Roger Waters' inflatable pig recovered in desert
Apr 29, 2008, 10:09 PM | by Chris Willman
Categories: Music
So what became of the giant pig that floated off during Roger Waters’ climactic set at the Coachella Festival on Sunday? The pig that prompted a $10,000 reward for its return? It’s been found. Even now, though, some mysteries remain: Did the pig “escape,” as stated in the press release offering the reward money, or was it liberated? Who, exactly, wanted the porcine porker back? (And by the way, which one’s Pink? Sorry, we got off track there.)
First, the find. Susan Stoltz, a resident of La Quinta, one of the towns adjoining the festival grounds in the California desert, got up Monday morning and decided to take a jog. She put on—irony alert!—a Pink Floyd T-shirt. It’s not that she’s a fan; she bought it a couple of years ago for a 1970s theme party. In the driveway, she found a “huge pile of vinyl and latex,” which she and her husband stuffed into the trash. Tuesday morning, she went out to her driveway and found another surprise—the front page of the local Desert Sun newspaper, with a story about the wayward pig and the $10,000 finder’s fee. (Waters, a left-wing Brit, has used the floating pig as a symbol for
right-wing forces since he first started setting ‘em aloft during Pink
Floyd shows in the late ‘70s.) Suddenly, Stoltz realized what she had, and so did a neighbor, who’d found the other half of the pig. They e-mailed the address listed in the story: lostpig@coachella.com. “I told them it it was more like pulled pork now—it was pretty shredded—but they said they’d be right out to get it,” Stoltz says. Within hours, she was being besieged by local media: “A lot of people think it’s pretty funny that this capitalist pig landed in a country club in [the] Palm Springs [area].”
But who wanted the pig back, and how did it get away from the wranglers who led it through the crowd, on ropes? Many people believed that it accidentally drifted away, but Waters, it seems, sometimes lets the pigs drift up toward the dark side of the moon after they’ve served their purpose at outdoor gigs. (At indoor arena shows, his pigs fly around with motors, via remote control.) Wikipedia has a very revealing page about “Inflatable pigs on Roger Waters’ tours” (not to be confused with the page on “Pink Floyd pigs,” which goes into the contractual disputes Waters had with his former bandmates over who got to inherit the original pig’s design attributes). Apparently Waters mass-produces his floating props now, and each one is individually spray-painted with topical graffiti prior to each evening’s show. This one had a pro-Obama slogan painted on its underbelly. Considering that Waters was also rumored to be behind a botched drop of Obama flyers at the festival, which blew into the yards of neighboring communities instead of landing on festival goers, is it possible the shredded pig was blown out of the sky by a Clinton or McCain supporter with a rocket launcher? (Or maybe a vacationing David Gilmour?)
Anyhow, if we're to assume that Waters didn't need this pig back any more than any of his others, who did? Marcee Rondan, a publicist for the festival, says that the concert promoter, Goldenvoice, put up the reward money because the pig is "a part of Coachella lore." Waters' nearly three-hour set, Rondan says, was the first two-parter in the nine-year history of the event."Maybe they’ll find a way to utilize it in the festival's arts display" in the future, she says. (Or maybe Paul Tollett, the cofounder of Coachella and head of Goldenvoice, who’s reportedly a Floyd fan, will just fly it over his next cookout.)
If they can patch it together. Stoltz says she and her neighbor were told by the retrieving forces that they thought the two pieces represented "90 percent, if not all, of the pig." Part of her reward included lifetime passes to Coachella, but, she admits, "I'm not really part of that crowd." However, she was already planning on going this weekend to Coachella’s sister festival, Stagecoach, which focuses on country acts. Look for the woman in the Pink Floyd T-shirt.
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