Roger Waters told a Canadian reporter last week that he is “far, far, far more important” than The Weeknd or Drake.
In an interview with The Globe and Mail, the 78-year-old Pink Floyd co-founder complained that “none of the newspapers in Toronto” sent a reviewer to his concerts in the city on July 8 and 9.
When Brad Wheeler explained he was assigned to review The Weeknd’s tour kick-off at the Rogers Centre on July 8 (a show that was cancelled at the last-minute due to the Rogers outage), Water replied: “I have no idea what or who The Weeknd is, because I don’t listen to much music. People have told me he’s a big act. Well, good luck to him. I’ve got nothing against him.”
He added: “With all due respect to The Weeknd or Drake or any of them, I am far, far, far more important than any of them will ever be, however many billions of streams they’ve got. There is stuff going on here that is fundamentally important to all of our lives.”
Water is currently on his This Is Not a Drill tour, which stops in Edmonton on Sept. 13 and Vancouver on Sept. 15. When it was announced, the tour was described in a release as a “stunning indictment of the corporate dystopia in which we all struggle to survive, and a call to action to LOVE, PROTECT and SHARE our precious and precarious planet home.”
Wheeler told Waters he overheard a woman leaving the July 9 concert complaining that it wasn’t as upbeat as she wanted it to be.
“Well, thank you madam,” Waters replied. “I don’t know who you are, but I thank you for noticing that it wasn’t just a sing-along party of old hits. I don’t go to those kinds of shows, because I don’t like them. The old bands go out and trundle through their hits year after year after year.”