Roger Waters - The Wall Live

More than a concert, "The Wall Live" is a total spectacle, a veritable blockbuster staged with an extraordinary deployment of resources. If thirty years ago this live show had marked the spectacular peak of Pink Floyd and a benchmark in the technological evolution of rock stages, this new-millennium version, bolstered above all by digital advances, is no less impressive in terms of production effort and visual payoff.

The evening's setlist stays faithful to the original, but in this new version Waters, within the web of themes that make up the show's so-called "concept", gives greater space and weight to universal issues - the pacifist theme in particular - rather than to the more personal ones. Starting from the reference to his father, killed at Anzio during the Second World War, the bassist's focus now shifts to the victims of every conflict still being tragically fought across the globe. During the interval, on the enormous wall built on stage brick by brick throughout the first half of the show, the stories of dozens of victims of wars fought at every latitude and in every era are symbolically highlighted. The wall becomes the space where epitaphs are placed for soldiers, women and children who fell victim to human folly. This wall, this new wall of the 21st century - conceived by the bassist well before the fall of the Berlin Wall (where the blockbuster show would later be staged in 1990) - bears the marks of globalization. Amid the graffiti and slogans covering it, corporate logos stand out, ever more central to global economic power, alongside religious and political symbols too often waved as banners in conflicts and here, in the animations, transformed into ideological bombs raining down on the innocent.

Despite this shift in conceptual focus toward universal themes, the topics tied to Waters' personal experience are still present, underscored by staging moments that have become iconic among "The Wall" fans, such as the giant puppets caricaturing the mother, the wife, the schoolmaster, moving along the edges of the immense stage, or the reproduction of the hotel room where protagonist Pink's descent into madness plays out, played by a Roger seated in a chair just a few metres from the stands, toward which he turns with a renewed spirit of dialogue. The Waters seen in Milan, as well as in his solo appearances over the past decade (I would also include the reunion for Live 8 in 2005), has nothing to do with the image of a surly, irascible, egocentric figure that the bassist had built up over the years, culminating in the notorious spitting incident aimed at a fan in the front row at a Pink Floyd concert in 1977. Waters is a spry sixty-seven-year-old who seems to have finally set aside the ghosts of his past, including the conflicts - exacerbated even on the legal front - with the rest of the band.

If in the '70s Pink Floyd were not known as individual musicians but only as parts of the group, now Waters is happy to be universally acclaimed as a myth and a solo author, and, as one of rock's grand old men, seems keen to follow in the wake left by the pacifist incarnation of John Lennon.

On the show's technical side, what truly astonishes is the flawlessness of the digital technology behind the film projections that run throughout the evening on the wall erected on stage, which turns into a giant seventy-metre screen. The thirty years since the show's original run (a handful of dates across two subsequent tours in 1980 and 1981) are keenly felt when some of the original animations devised by Gerald Scarfe are projected: they certainly retain their sinister, unsettling charm, but look genuinely dated when set alongside the new digital effects, which leave the audience literally open-mouthed. The hundreds of bricks making up the wall, built up gradually during the first half of the evening until the stage and the musicians - who keep playing throughout - are completely hidden, are perfectly replicated, brick by brick, by beams of light capable of conjuring up spectacular illusions and optical effects at will. Individual bricks virtually pop out and then slot back into the wall, stripping the viewer of any point of reference or certainty about the solidity and stability of the whole stage structure. At certain points in the show, the wall seems to spin on itself and then explode toward the crowd, disoriented and electrified by the mass of sounds and effects washing over them.

The sound system, with groups of speakers distributed at various points around the venue, shows off all its magnificence, enveloping the audience in 360 degrees. Several times during the evening I found myself turning left and right, chasing sounds, noises, assorted effects. Only, as had already happened at previous solo concerts by the bassist, the sound becomes almost piercing when additional pre-recorded layers of screaming crowd noise are laid over the band's musical bed, perhaps to create a stunning epic effect that ends up feeling more like a distorted, chaotic din. It's reminiscent of being at a stadium during certain matches, when crowd recordings blasted from the speakers drown out the roar of the actual audience, creating a certain unease and sense of artificiality.

"The Wall Live" is total sensory immersion, a kind of giant box of special effects and surprises: look up and you see a fighter jet reproduction, wingspan several metres wide, crossing the venue and crashing into the wall in flames, or the legendary flying pig - this time looking more like a wild boar (are the rights to the original held by Pink Floyd?) - soaring over the floor. Musically speaking, there isn't much to say. The score is very close to the original. The musicians do their job with skill. Gilmour's guitar solos are reproduced very faithfully, but without added emphasis. Some nostalgic fans might have preferred to see David appear atop the wall for the chorus of "Comfortably Numb", recalling that historic on-stage back-and-forth between bassist and guitarist in the '80s shows. Personally, rather than missing it, I've come to terms with its absence.

That this "The Wall Live" is a Waters concert becomes clear when the artist carves out moments of self-celebration, standing alone at the centre of the stage, the demiurge before his own great work. But even more than that, this live show is the staging of a solid score, a classic that in the future could well be replicated as a theatrical rock opera on Broadway and around the world, following the same logic that has already brought the musical histories of several rock and pop legends to the stage.

I believe that "The Wall" as a concept, as a show, as an idea, is stronger than the Pink Floyd brand itself and even than Waters, its principal architect. While any live revival of a '70s Floyd classic - whether by Waters or by Gilmour - be it a full performance of "The Dark Side Of The Moon" or any of the band's historic tracks, such as "Shine On You Crazy Diamond", "Dogs" or "One Of These Days" to name a few, can only leave a bittersweet aftertaste given the impossibility of recreating the pathos of legendary performances built on balances, alchemies and improvisations honed over years and years of intense live activity by the band, "The Wall" has a light all its own - one that, moreover, is technically quite simple musically, and can be reproduced by any competent professional performer. The very idea of the original "Surrogate Band" (the band of clones who doubled for the four Floyds in the first "The Wall Live") implied that a show this colossal and mammoth could be played by anyone at all, without the audience even noticing.

Six sold-out dates at the Forum for over 60,000 spectators - four in April and another two next July - give a sense of the scale of the event. More than 30 years have passed, yet the blockbuster "The Wall" continues to enchant. This is history: one of rock's great classics projecting itself forcefully toward new generations and the new millennium.

• A complete analysis of "The Wall": the album, the show, the film

Photo by Maury Mauser

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