September 24, 1999 WATERS CLOSES 1999 TOUR WITH NEW SONG Roger Waters closed his 1999 In The Flesh tour on 28 August at Kansas City, Missouri's Kemper Arena, closing the tour by surprising the audience with a new song. The song, "Each Small Candle," is about the war in Kosovo. The song was rehearsed, and was even overheard by fans who were nearby during a rehearsal the night before the tour. But it never entered the set list until the encore of closing night. It was played that night at the start of the encore, just before the final song of the night, Comfortably Numb. "A few years ago," Waters told the Kansas City audience, "an Italian journalist contacted me from the Initiativo Contra da Torturum, which is the initiative against torture in Northern Italy. And he sent me some lyrics written by an Argentine man who had been tortured. And, in the English translation I found to be very moving. And so I set them to music. I had no idea what went with these lyrics, and then they sat in the back page of... a half a page of scribbled lines for the next seven or eight years. Until Kosovo." Waters stopped to quiet the audience, which was cheering noisily in anticipation of the new song he was about to play. "I had trouble making any sense out of the whole thing in Kosovo," Waters admitted. "I found myself not quite knowing what I thought about it all. Wwhich was a problem for me 'cause normally I do know what I think about things. Until one day I read a piece in The London Times which told the story of a Serbian soldier who saw an Albanian woman lying wounded in a burned-out building, and he left his platoon and went over and helped her. And then joined his men and marched off. And in THAT image I found some sense. And so the rest of the song is about that." Many fans who have heard the song have said that the song has a Celtic touch to it, comparing the style to Loreena McKennitt and other Celtic musicians, and suggesting that the melody is somewhat similar to the old English Christmas carol 'God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.' The lyrics to 'Each Small Candle' are at the end of this article. Six nights earlier, on 22 August, an unexpected former comerade of Roger Waters turned up in the audience at Waters' show at the Lakewood Amphitheatre in Atlanta, Georgia. Several fans noticed Richard Wright in attendance with his wife. One fan spoke to Wright for several minutes before others realized who he was an crowded around to ask for autographs. "They sound pretty good," Wright is reported as saying. "Roger's vocals are a bit off-key, but he was notoriously off-key even in the old days. Jon's doing a great job with my parts, but I'm not too impressed with the guitar work. No one can touch what David is capable of on guitar." During the intermission, Jon Carin came into the audience and spoke to Wright for several minutes. After the show, Wright and his wife left. There are strong indications that they were invited backstage. It is not entirely clear whether they were invited backstage by Waters, but it seems far more likely that it was Jon Carin who extended the invitation. Nothing is known about what happened backstage, whether Wright spoke to Waters, nor even confirmation that they had a face-to-face meeting there. For detailed reviews of both the Kansas City show and the Atlanta fan encounters with Richard Wright, see http://waterstour.cjb.net Each Small Candle by Roger Waters No the torturer won't scare me Nor the body's final fall Nor the barrels of death's rifles Nor the shadows on the wall Nor the night burnt to the ground The last dim star of pain, this hurt But the blind indifference Of the merciless unfeeling world Lying in a burned-out shelter Of some Albanian fort An old Babushka holds a crying baby in her arms A soldier from the other side A man of heart and pride Breaks ranks, lies down his rifle And kneels by her side He gives her water, bread and meat And calms the crying child Her touch heals absolution across the great divide He picks his way back through the broken tunnel of the night And there at the curve, the samaritan Serb turns.. And waves... Goodbye Each small candle lights a corner of the dark... And the old pain stops hurting (And the blackened eyes stop burning) And the children can be children (When the desperados meet them) When the tide rolls in to greet them (And the natural law beside them) Greets the humble and the mighty (And the million candles burning) Light the dark side of the human mind Each small candle lights a corner of the dark...