Roger Waters, during the Long Island rehearsals for the Wall tour (specifically, August 24th) is the cover star of the September 30th, 2010 issue of Rolling Stone magazine (US edition). It's available from North American newsstands from tomorrow (September 15th, coincidentally the first show of the 105-date tour), and online from October 1st via Rolling Stone's premium subscription plan.

The article, only a small fragment of which has been posted online, reveals preparations for this mammoth tour, which kicks off in Toronto. This ranges from Roger's fitness routine, through to decisions on what the band will be wearing (Roger apparently met with a stylist to select stage clothes in various shades of black, rejecting one pair of leather boots as "very Bruce" and another as "too Pete Townshend"!)

Lighting director Marc Brickman, who also worked on the original shows, talks about the scale of even those performances. "It was just mind-blowing — I was speechless," says Brickman. "It was mounting opera at a rock & roll show. In 1980, you couldn't even dream of that show." For Waters, the idea behind arena theatrics was simple: "You can't ask people to go to the circus and just have fleas in the middle — you've got to have elephants and tigers."

The magazine has also posted a set of exclusive pictures taken at rehearsals but DON'T click here if you don't want to see any of the new staging or effects...

Published in the UK by Carlton Books in hardback on Thursday (September 16th, 2010) is "Passion For Speed: Twenty Four classic cars that shaped a century of motor sport" by Nick Mason and Mark Hales. It is the new, expanded edition of the ground-breaking and critically acclaimed book "Into the Red". Passion For Speed puts you behind the wheel of some of the world's greatest ever sports and racing cars.

To tie in with this book, Nick is undertaking almost 30 interviews with various parts of the media (in particular, BBC Radio, Sky TV (tomorrow morning, live), and Talksport Radio (Wednesday, live) along with various publications).

Just revealed is a sixth night at London's O2 Arena for the Roger Waters The Wall Live show. Roger will be thrilling another 20,000 or so fans there on May 18th, 2011, in a show which will surely be the final one to be added to the UK leg of the 2011 tour.

Presales for the show start tomorrow (September 15th) at 9am, with a further, O2 presale on Thursday (September 16th), and the general sale of tickets starts on Friday (September 17th) at 9am. Tickets will be available from Ticketmaster.co.uk (please remember to use our link - thanks!).

UPDATE: Just as soon as we posted this news, we got through two further dates in the UK that have just been added: June 28th, 2011 at the MEN in Manchester, and June 29th, 2011, at the same venue. Tickets for these shows go on sale on Friday, September 17th at 9am, again through Ticketmaster.co.uk...

Tomorrow night sees the start of Roger Waters The Wall Live tour, with Toronto's Air Canada Centre the host to the event. As The Star reports, 25 students from the Regent Park School of Music will also take to the stage all three nights as backup vocalists for Another Brick In The Wall (part 2).

The school received a cold call last week from the tour promoter asking if the students, ages 10 to 15, would be interested in singing at the concerts. Richard Marsella, director of the school: “It came to us out of the blue, so it's been a last-minute turnaround trying to get students and all the logistics organized. They all just found out. So our first practice will be on the bus on the way to the concert.”

We're sure that other schools will get this great opportunity as the tour unfolds...