive as any contemporary punk anthem.

This angre, this hatred, this renewed commitment to using the power of music for revolutionary purposes — even on an illusionary level, although Floyd have always been the perfect masters of illusion — seems to infuse everything and everybody, from the totally crazed-out guys in the audience (some of those shots could easily be mistaken for a Slayer concert) to the entire stage, on which individual musicians tend to get lost in the big flashing picture, with its blood-red lighting of the Battersea decorations. The video does strongly suggest that no individual musician here really matters, with the obvious exception of Roger himself: even when Kilminster takes that last raging solo, well worthy of a diligent Gilmour understudy, the camera never focuses on the guitarist, too busy to show us all those Trump quotes instead. (I do love those few shots when it lingers on the backing lady singers, who are not of much use for this particular song but just look bizarrely cool, as if coming straight out of a Star Trek universe). But that’s hardly a problem — ‘Pigs’ is a general statement, not a showcase of individual virtuosity, and most of the time, the camera is doing precisely what it is supposed to do.

Even during the long instrumental section, we have almost no idea of what is going on stage (no chance to see that piggy-pig-pig talkbox in actual use!), with all the attention given to the floating pig — the best shots being taken from a distance, which makes the collective audience feel like a huge mass of hog slop through which the Godzilla-pig is slowly making his way through, having himself the gastronomic feast of a lifetime; a pretty creepy feeling, if you ask me, though the shots of people groping and tugging at the pig add a bit of absurd comedy flavor.

Does the specific re-dedication of the song to Ivanka’s Dad end up somehow trivializing it? Both yes and no, I think. Yes, because any specific political references in art pieces end up dated, sooner or later; subsequent generations will not be able to appreciate this footage the same way we do. No, because if this is the fuel that is needed to feed Roger’s fire, well, more power to him. In my mind, I can easily substitute the American bastard for the Russian bastard (to whom all the three verses of ‘Pigs’ are perfectly applicable just as well) — disregarding the misguided warm feelings that Roger "Horseshoe" Waters seems to demonstrate toward him offstage — and feed off the furious vibes of Zócalo Square with perfect impunity.

In a recent well-publicized tweet, David Gilmour’s wife went all ballistic on Roger, calling him an "anti-Semitic, lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching, misogynistic, sick-with-envy, megalo­maniac" — clearly, in an emotional state that could be well compared to the level of fury in this performance. My biggest worry is... about the ‘lip-synching’ bit, actually, although it does not seem as if, even with his failing voice, there’s too much lip-synching necessary on ‘Pigs’ (perhaps in the "you’re nearly a cry" bit). As for everything else — well, the uncomfortable truth is that, just like really bad boys and really bad girls may tend to have the greatest, wildest sex, so do lying, thieving, sick-with-envy megalomaniacs sometimes make the best kind of music. No, I wouldn’t want to have Roger Waters as a friend in real life (as opposed to Gilmour, who seems like a really swell chap to hang out with); but yes, I’m definitely willing to pay for a couple of hours of his specific services to satisfy my innermost needs. Oh wait, that kinda came out wrong, didn’t it?...