Roger Waters says his son, Harry Waters, initially turned down the chance to tour with the Pink Floyd legend.
A tour in 1999 saw Waters in need of two keyboard players, with his son Harry offered the role on the tour. Though he would turn The Dark Side of the Moon mastermind down on that occasion, it wouldn’t be long until his son did take him up on a role as part of the touring unit. Waters would go on to share the reasons for offering his son the role as keyboardist, confirming a drop-out from his touring line-up in the latter months of 2001 prompted Harry to join his father on stage. Speaking to TVNZ in 2007, Waters confirmed he had wanted his son on stage with him two years before he actually joined the line-up, and it seems he did a “good job” according to Waters.
Waters said: “No he’s a very good piano player and he’s a good keyboard player so I started going out again in 1999 and I needed two keyboard players and I had one in mind so I asked Harry if he’d like to go and he said, ‘No I’m doing my own thing,’ and whatever.
“But a couple of years later when I went out again after 9/11 one of the keyboard players dropped out and I said ‘you’ve got a second bite of the cherry here if you’re interested’ and he went ‘yeah well I’d like to do it’ and he does a good job and it’s nice to have him on the road with me. It’s good.”
Waters would continue touring as a solo artist and released This is Not a Drill, a live album, in 2025. Elsewhere in the same interview from 2007, Waters would say he had no problem with former bandmate David Gilmour continuing on with the Pink Floyd name.
He said: “My view is this. And it’s only my personal view. There were sort of two bits of Pink Floyd that I thought was important.
“One was Syd Barrett and his extraordinary, most weirdly, wonderful songs that he wrote in 1966, 67 and maybe even a little of 68. And after Syd developed his disease we carried on without him and we struggled and struggled and eventually did some really compelling work between 1968 and 1982.
“And there was all the argy bargy and other people would say then there were the two big tours that the boys did, and two albums that they made. I don’t really think that work holds up, that’s just a personal opinion of mine. It would have been better if they’d called it something else. But they didn’t and they took that decision and I promise you I have no problem with it.”
