Pink Floyd

Pink Floyd – The Wall: the album, the show, the film

Introduction

Part 1. Before The Wall

Part 2. The “concept” behind The Wall

Part 3. The record

Part 4. The show

Part 5. The film

Part 6. Beyond the wall

Introduction

November 1979: EMI is chomping at the bit; the run-up to the holiday season alone accounts for 30% of annual record sales. Pink Floyd, more than two years on from their previous album, “Animals”, can wait no longer; the pressure is immense, and the stakes involved are enormous.

After months and months in the studio, everything is thrown together in a rush, to the point that a few last-minute decisions reshuffle the running order of the songs on the album. Proof of this can be found in a couple of errors in the reproduction of the lyrics on the double-gatefold vinyl sleeve, already sent to print. The lyrics to “What Shall We Do Now” are included, a song later performed live as an extension of “Empty Space”, but left off the record itself for reasons of space. Meanwhile, the lyrics to “Hey You”, the opening track of the second record, are mistakenly placed at the end of side three. Not bad for a mix-up on an album about to be launched in grand style on a global scale…

But here it finally is, on November 30th, in shop windows lit up for the holidays: “The Wall”, the colossal double LP by the band that had dominated the 1970s, first as a cult act on the British rock scene, then churning out albums selling tens of millions of copies.

The release instantly takes on the shape of a planetary, era-defining event, certainly one of the most important moments in the history of rock. Radio stations across the world are flooded with “Another Brick In The Wall”, a stroke of commercial genius with funky undertones that shoots to the top of the sales charts. The press, tabloids included, pours out endless column inches and, as we'll see, finds material to stir up a few flimsy scandals along the way.

The album of the wall, its bricks and Gerald Scarfe's stunning artwork, enters the lives and imaginations of millions of kids, marking them forever. A myth passed down from generation to generation right up to the present day. More than 30 years after its release, it has sold around 30 million copies, a staggering figure for a double album, not counting the various spin-off releases that would follow, such as the show staged in Berlin in 1990 (released as a Waters solo album) and the questionable 2001 release of “Is There Anybody Out There – The Wall Live”, drawn from recordings of the historic 1980 and 1981 concerts.

Among those kids, then fifteen years old and just getting to grips with his first rock album, was yours truly. For personal reasons, then, my analysis can only be a deeply subjective one, one of the countless interpretations that an album like this can inspire – an album whose greatest qualities include its ability to speak directly to the listener's own life. Around a work like this, the personal histories of its listeners become inextricably woven into the fabric of the work itself and become part of it, like reflections of life refracted through an endless hall of mirrors; as if the substance of the work expanded, becoming weighty, tangible, real within the lived experience of anyone who has heard and loved it.

The creative genesis of “The Wall”

The creative path that led to “The Wall” is extremely revealing when it comes to understanding its deeper meaning, and it dates back to 1977, specifically to the tour for “Animals”, the band's controversial record at the time, a tour that went by the name “In The Flesh”.

Having left behind the small concert halls where early-70s audiences loved to listen to them in strict, almost religious silence, the band now tours stadiums, where tens of thousands of people crowd the stands, push against the barricades, becoming a single, indistinct mass – enthusiastic and thrilling, yet in some ways frightening when seen from the stage. Roger Waters, the bassist and author of all the lyrics since “The Dark Side Of The Moon“, is exhausted, worn out. A decade spent on a mad ride that, in just a few years, took him from near-anonymous artist to billionaire international star. A journey that, in the history of rock, has claimed more than one victim.

From their very beginnings, Pink Floyd had turned their live shows into a showcase for originality and experimentation. From the late 60s onward, in the full swing of the psychedelic era, their live performances were enhanced by a highly advanced light show (projectors and lighting rigs operated by true professionals, creating a pyrotechnic whirl of colour on stage) and by cutting-edge amplification, in particular a quadraphonic sound system refined year after year, allowing the audience, wherever they were in the venue, to enjoy a clean, clear and immersive sound.

With the staggering commercial success of "The Dark Side Of The Moon", audience expectations for Pink Floyd's live shows grew even higher, and the band threw themselves into the effort, investing heavily to offer fans an ever more dazzling spectacle, packed with special effects and dramatic twists (one famous example being the model Spitfire — the celebrated wartime fighter plane — that would burst onto the scene from the back of the venue, fly the length of the hall, and crash-land on stage in flames). The ever-rising costs of these shows pushed the band and their management to seek out ever bigger venues, particularly for the epic "Animals" tour of the United States, where from 1973 onward the band had concentrated its live performances at the expense of Europe and their home country.

The "Animals" tour proved genuinely gruelling for Pink Floyd, who emerged from the experience thoroughly worn down. A few episodes from that period would later prove pivotal in shaping what came next.

A kid, just one among tens of thousands, is standing in the front row at a Montreal show on the tour, screaming, thrashing about, hollering for "Money", his favourite hit, seemingly there only to cause a scene and knock back beers. Waters can't take it, can't stand this parasite in the crowd. He takes aim, like one of Her Majesty's riflemen, and nails him right in the face, viciously. Waters is shaken by what he's done — the gesture strikes him immediately as horrifyingly fascistic, violent beyond all measure and decency, so shaken that it sets off a process of creative catharsis that will lead him to conceive one of the greatest rock works of all time.

The bassist had, in a way, already embodied — anticipating it — the "dictator rocker" who would later appear as the protagonist of the song "In the Flesh" and who would be played in the film "The Wall" by Bob Geldof.

This was the spark that set Waters on the path to "the concept": the idea around which to build a new record, namely the wall of incommunicability between artist and audience. A wall that, as time went on, would grow brick by brick in Waters's mind until it became a full-blown emblem of alienation and estrangement from the world at large.

Pink Floyd, musicians who vanish amid the sheer grandeur of their own stage productions, were both victims and architects of their own indictment of the showbiz machine — an indictment that had reached its peak on "Wish You Were Here", and in particular on the track "Welcome To The Machine". On one hand, on stage the musician disappears as an identity, becoming a mere technocratic performer. From the stands, 100 metres from the stage, how could anyone pick out the individual musician beneath tons of special effects burying him? Wright had already grappled with this, reflecting on the fact that, buried under truckloads of gear, all he was really doing was playing an organ. Hence the idea of the masks used by the band's "double" during the live shows for "The Wall" — the "Surrogate Band" that performed in rotation with, or alongside, the real Pink Floyd, wearing masks cast from their actual faces. On the other hand, Pink Floyd had never had a star, a frontman in the Mick Jagger mould, so to speak — they weren't known for their faces, only for their music.

On the other side of things, seen from the stage, the audience — thousands of spectators packed into stadiums — was a shapeless, faceless mass. Waters increasingly came to see that the dynamic between musician and spectator/mass mirrored the dynamic between a dictator and the people/mass he controls.

Another telling anecdote about the band's dismal psychological state during the "Animals" tour concerns its final, long-awaited date. As the night drew to a close, at the ritual encore, David Gilmour, disgusted by the poor musical quality of the show, refused to go back on stage, headed instead to the mixing desk, and watched from there as his bandmates played on, backed on guitar by the trusty Snowy White, the extra six-string brought in for the live shows. How many people in the stadium ever noticed?

Once the "Animals" tour wrapped up and the band had taken some time off, they began thinking about future projects. The urgency to get back into the studio became pressing following a serious financial shortfall at the management company the band had hired to sort out their (apparently frequent) problems with the British taxman.

In truth, the only member genuinely active creatively at that point was Roger Waters, who from as early as autumn 1977 had been working alone on a couple of "concepts". One was the embryo of "The Wall", initially titled "Bricks In The Wall"; the other was an early draft of "The Pros And Cons Of Hitch-Hiking", which many years later, in 1985, became a solo album by the bassist.

The rest of the band were busy with solo projects (Gilmour and Wright) or devoted to extra-musical pursuits. Case in point: Mason, who spent his time tearing around in his numerous racing cars. A small anecdote: around the time "The Wall" came out, the drummer even took part in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, driving a Lola 2000 sponsored by EMI, its bodywork entirely wrapped in the design of the album's famous bricks!

The first 90-minute demo of "The Wall", recorded by Waters and dated July/August 1978, was extremely rough and a far cry from the finished product — so much so that it struck Gilmour as an indistinct mess. In various interviews, the band has recalled this stage of assessing the new material Waters brought to the table as a particularly fraught one, with the members frequently at odds over the merits of individual songs. Gilmour in particular didn't seem fully convinced even by the project as a whole, though it ultimately prevailed, both for lack of any alternative and for the shared goal of digging themselves out of financial disaster. Waters was especially prolific during this period, and whenever his bandmates raised objections, he'd respond to the pressure with fresh material — often of striking quality — surprising everyone. It was clear that the bassist was increasingly cementing his position as the group's leader.

Gilmour, for his part, as we'll see in more detail further on, still managed to make a hugely important contribution to the new record, with a handful of memorable songs bearing his name alongside the bassist's.

Mason, at the time the member personally closest to Waters, brought his interpersonal and diplomatic skills to bear rather than his artistic or compositional ones, which had never really been his forte. Wright, meanwhile, grew ever more apathetic and withdrawn, not helped by the innate laziness that had always marked him, and so became Roger's favourite target as he grew impatient to see "his" work brought to completion.

Amid this restless backdrop of internal wrangling, as the months relentlessly ticked by, the record label began pressing ever more insistently for the band to get the album recorded and released. With their recent output, from "The Dark Side Of The Moon" onward, Pink Floyd had become such an extraordinary business proposition that the industry could grant no extensions to the established release schedule.

At a certain point, in order to shake things up, Canadian producer and musician Bob Ezrin was brought in, and he gave the project a crucial push forward. Above all, Ezrin seemed to be just the right person to click musically with Waters.

Ezrin took the story and its content in hand, trying to bring some order to it. The result of a sleepless night was a 40-page manuscript that became the basic script from which "The Wall" was completed. The original copy is still kept today at the "Rock and Roll Hall of Fame" in Cleveland.

The work was finally taking shape, and the project grew ever more ambitious. "The Wall" wouldn't just be an album: it would also have two further, equally important incarnations, a live show and a film.

The recording process for the album was particularly complicated, unfolding on both sides of the ocean. After an initial recording stage in London at the end of 1978, the band relocated to France for tax reasons between January and July 1979. Following their customary August break, a habit Pink Floyd had kept up for years, recording moved to New York and finally to Los Angeles.

The individual musicians worked independently of one another. This fragmented approach to the work showed its Achilles heel when it became clear that Wright had fallen dramatically behind, to the point of putting the album's release date at risk. The situation grew so tense that the keyboardist's departure from the band was already formalized during the autumn 1979 sessions. As a result, Wright doesn't play keyboards anywhere on the record, and the orchestral parts, conducted by Michael Kamen, took on an increasingly significant role in the final stages of completing the work. Wright's exit only became public knowledge many years later. Curiously, among the terms of his departure from the band, the keyboardist had insisted on the right to take part as a session man in the "The Wall" shows, something which, to the eyes of fans and press alike, seemed to simply confirm that the quartet was still united in form as well as substance. In reality, neither Wright's nor Mason's name appeared anywhere in the album credits.

During the final sessions recorded in Los Angeles, Waters had no qualms about bringing in outside musicians to give more punch to the keyboard and percussion parts. The drums on "Mother", for instance, are played by one of the most in-demand session players of the era, none other than Jeff Porcaro, also known as a member of the supergroup Toto.

With just a few weeks to go before the album's release, the situation was still completely up in the air, to the point that it wasn't even clear yet whether the record should come out as a double or even a triple album. This situation is a reminder of just how closely music production was tied, in those years, to the running time of vinyl records. Each side could hold no more than 22-23 minutes of music, meaning each record could contain roughly 45 minutes total across both sides. In the end, the decision came down to a double album, which meant both cutting some songs and a mix-up on the graphic design front, which has already been mentioned.

Part 2. The "concept" of The Wall

To use a term that was fashionable in the '70s, "The Wall" can be considered a "concept" album, that is, more than just a sequence of unconnected songs, but a single unicum with a meaning, and a stylistic and narrative coherence of its own.

Pink Floyd wrote their first concept album with "The Dark Side Of The Moon" in 1973, later followed by "Wish You Were Here" in 1975 and "Animals" in 1977, together completing a sort of trilogy devoted to madness and human alienation. On "The Dark Side Of The Moon", Waters, who by then had become the band's steady lyricist, examined everything in everyday life that drives people to madness: the desperate pursuit of money and success, the relentless passing of time. With "Wish You Were Here", Waters pointed the finger at the show-business machine that relentlessly wrings artists dry until it drives them mad. It's no coincidence that the album is dedicated to the band's original leader, Syd Barrett, a brilliantly erratic artist who couldn't withstand the impact of fame, the punishing pace of recording sessions and international tours.

On "Animals", Waters' social critique becomes even sharper, drawing on Orwell and allegorically turning human beings into sheep, dogs and pigs.

As already mentioned, the idea for "The Wall" has its roots in the "Animals" tour. In putting the story together, Waters says he drew on three levels of inspiration: one strictly autobiographical; one drawn from observing society (for instance, the failure to communicate within relationships); and finally one that represents pure narrative invention.

People have often gone too far, however, in seeing the character of Pink as a reference to Syd Barrett, the band's founder, who lost his way after the extraordinary debut album "The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn". The only certain and openly acknowledged nod to Syd is actually found in the lyrics of "Nobody Home". Beyond that, the figure of Pink draws more generically on rockstar iconography and rock-world anecdotes, ranging from trashed hotel rooms (a habit of many bands and artists) to the presence of groupies, "easy" girls looking to get close to their idol by any means necessary backstage at concerts.

Roger's personal experiences are truly numerous, and in my opinion they are what most shaped the narrative as a whole. "The Wall" is, above all, an album onto which Waters projected a great many personal anxieties and struggles.

The main sources drawn from the bassist's personal, private life are:

– The death of his father at Anzio during the Second World War; Waters, born in 1943, like many of his contemporaries who became protagonists of 60s and 70s rock, is a war orphan. An active pacifist since the early 60s, even before playing with Pink Floyd, Roger touches on the theme of war in "The Wall" and later develops it further in "The Final Cut", also shocked by the contemporary Falklands conflict.

– The role of an overprotective mother; it was his widowed mother who raised Roger under her wing. The image of the smothering, mother-hen figure is among the strongest and most recurring in the story.

– The experience of a frustrating and humiliating school; Waters attended a prestigious college that left an indelible mark on him.

– The divorce; Waters recalls the period of his 1975 divorce as one of the most stressful of his life.

Other elements stem from Waters's own experience as a musician within Pink Floyd:

– The depersonalized relationship with the audience; especially regarding the experiences from '73 onward, with ever-bigger arenas and a less attentive audience, not seated and focused but present at the concert with the sole aim of causing chaos or drinking beer.

– The Los Angeles incidents of '75; during that year's American tour, 500 attendees at the Los Angeles concert were arrested, mostly for drug possession.

The plane of pure narrative invention would instead serve as the glue to bring order to the many but confused ideas that Waters put before the rest of the group for consideration. At this level, a decisive push came first from Bob Ezrin for the album and later from Alan Parker as the film's director.

The resulting story is, in short, that of Pink, a rock star who, during a grueling tour, is destroying his relationship with his wife. In the long days spent alone in an anonymous hotel room between one concert and the next, Pink, in a vain attempt to get in touch with his wife, conjures up the ghosts of his existence: his father's death in the war, a difficult childhood caught between his mother's overprotective attitude and the indoctrination of psychopathic teachers. Symbolically, Pink's existential difficulties and traumas are represented as bricks that build a wall of isolation, distancing him from reality until he is completely cut off. In the end, Pink will confront his traumas introspectively, up to the fall of the wall that will bring him back into direct contact with his fellow human beings.

Part 3. The Album

The album "The Wall" was released on November 30, 1979, preceded by a week by the single "Another Brick In The Wall", which quickly reached number one worldwide and was banned by the regimes of South Africa and North Korea for its anti-authoritarian message.

More recently, in 2005 some former pupils of the London school who sang in the song's famous choir, having found each other through a social network, claimed royalty rights, so far without success. Things went better for singer Clare Torry, the magical voice behind "Great Gig In The Sky" from "The Dark Side Of The Moon", who managed to secure 50% of the song's rights.

The album's success was equally massive, with an estimated 30 million copies sold to date, an enormous figure considering it's a "double" album.

The cover, conceived by Roger Waters, simply features a brick wall, with Gerald Scarfe's images inside it — Scarfe being a key figure in the threefold "The Wall" project (album, show and film). Scarfe, an illustrator with a strong claustrophobic streak, had already worked with Pink Floyd during the "Wish You Were Here" tour, producing a highly emotionally charged animation that was projected during the song "Welcome To The Machine", an underrated track by the band and one of the rawest and most violent in its message of accusation against the machine of show business.

Critical Musical Analysis

Musically speaking, "The Wall" doesn't break any new ground - if anything, it marks a decisive (and indeed final) halt to the band's musical exploration, which throughout the Seventies, while working within an easily digestible rock format that indeed brought overwhelming commercial success, had never shied away from expansive, innovative territory (see in particular the recent critical reappraisal of "Animals", released in 1977 but written mostly in the summer of 1974, which some now regard as one of the records anticipating new wave).

But beyond a strictly musicological approach, "The Wall" should be read as an extraordinary act of synthesis of an entire decade. Only Pink Floyd's vast experience could have produced a record of such musical quality, arrangement and production. "The Wall" is the triumph of all the professional skills that had developed over the years alongside rock music, because the history of rock has constantly dialogued with and evolved alongside the record industry, its technologies, its means of communication. Sound engineers, producers, the creative minds behind the packaging are absolute protagonists on "The Wall", on a par with the musical substance itself. From this point of view, "The Wall" stands at the very top of the historical bar. Flawless sound, painstaking quality and care in the arrangements, and the extraordinary evocative power of Gerald Scarfe's cover artwork - Scarfe would go on to create the animations for both the stage show and the film that would hit screens a few years later.

Only other professionals who grew up alongside rock (read: a portion of the critics) seem unwilling to accept such a broad perspective, relegating "The Wall" to the role of a record released past its sell-by date, arriving alongside new movements (punk, new wave) that were shaking up the music scene of the time.

Waters, a longtime admirer of the Beatles and the Byrds, returns with "The Wall" to his first great love, the traditional song format, of which he'd already given us several gems going back to "More" (1969), "Atom Heart Mother" (1970), and "Obscured By Clouds".

On "The Wall", Wright's keyboards no longer define the band's sound as they once did (the famous "spacey" textures, for instance, are gone). Taking center stage instead are orchestral and piano arrangements, in a style closer to the singer-songwriter tradition to which Waters, in his boundless ego, was evidently aspiring.

The songs are structurally simple and often short, suited to the complexity and narrative dynamics of the work. There are no long suites with expansive musical passages; instead there are musical callbacks, true leitmotifs (like "Another Brick In The Wall", reprised three times across the record) in a tradition rooted in classical music (it's no coincidence that Roger Waters recently composed an opera in a classical style, "Ca Ira").

A first for the band, the entire album was written in the studio. Gone was the group's usual habit of road-testing songs live before committing them to record in order to refine them. This had happened with previous albums - the whole of "The Dark Side Of The Moon", for instance, had been toured since 1972, and some key songs from "Wish You Were Here" and "Animals" had likewise been performed live as early as 1974.

The album is weighed down by a sense of unease and looming oppression that at times makes it difficult, hard to digest, almost unbearable. As with all rock works that stretch across four vinyl sides (it's only right to consider the structural dimension of vinyl when analyzing a record conceived with that format's characteristics in mind), there are inevitably some slack moments and redundant passages. Waters' paranoia, at times - especially on the second side - puts the listener through the wringer, but "The Wall" belongs to the very small club of records that can rightfully claim the title of "rock opera". Among them, "Tommy" by the Who and "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway" by Genesis, penned by two other towering figures of rock, Pete Townshend and Peter Gabriel.

Overall, what's most striking about "The Wall" is its monumental scale, and the evocative, empathetic power it holds over the listener, who easily identifies with the story being told. The narrative thread, woven alongside the lyrics and music through the insertion of voices, screams, whispers, cries, dialogue, the roar of planes, helicopter blades, is so dense that it lends itself to constant imagery, prompting the listener to picture images, situations, scenes. "The Wall" comes across, in every sense, as the soundtrack to a film that had not yet been made but that was already part of the band's creative plans.

Ultimately, "The Wall" is the soundtrack each of us can adapt to the hardest moments of our own lives - a work whose strength doesn't lie in the depth or unity of its message, which actually stays fairly surface-level, satisfying more or less everyone. It's a work with multiple levels of interpretation, where everyone is free to skim the surface or dig deeper, uncovering new keys to reading and experiencing it. But its symbolic, social and political implications - more through free association than any deliberate intent on the band's part - go well beyond a strictly personal, psychological reading.

"The Wall", for instance, is a much-loved record in Germany, still divided at the time. So beloved that in 1990, following the fall of the Wall, Waters - by then committed to his up-and-down solo career - was called upon to perform it live in Berlin itself, in front of an immense crowd and backed by numerous international guests.

Waters is without question the mastermind behind the entire "The Wall" project, though it can rightfully be considered a Pink Floyd album in every sense - the last to feature the band's classic lineup.

Gilmour's contribution, as co-producer of the album alongside Waters himself and Bob Ezrin, would prove decisive. The guitarist co-wrote three key songs - "Comfortably Numb", perhaps the finest of them all, as well as "Young Lust" and "Run Like Hell", among the album's freshest tracks and useful in easing the claustrophobic feel of some of Waters' compositions.

Gilmour is also the lead voice on several tracks and strings together a series of solid "solos" and guitar inventions, some of them truly memorable. Underscoring his still-central role within the band, the guitarist would ultimately be credited as musical director of the imposing - not to say pharaonic - "The Wall Show", which Pink Floyd staged for just a handful of highly selective dates in the United States and England in 1980, and again by popular demand in Germany in 1981, as well as once more in the UK.

Song by song

Disc 1

“In The Flesh?” (Waters)

We (re)start from where it all began, the 1977 “Pink Floyd” “In The Flesh” tour. The spectacular intro hits with enormous violence and impact, with a chord progression marked out by the guitar that melts melodically into the harmonic development that follows. Then sudden stasis, as the rhythm section empties out and Waters' voice takes centre stage over a simple keyboard accompaniment, with the backing vocals — gorgeous throughout the record — acting as counterpoint. Waters' expressive growth is immediately apparent: he clearly worked extremely hard on his voice in the second half of the '70s. Worth recalling in this regard that during the recording of “Have A Cigar” from 1975's “Wish You Were Here”, Waters gave up on the lead vocal because it was too demanding for his range, handing it over to Roy Harper. Narratively, “In The Flesh” is a flashback, and the song will return much later in the album.

“The Thin Ice” (Waters)

The cry of a newborn introduces the birth of Pink, the story's protagonist (apparently, during an interview, some clueless journalist once asked the Floyd: “Which one of you is Pink?”). “The Thin Ice” is an acoustic gem of great tenderness. The song's dynamic arc reflects one of the leitmotifs of “The Wall”, namely the alternation between implosion and explosion, between moments of lyrical intimacy and violent outbursts, often triggered, as here, by the slashing blows of Gilmour's guitar.

“Another Brick In The Wall part I” (Waters)

This is the first part of a theme that turns out to be one of the album's most beautiful musical inventions. The guitar, drenched in delay, reverberates and floats, laying down an irresistible, stretched-out carpet of sound that risks becoming tiresome as it lingers on too long. But the arrangement choices — like the sudden keyboard crescendo or the grafting of distorted chords onto that crystalline backdrop — remain memorable touches, small gems of arrangement scattered throughout the record, which imprint themselves indelibly on the listener's mind.

“The Happiest Days Of Our Lives” (Waters) e “Another Brick In The Wall Part II” (Waters)

By now used to hearing it together with the track that precedes it, under the simple title “Another Brick In The Wall”, here it is, heralded by the arrival of the helicopters: one of the greatest hits of all time. The song, disarmingly simple, is built on a single chord and, decades on, still retains an impressive amount of pathos — and it hardly matters that the famous guitar solo wasn't even written by Gilmour. Most memorable of all is the children's choir, made up of 23 kids aged 13 to 15 from the fourth-year music class at Islington Green School in London. The press made a scandal out of the choir business, accusing Pink Floyd of not paying the kids. It turned out instead that their teacher had approved and signed off on the whole thing, getting free use, for teaching purposes, of Britannia Row Studios, owned by Pink Floyd themselves. The matter was closed, and the kids even came away with a few copies of the album, promptly handed out by Waters.

That same “Another Brick In The Wall”, which dominated radio airwaves worldwide for ages, provoked the fury of South Africa's racist government, which banned it outright, since the slogans in the chorus (“we don't need no education, we don't need no thought control”) were adopted by Black protesters on the anniversary of the bloodily suppressed Soweto uprising. Every copy was pulled from shops, and anyone caught owning one even risked jail time.

Mother (Waters)

This is a gorgeous acoustic ballad, its odd time signature marked out by the guitar, with precious “bucolic” touches of organ woven in. The song centres on the mother figure, fundamental to the entire arc of the story: an overprotective mother who will shape Pink's whole existence, preventing him from ever finding independence, maturity, or the ability to run his own life free of conditioning.

Goodbye Blue Sky (Waters)

We're now at the start of side two of the vinyl, the more claustrophobic half, during which Pink, brick by brick, will complete the wall that isolates him from the rest of the world. And yet, musically, Goodbye Blue Sky, after its grim opening sound effects, has moments of real tenderness thanks to its lovely vocal blends. But that's just an illusion. The atmosphere turns dark and grim again as Gilmour's voice soars over crushingly heavy bass. Pink is inexorably heading into a dead end.

Empty Spaces (Waters)

Just before Empty Spaces, playing the vinyl backwards reveals a message discovered back when the album came out by a radio DJ: “Congratulations, you have just discovered the secret message. Please send your answer to old Pink, care of the funny farm, Chalfont”. Live, and in the film, “Empty Spaces” appears paired with the biting, hammering “What Shall We Do Now”. Musically, the song is a murky march toward the abyss of isolation and the inability to communicate.

“Young Lust” (Waters, Gilmour)

This is a sturdy, syncopated rock number, a pastiche of various musical genres, a sort of parody of rock itself — much as, Pink Floyd themselves said, “The Nile Song” had been years earlier on the soundtrack to the film “More”. “Young Lust” nonetheless stands out as one of the freshest, most successful songs here, especially for anyone who's struggled with the pessimistic, obsessive, claustrophobic tone Waters stamped on much of the record. The song references so-called groupies, girls willing to do anything to get close to whichever rock star is in town (the backstage scene in the film is unforgettable). But more broadly, it's a song about the desire for escape, carefree youthful moments, drunken benders, and cheap pornography. And again, as Waters has said, about the sense of power and invulnerability you feel onstage, shielded behind mountains of wattage unloading onto the crowd.

“One Of My Turns” (Waters)

The phone rings, but no one answers. Pink tries to reach his wife, in vain. The scene takes place in a hotel room somewhere in Los Angeles — one of the work's pivotal scenes, revisited at several points in both the live show and the film. The bare, impersonal hotel room, television perpetually on, represents the ultimate isolation, the absence of roots, complete detachment from the world. Pink has picked up a girl, but there's no possibility of connection; he's left alone with his thoughts in front of the TV. He broods over his life, over his marriage in ruins. And then suddenly, as the guitar shrieks through an acid-toned solo, Pink explodes hysterically, trashing the room. Devastation and madness, as the song's narrative dissolves into a desperate scream. “One Of My Turns” was released as the B-side of the “Another Brick In The Wall Part II” single.

“Don't Leave Me Now” (Waters)

The most claustrophobic song on the record, almost to the point of being unbearable, with keyboards weaving a murky, swampy carpet you risk sinking into. And then, finally liberating, comes the musical opening up, with long guitar notes and hypnotic keyboard textures dragging us out of the mire.

“Another Brick In The Wall Part III” (Waters)

Of the three versions of "Another Brick In The Wall", this is the most violent. For Pink, the moment of reaction has arrived; in a surge of pride, the protagonist convinces himself that isolation is a desirable condition, a free choice, and shouts it to the world.

"Goodbye Cruel World" (Waters)

A simple "pedal" note over the octaves to declare that the wall is complete. Pink is totally isolated and revels in it. End of part one.

Disc 2

"Hey You" (Waters)

Musically among the finest songs on the record, "Hey You" nonetheless struggles to find its place within the narrative arc of Waters's project. Originally planned for the end of side three, it was placed at the start of that side on the record instead, and was even cut altogether from the 1982 film. The famous, gorgeous fretless bass part that opens the song is credited to Gilmour on the recent "Echoes" compilation. Ultimately, nothing shocking: no one has ever questioned Waters's heavy hand or Gilmour's delicate touch. Credit for the bass part reassigned, it must be said that the song is truly wonderful melodically, building to a crescendo marked by guitar arpeggios and dreamy keyboard notes. Inevitably, Gilmour's solo arrives, one of the finest on the album, played over a hypnotic guitar riff in a crescendo of great intensity. A brief variation follows, and we return to the bass flourishes over a muffled bed of teeming sounds, seemingly evoking insects, parasites, worms. "Hey You" is a desperate cry for help directed at the outside world, and the worms are the symbolic representation of decay. In other words, whoever isolates himself, rots.

"Is There Anybody Out There?" (Waters)

Facing the insurmountable wall, Pink simply cries out: "Is there anybody out there beyond the wall?" A sweet, simple sequence of arpeggios, a practice piece for legions of bedroom and beach guitarists everywhere.

"Nobody Home" (Waters)

A gorgeous ballad for piano and voice, the song represents a highly poetic and evocative moment of reflection. Pink retraces the objects and rituals of his existence, which are ultimately the clichés of rock stardom. The Hendrix-style haircut, almost obligatory in the music world of the late Sixties, or the reference to the laces that really did hold Barrett's boots tied at the calf. And then again the silver spoon, the nicotine stains, a booklet of his own poems...

"Vera" (Waters)

Vera Lynn was an English singer from the early 20th century whose songs were sung by the troops during World War II. Masterfully orchestrated, "Vera" underscores the drama of Waters-Pink tied to the loss of his father.

“Bring The Boys Back Home” (Waters)

A march marked by the roll of drums announces the return of the "boys" from the war. The song, considered by Waters to be the central pivot of the whole album, picks up the theme of soldiers failing to return home, and aims to stress the importance of essential human bonds: friends, family, one's partner, one's children. Nothing—not work, not the frantic, exhausting rush of everyday existence—should ever take precedence over one's closest relationships.

"Comfortably Numb" (Gilmour, Waters)

An immortal song, among the finest in the entire Floydian catalogue, and indeed in all of rock. The orchestration, soft and light, seems to float, and it's in this suspended feeling that our own dreams cling too. The verse is sung by Waters, then Gilmour's voice bursts in. In the live show, this handover of lead vocal duties would become a hugely spectacular stage device, with Gilmour magically appearing atop the wall built on stage, invariably whipping the crowd into raptures. The song is simply a masterpiece, further enriched by small, memorable touches (such as the scream that accompanies the start of the second verse) that have entered rock history and our collective musical imagination. Gilmour, at the very top of his game, closes the song magnificently with one of the greatest solos of all time. Intense, dramatic, taut, its notes never closer to the force of a cold razor blade—the very one Pink uses in the film to shave his chest and eyebrows—the one that, on every listen, pierces every defence and goes straight to the heart. Legendary.

In "Comfortably Numb", Pink's manager bursts into the hotel room to find him in a catatonic state. In great haste, and with little regard for his actual condition, Pink is drugged and put back on his feet; the show, quite simply, must go on.

“The Show Must Go On” (Waters)

Once again, the gorgeous backing vocals dialoguing with Gilmour's voice open the final, decisive side of the record. A brief but striking fragment, "The Show Must Go On" invites the audience in, underscoring Pink's dismay and fears, to the spectacle that is finally about to begin.

“In The Flesh” (Waters)

The moment has come for the alienating ritual, for the show transformed into a fascist rally, with Pink cast as a bloodthirsty dictator. "In The Flesh" is even more stunning than the opening version, with heavenly harmonies and arpeggios laying out a red carpet for the entrance of Waters' theatrical voice. From his stage-turned-podium, Pink has something for everyone, targeting the most easily identifiable scapegoats: Jews, Black people, homosexuals, pimply teenagers.

"Run Like Hell" (Gilmour, Waters)

Another musical parody, this time of disco music, "Run Like Hell" is another thoroughly enjoyable song, released to radio as a second single as well. The structure is simple: over a four-on-the-floor kick drum, the guitar weaves a crystalline layer of sound. Narratively, "Run Like Hell" continues the spectacle staged by Pink and embodies its most alienating moment. The square, pounding beat, typical of disco music, drives the crowd to move in unison like a single organism, stripped of will, obeying the dictator's delusions.

“Waiting For The Worms” (Waters)

A gorgeous song, among the best on the record, it represents for Pink the moment of slowly regaining consciousness after the effects of the drugs wear off. Among the arrangements, worth noting is the beautifully stretched-out sound of Mason's cymbals. Suddenly, though, the rarefied atmosphere is broken by a harsh, unsettling voice filtered through a megaphone (actually Waters singing live while pinching his nose). From this point on, the song describes, in an imperious crescendo, a march by the National Front, a pro-fascist group, through the streets of London from Brixton to Hyde Park. The underlying idea is one of isolation, which pushes people to commit violent acts and join groups of fanatics and extremists.

"Stop" (Waters)

For Pink, the time has come to cast off the dictator's mask, the time has come to set in motion a harrowing process of inner reckoning.

“The Trial” (Waters, Ezrin)

“The Trial” depicts, in strikingly theatrical tones, Pink's merciless self-analysis, which translates into a direct reckoning with everything that has estranged him from reality: the teacher who suppressed his artistic and poetic calling; the wife he married too young and with whom he never managed to build a mature relationship; the mother who built the protective shell and who represents the ultimate, fetal refuge. The verdict is simple: “You have shown feelings of an almost human nature”; the punishment a foregone conclusion: “tear down the wall.” The wall must come down, and Pink be returned to reality. The wall collapses, in a musical crescendo of tremendous intensity and emotional impact.

“Outside The Wall” (Waters)

Here are the song's lyrics, emblematic as they are: "Alone, or two by two/ Those who truly love you/ Walk up and down outside the wall/ Some hand in hand/ Some gathered in groups/ The sensitive ones and the artists/ Try to tear it down/ And when they've given you the best they've got/ Some of them will stagger and fall/ After all it isn't easy/ Banging your heart against some mad bugger's wall".

The wall has finally come down. All that remains are the bricks, his songs, cornerstones of rock history.

Part 4. The Show

While "The Wall" was firmly lodged in the world's hit parades, the band began work in the winter of 1980 on the live show, the project's second step.

The show represented the summa of the band's already spectacular live performances. The stage, of extraordinary size, called for the progressive construction of a wall 12 metres high and over 40 metres wide, which by the end of the concert's first half (coinciding with the end of disc 1) completely blocked the audience's view of the musicians.

On stage alongside the four Pink Floyd members, including Rick Wright acting as a session man, played a second lineup, the Surrogate Band, a sort of clone group wearing masks of the four original musicians.

The stage design was entrusted to the team of Fisher and Park, who had already worked with the band on previous shows.

A key role in the show was played by Gerald Scarfe's animations, projected onto the giant wall that doubled as a screen. Enormous 8-metre puppets were also built, representing the teacher, the wife, and the mother — the latter in inflatable form. Also impossible to miss was the famous flying pig, a constant presence since the days of “Animals”. On stage, a bare hotel room was also recreated, where Waters would go to sing the show's most intimate passages.

The quadraphonic sound system was the most advanced the band had ever taken on tour. There were even speakers placed under the seats to amplify the show's climactic moment — the collapse of the wall — giving the stunned audience the feeling that the entire structure was actually coming down. “The Wall” shows were only ever held in large indoor concert halls, with stadiums firmly ruled out. The whole concept behind “The Wall” had emerged in reaction to the disastrous stadium tour for “Animals”, and the band refused to budge on this even when an American promoter, astonished by the extraordinary early performances in Los Angeles and New York, offered the group exorbitant sums to bring the show to Philadelphia's stadium.

“The Wall” was performed live in only a few select cities over the course of two years. In 1980 it was first staged in the United States, from 7 to 13 February in Los Angeles and from 24 to 28 February in New York; the next stop was London, from 4 to 9 August. Unexpectedly, the band announced further tour dates in 1981. One reason was the need to film the entire show in order to gather material for phase three of the project: the film itself. The second tour touched down in two cities: Dortmund, Germany, from 13 to 20 February, and London again, from 13 to 18 June.

These are the show credits as detailed on the “Is There Anybody Out There” album: written and directed by Roger Waters; musical director, David Gilmour; stage design, Mark Fisher and Jonathan Park; art director, Gerald Scarfe; mixed by James Guthrie.

The musical recordings of the show were released on record twenty years later. In 2001, “Is There Anybody Out There” was surprise-released. Footage of the show, never used for the film, remains unreleased to this day, although it can easily be found online. Particularly interesting in this regard is the way footage for every song has been paired with the audio taken from the “Is There Anybody Out There” album itself. The synchronisation turns out to be almost perfect, confirming just how much the show was a vast theatrical machine in which music, acting, projections, puppets and light show were woven together according to a rigorously fixed script. Waters sings and plays throughout the entire show wearing an earpiece, allowing him to stay perfectly in time with the whole spectacular apparatus.

Description of the show

The show opens with the appearance of a presenter introducing the evening to the audience. When the curtain rises, the stage reveals itself in all its grandeur. The wall, erected throughout the evening along both sides of the stage, leaves a large gap of about 25 metres in the centre, where the musicians are positioned, with the huge circular screen behind them — a fixture of the band's shows for several years by then. The first notes, amid pyrotechnics setting the stage ablaze, are played by the “Surrogate Band”, soon joined by Waters singing “In The Flesh?”. The first puppet to appear is that of the teacher, during “The Happiest Days Of Our Lives”. The huge, menacing figure, controlled by thick cables like a gigantic marionette, scans the audience in the front rows with two spotlights standing in for its eyes. During “Another Brick In The Wall Part 2”, in a live version that doubles the guitar solo and adds an organ solo, the construction of the wall begins in the centre of the stage, with stagehands carrying and stacking individual bricks — polystyrene blocks roughly 1.5 metres each. During the superb guitar solo of “Mother”, the inflatable mother appears, arms crossed, stern gaze, improbable hairdo.

During “Empty Spaces”, Scarfe's famous animation is projected, depicting the sexually charged battle between two flowers. Unlike on the studio album, the song here has an independent coda that flows into the previously unreleased “What Shall We Do Now”. At the end of the song, a satisfied Waters greets the audience for the first time that evening. The relentless drive of this track, with its obsessively repeated riff played in a rising crescendo of ever greater intensity, is a Waters trademark, one he also used for the finale of “Dark Side Of The Moon” on the track “Eclipse”, as well as for the ending of “Dogs”, the lengthy suite included on “Animals”.

In the final chorus of “Young Lust”, Waters and Gilmour finally stand side by side, sharing the same microphone. The song ends, giving way to the sound of a ringing telephone that heralds another brick in the wall: the one representing the breakdown of the marriage. Right on cue, the puppet of the wife appears too, in the form of a giant blood-sucking mosquito.

Waters screams in desperation during “Don't Leave Me Now”, hunched over himself, in a moment of clear autobiographical identification. The stage keeps filling with bricks, leaving fewer and fewer gaps open. “Another Brick In The Wall Part 3” unexpectedly stretches out and continues into the previously unreleased “The Last Few Bricks”, which quotes musical passages from the first part of the album, from “The Happiest Days Of Our Lives” to “Young Lust” to “Empty Spaces”, within a tense atmosphere of alienation and post-industrial devastation. Gathering together fragments of his own history, Pink adds the final bricks that will seal him off from the world for good. The first part of the show ends with Waters, by now hidden behind the wall covering the entire stage, singing “Goodbye Cruel World”, his farewell to the world.

The second part begins. A pink mannequin sits propped against the wall; a guitar arpeggio introduces “Hey You”. The whole song proceeds with only the puppet on stage, picked out by a single spotlight. During the performance of “Nobody Home”, staged on a platform jutting out from the wall, a hotel room is recreated, said to be located somewhere in Los Angeles, where Waters reappears and sings seated. The television keeps broadcasting, and through the window a neon sign reading “Tropicana” and the silhouettes of exotic palm trees can be glimpsed.

“Bring The Boys Back Home” is considered by the bassist to be the show's pivotal moment in narrative terms. A still image is projected onto the wall showing a child shaking hands with a soldier lined up alongside his fellow troops. It is, symbolically, the image of the dearest bonds shattered by war, the starting point of Pink's entire existential collapse.

From this moment on, through the use of three projectors, the great wall is visually divided into three large screens, across which Scarfe's animations alternate.

“Comfortably Numb” is one of the show's most intense moments. Waters, wearing a doctor's coat, introduces the verse walking at the foot of the wall, then, to everyone's surprise, Gilmour appears atop the structure to sing the chorus. The duet repeats in the second half of the song, making way for the grand finale with the legendary guitar solo.

After "The Show Must Go On" the presenter reappears. Pink has been polished up and the show can go on. The master of ceremonies, his voice distorted and robotic, announces the start of the spectacle. The show-business machine has regained control of the situation, and Pink is ready to return to the stage, but under a different guise.

With an explosion similar to the one that opened the evening, the show starts up again. On both sides of the wall the unsettling crossed hammers are projected, alluding to a dictatorship; lined up in front of the wall are Pink Floyd flanked by the Surrogate Band. Waters, dressed in a studded black leather coat, resumes whipping up the crowd. The legendary helium-filled inflatable pig from "Animals", also branded with the hammers symbol, takes flight over the audience.

In Waters's mind, "Run Like Hell" was the "disco" moment of the evening, a parody of depersonalised music created solely to make the audience move like automatons. In reality, "Run Like Hell", musically credited to Gilmour, still stands decades on as one of the show's most compelling episodes. Waters and Gilmour duet, while the bassist doesn't shy away from launching into "bestial" vocalisations reminiscent of those in "Careful With That Axe Eugene".

With "Stop" the narrative returns to the level of Pink's consciousness, who, in the guise of a pink mannequin, reappears atop the wall.

During "The Trial" the animations, still split into three parts on the great wall that serves as a screen, highlight the various characters Pink's mind must confront: the teacher, the mosquito-woman, the mother. Waters sings alone in front of the wall. The clumsy judge delivers his sentence, and in the musical crescendo the wall on stage comes crashing down thunderously, to the audience's astonishment.

After the collapse, a group of musicians with acoustic instruments walk onto the stage amid the rubble. Roger with a clarinet and Rick with an accordion, Nick, David and the others with guitars and tambourines. With "Outside The Wall" performed, the band leaves the stage again, only to return to take their final bow.

Part 5. The Film

The third phase of the "The Wall" project called for the production of a film. Initially, four people worked on the project: naturally Roger Waters, illustrator Gerald Scarfe, director Michael Seresin, and Alan Parker, acting as producer.

The live footage shot during the show was meant to be an integral part of the work, as were Scarfe's giant puppets. Seresin was soon pushed out, and the director's role was taken over by Alan Parker, who immediately imposed a new vision that sparked fierce objections from the others: no live footage and no puppets. Parker offered Waters the role of Pink, but after he turned it down, opted for Bob Geldof, singer of the Boomtown Rats.

Relations between Parker, Waters and Scarfe became particularly tense, to the point that Parker asked Waters to take a month and a half of forced vacation. It was during this period that the director truly made the film his own. Upon Waters's return, tensions skyrocketed; on one hand the director had given the whole film a starkly intense imprint, on the other Waters, who had envisioned a decidedly more restrained realisation, could not accept having been sidelined from the helm in this way. The film's raw imagery (the blood-filled swimming pool; the eyebrow-shaving scene; the frequent shots of the dead and wounded in the trenches) became Alan Parker's trademark, and he had in fact been chosen as director precisely for his direct, evocative style. The bassist eventually resigned himself to it, also aware that he could never have been the film's director himself.

Waters had already distinguished himself for his obsessive desire for control over the band's projects. One anecdote in this regard dates back to the recording of "Have A Cigar", included on "Wish You Were Here": Waters, who has never been a gifted singer, fails to nail the part, unable to hit the right key; almost as a joke, Roy Harper, who happened to be at the same studios, is invited to sing it instead. When everyone finds Harper's performance excellent, Waters is caught off guard and is left so stung by it that he would regret it for years. Waters, for that matter, has always displayed a nasty temper and rather relished it.

The film premiered on 23 May 1982 at the Cannes Film Festival. With credits distributed as follows: Alan Parker, director; Roger Waters, creator and screenwriter; Roger Waters, David Gilmour and James Guthrie, music producers; Gerald Scarfe, animation director.

Regarding the music credits on Pink Floyd's records, Gilmour stated that he, unlike Waters, had always paid little attention to the matter, being far more interested in the creative side. He had no idea of the legal battles awaiting him shortly afterwards over the use of the Pink Floyd name...

Musically, for the film some parts were rewritten, particularly the orchestral sections, courtesy of Michael Kamen. The reworkings affected "Mother", "Bring The Boys Back Home" (with a Welsh male voice choir), "Empty Spaces" in the extended version that flows into "What Shall We Do", already featured in the live shows, and "Outside The Wall". Only one entirely original track appears at the start of the film, "When The Tigers Broke Free", a prelude to Pink's story that Waters dedicated to his father, who died at Anzio.

The film includes all the songs from "The Wall" except for "Hey You" and "The Show Must Go On".

"Goodbye Blue Sky", which on the vinyl album opens the second side before "Empty Spaces", here appears instead before "The Happiest Days Of Our Lives".

The Film

A shot of a long, anonymous hotel corridor somewhere in Los Angeles, with a cleaner going about her work: this is how the film opens. The hotel suggests a place of transition, of passage from one tour city to the next. Symbolically it represents the precariousness of the rocker's nomadic existence, the only den available to him, yet one without roots, in which to seek refuge. It's from inside a hotel room that Pink's inner journey begins, suspended between waking awareness and dream, which will lead him to confront his past and, in particular, his recurring nightmares.

The first song is "When The Tigers Broke Free", unreleased both on the record and in the stage show. The tigers allude to German tanks, and the scene indeed shifts to a trench during the Second World War, where a soldier is holed up under bombardment. The reference is to Roger's father, a key figure in the film even more than in the album. Over the years that passed between the first musical conception of "The Wall" and the production of the film, Waters had drawn ever closer to the theme of remembering the war, a process brought to completion with "The Final Cut", the 1983 album presented as a genuine "requiem".

One of the film's leitmotifs is the transposition of the war truly experienced by the father onto every area of the son's life. Pink is at war with the teachers who educate him, with the mother who raises him, with the wife who betrays him, with the police who beat down hard, with the audience attending the concerts, and in particular with the "different" ones scattered through the crowd.

The battle continues from generation to generation, from father to son; each fights his own battle differently and in his own time, but it is always a bloody battle. The blood in the trenches mixes with the blood in the hotel swimming pool where Pink thrashes about as if gone mad. Among the dying being tended to by the Red Cross after the bombing wanders a young Pink who, having discovered his father's war medals in a drawer at home, becomes aware of the tragedy that befell his family, and that of so many of his peers whose fathers never came back from the front.

But other battles await Pink as he grows up, starting with school, where the teachers prepare for their lessons like hardened soldiers ready to crush any emotional, if not artistic, spark in the kids at their desks. (Trivia: when the teacher reads out a poem Pink has scribbled, you can make out a few lines from the song "Money".) School is like an assembly line, and the kids are literally minced into mush, until the inevitable rebellion that leads to the school being torn apart: once again, violence begets violence.

The mother, for her part, smothers young Pink oppressively, ready to turn a slight fever into a drama, ready to point her son toward the right path or the right girl to date, even if she's comically oversized (young Pink dances with a girl a full head taller than him).

The years pass, but there's no respite for the adult Pink. His marriage, too, falls apart — a "hippie" marriage that began under the best auspices and soon turns into a nightmare. His attempts, from the hotel room, to reach his wife by phone on the other side of the ocean and try to mend the relationship are in vain. The woman, enthralled by a pacifist leader who easily lures her into bed, refuses every call coming in from Los Angeles.

Throughout the film, which is mostly live-action, there are also a few animated sequences by Scarfe, including the splendid sexual battle fought by two flowers set to "Empty Spaces" and "What Shall We Do". Amusing is the appearance of the groupies, a rock cliché, making their way through the concert's backstage to reach the star, first distracting a policeman and then a few roadies, the guys "on the road" following the band on tour. One groupie finally manages to get close to Pink, who takes her back with him to the hotel after the show. Here the rock clichés continue, with a suddenly irritable Pink who, rather than communicate with the unknown girl beside him, prefers to devote himself to wrecking the room instead — yet another act of destruction in the film.

Pink has now completed the wall; he is completely isolated from the world, utterly incapable of communicating with anyone. In the wrecked hotel room he moves among his countless belongings, sitting on the floor creating a mad, meticulous order out of chaos (perhaps an unconscious nod to the neatly arranged insects on the cover of the solo album by the leader of the early Pink Floyd, "Barrett"?).

But Pink's madness goes further still. In front of the mirror he shaves off his chest hair and eyebrows, inflicting small wounds that leave him stained with blood (yet again).

At the height of the protagonist's madness, the narrative shifts back in time once more, to a station platform. It's the image of soldiers returning from war, awaited by their families. But the words of Vera Lynn, the English singer who during the Second World War genuinely tried to bring comfort by promising the "boys" would come home from the front, ring hollow for young Pink, who wanders through the crowd without finding his father.

Into the hotel room burst the tour management and a swarm of doctors, who find the musician in a coma. But the show, according to the ancient law of showbiz, must go on. One injection later, Pink is back on his feet, ready to face the audience. But beneath the old, decaying shell of the rocker, a new mask is ready: that of a kind of pro-Nazi leader heading to a rally rather than a concert.

The hall is packed, and everywhere huge banners loom, bearing two crossed hammers evoking the swastika. The concert/rally's security is made up of skinheads (real "skins" rounded up on the streets of London and hired for the film). Pink, now a dictator, whips up the crowd and mercilessly attacks all the "different" people present in the hall.

During "Run Like Hell", the album's "disco" track, which Waters loved to emphasize in concerts too, the crowd moves like automatons, mechanically repeating the same steps and gestures. It's the triumph of conformity. Meanwhile, gangs of thugs roam the streets hunting for human prey on which to vent their frustration.

Suddenly the scene becomes more intimate, everything is set for the grand finale. Public restrooms, Pink is huddled next to a sink with a notebook of jottings; he tries to find himself again through his own verses. (Note: before Bob Geldof sings "Stop", one can make out a few lines from the song "Your Possible Pasts", which would appear on the following album "The Final Cut", and from the song "5.11", taken from Waters's solo album "The Pros And Cons Of Hitch Hiking").

As Scarfe's animations start flowing again, an inner process unfolds in Pink's mind in which he reviews the key figures who led him to isolation: the teacher who scolded him for his artistic streak; the overprotective mother; the wife who abandons him in his moment of need.

Finally comes the inevitable verdict: to tear down the wall of isolation and return among human beings. And so we reach the epilogue. The wall has collapsed while some children move among the rubble, gathering the debris. A new generation is growing up beyond the wall. Will it too be forced into the war of life?

The songs from the film

“When The Tigers Broke Free”

“In The Flesh?”

“The Thin Ice”

“Another Brick In The Wall Parte 1”

“When The Tigers Broke Free” (Ripresa)

Goodbye Blue Sky

“The Happiest Day Of Your Life”

“Another Brick In The Wall Parte 2”

Mother

Empty Spaces

What Shall We Do

Young Last

“One Of My Turns”

Don't Leave Me Now

“Another Brick In The Wall Parte 3”

Goodby Cruel World

Is There Anybody Out There

Nobody Home

Vera

“Bring The Boys Back Home”

“Confortably Numb”

“In The Flesh”

“Run Like Hell”

“Waiting For The Worms”

“Stop”

“The Trial”

“Outside The Wall”

Part 6. Beyond the Wall

The soundtrack for the film “Pink Floyd – The Wall” was meant to be released, but since the original material wasn't enough, Waters announced a record that never saw the light of day, called “Spare Bricks,” which was supposed to include the only unreleased track “When The Tigers Broke Free,” “Outside The Wall” and other recordings not included in the film. The choice of songs was dictated by the fact that, compared to “The Wall,” this record was meant to lean more into a requiem-like dimension and the idea of remembrance so dear to Waters at that time.

The project, which would later become “The Final Cut,” gained fresh momentum following Argentina's invasion of the Falkland Islands and Britain's harsh military response, which deeply shook the pacifist Waters. Inspired by these grave events, he wrote new songs that were included on the album, which by that point had become entirely independent from “The Wall.”

The “The Wall” show was revived by Roger Waters as a solo artist in Berlin on 21 July 1990 to celebrate the fall of the Wall, which had happened on 9 November 1989.

The performance, in front of around 350,000 people, featured numerous guest artists: Bryan Adams, The Band, Paul Carrack, Thomas Dolby, Marianne Faithfull, James Galway, Jerry Hall, The Hooters, Cyndi Lauper, Ute Lemper, Joni Mitchell, Paddy Moloney, Van Morrison, Sinead O’Connor and the Scorpions.

The stage, set up in Potsdamer Platz, the no-man's-land straddling the wall, measured nearly 180 metres in length and 25 in height, and was designed by the trusted Fisher-Park team.

Compared to Pink Floyd's live performances, the main differences in the setlist, aside from a few metric variations applied to some songs, were the exclusion of “The Show Must Go On” and the addition, after the fall of the wall, of “The Tide Is Turning,” recorded by Waters for his solo album “Radio K.A.O.S.”

Recently, Waters announced a new, monumental live version of “The Wall,” which will debut in Toronto on 15 September 2010 and will also come to the Mediolanum Forum in Assago on 1 and 2 April 2011.

Following Rick Wright's untimely death in 2008, we can sadly note that the last song ever played live by Pink Floyd's classic lineup was “Comfortably Numb,” closing out the great reunion performance at “Live 8” in June 2005.

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30/05/2010