The Wall
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| The Wall | ||
 |
||
| Double album by Pink Floyd | ||
| Released | November 30, 1979 (UK) December 8, 1979 (U.S.) |
|
| Recorded | April 1979 – November 1979 at CBS Studios, New York, Producers Workshop, Los Angeles, and Super Bear and Miravel, France | |
| Genre | Progressive rock Hard rock Art Rock |
|
| Length | 81:20 | |
| Label | Harvest (UK original) EMI (UK reissue) Columbia (original US) Capitol (US re-issue) |
|
| Producer(s) | Bob Ezrin, David Gilmour, James Guthrie and Roger Waters | |
| Professional reviews | ||
|---|---|---|
| Pink Floyd chronology | ||
| Animals (1977) |
The Wall (1979) |
A Collection of Great Dance Songs (1981) |
The Wall is an album by the English rock band Pink Floyd, released in 1979. Hailed by critics and fans as one of Pink Floyd's best albums, the album is widely regarded as a rock classic, and its morbid anthems have inspired many contemporary rock musicians.
The Wall was the last Pink Floyd album to feature Richard Wright until his return in 1987. By the time the album was being recorded, Roger Waters had tightened his grip on the band and demanded near-complete artistic control, creating tensions within the band. However, the album was successful, selling an estimated 30 million copies worldwide, and being one of the best selling albums of the 1980s. The Wall is the band's best selling album in the U.S., with more than 23 million copies sold. The album reached #1 on the Billboard album charts in the U.S. where it stayed for 15 consecutive weeks. The album would remain on the U.S. charts for two years. However, the album peaked at #3 in the band's native UK.
"Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)" was the band's only number one single from The Wall, reaching #1 in both the UK and the US. Around the world, the album produced a number of hit singles for Pink Floyd, including "Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)", "Young Lust", "Hey You", "Comfortably Numb" and "Run Like Hell".
Contents |
[edit] Recording history
In 1977, Pink Floyd were promoting Animals with their In The Flesh tour. The tour was gruelling and made the band members miserable. As time went by, the nature of the concerts caused Waters to become detached from the audience and see himself as a superior figure. The final night of the tour, in Montreal, Canada, Waters was starting to sing "Pigs on the Wing (Part 2)" and an audience member set off a firecracker near to the stage. He stopped singing and shouted out, "Oh, for fuck's sake. Stop letting off fireworks and shouting and screaming! I'm trying to sing a song." He then continued with the song, but things went downhill from there, and during "Pigs (Three Different Ones)", Waters watched incredulously as one fan climbed the netting that separated the audience from the band and in disgust, Waters spat in his admirer's face. Afterwards, Waters regretted what he had done, and lamented the separation between the audience and band. It was this which caused Waters to come up with the idea for The Wall.[1]
- Waters Loses Temper With Audience (file info) — play in browser (beta)
- Recording of the incident
- Problems listening to the file? See media help.
The album's recording was complicated, as it was recorded at four studios during eight months. Roger Waters revealed on the radio show In the Studio with Redbeard that the jumping around was the result of English tax laws, with financial considerations dictating the way the album was made. According to Waters, "we were going to record it in London then we had an extraordinary reverse and we had channeled a lot of money into a company (Norton Warburg) in London who was supposed to be investing it and so forth but unfortunately they stole it all instead. They stole it in a way that the revenue in England still wanted us to pay tax on it. So five years after Dark Side of the Moon, we were completely skint. Having got this piece of work, looked as it might be a good one, we decided reluctantly to go make the record in the south of France. I confessed the reasons for making the record in the South of France was purely for the fear of being broke".
During recording, Waters felt that Richard Wright's contribution to the band was small, and ordered him to leave after The Wall was finished.[2] During this time, Wright had a cocaine addiction that might have played a part in his dismissal.[3] Waters claimed that David Gilmour and Nick Mason supported Waters' decision to fire Wright, but in 2000, Gilmour stated that he and Mason were against Wright's dismissal.[4] Wright was fired from the band but stayed on to finish the album and perform the live concerts as a paid musician. Ironically, the huge startup costs for the tour, coupled with Waters' refusal to play large venues, meant that Wright was the only member to make a profit on the tour.
For "Another Brick in the Wall" (Part II), Pink Floyd needed a school choir, and approached music teacher Alun Renshaw of Islington Green School, around the corner from their Britannia Row Studios, in the middle of a lesson. The choir were not allowed to hear the rest of the song after singing the chorus, and were let down, as they wanted to hear Gilmour's solo. The chorus was overdubbed 12 times to give the impression that the choir was larger. Though the school received a lump sum payment of £1000, there was no contractual arrangement for royalties. Under 1996 UK copyright law, they became eligible, and after choir members were tracked down by royalties agent Peter Rowan of RBL Music, through the website Friends Reunited, they sued. Music industry professionals estimated that each student would be owed around £500.
Originally released on Columbia Records in the U.S. and Harvest Records in the UK, The Wall was then re-released as a digitally remastered CD in 1994 in the UK on EMI. In 1997, Columbia Records issued an updated remaster (which sounded superior to the EMI remasters from 1994) in the United States, Canada, Australia, South America and Japan. For The Wall's 20th Anniversary in April 2000, Capitol Records in the U.S. and EMI in Canada, Australia, South America and Japan re-released the 1997 remaster with the artwork from the EMI Europe remaster.
The Wall was the first Pink Floyd album since 1967's The Piper at the Gates of Dawn whose cover was not done by Storm Thorgerson and Hipgnosis. Instead, Gerald Scarfe did the cover and gatefold sleeve.
[edit] Concept
The storyline portrays the fictional life of an anti-hero named Pink, who is hammered and beaten down by society from the earliest days of his life: having lost his father (killed in Anzio during World War II, as was Roger Waters' own), smothered by his over-protective mother, and oppressed at school by tyrannical, abusive teachers who tried to mould him and the other pupils into the "right" shape for society (hence the recurring image of the meat grinder). Pink withdraws into his own fantasy world, building an imaginary wall, an allegory for being emotionally distant to protect himself from the rest of the world. Every bad experience in his life is "another brick in the wall". After heavily contemplating how to fill in the last few empty spaces in the wall, Pink puts off its construction for a while. He becomes a rock star and gets married, only to be cheated on by his wife due to his distance and coldness, as well as the life as a rock star. After this he resumes and eventually finishes building the wall.
Pink slowly goes insane behind his freshly completed wall. He is lost on the inside, but is forced to surface by his demanding lifestyle, and I.V. drug use distributed by his crew to "keep him going through the show". Hallucinating, Pink believes that he is a fascist dictator, and his concerts are like Neo-Nazi rallies where he sets his men on fans he considers unworthy, only to have his conscience rebel at this and put himself on trial, his inner judge ordering him to tear down his wall in order to open himself to the outside world. At this point the album's end runs into its beginning with the closing words "Isn't this where..."; the first song on the album, "In the Flesh?", begins with the words "...we came in?" hinting at the cyclical nature of Waters' theme.
The LP's custom picture labels tied in with the album's concept. Side one had a quarter of the wall erected and a sketch of the teacher. Side two saw half of the wall erected and a sketch of the wife. Side three had three-fourths of the wall erected and a sketch of the character of Pink, while side four had the wall completely erected and a sketch of the prosecutor.
- "Isn't this where...we came in?" (file info) — play in browser (beta)
- The last second of Outside the Wall and the first second of In the Flesh?
- Problems listening to the file? See media help.
[edit] Concert and filmed versions
Rehearsals for The Wall concerts began shortly after the album's release in December 1979 at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles and rehearsals would run until January 1980 when it moved to the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena for the first performance.
Pink Floyd performed the concert version of The Wall only in a handful of cities. This was due to the grandiosity of the performance, which involved constructing a giant wall across the stage between band and audience, not to mention staple Pink Floyd props such as giant screens, flying pigs and pyrotechnics. It was performed first in Los Angeles from February 7 to 14, 1980, then in New York from February 24 to 28, 1980 at Nassau Coliseum. It was followed by performances at Earls Court in London from August 4 to 8, 1980, then again in Dortmund, Germany at Westfalenhalle from February 21 to 28, 1981. Finally, the band did one more week at Earls Court in London from June 13 to 17, 1981. Roger Waters would later perform it in 1990 in Berlin.
The performances began with a Master of Ceremonies, who rotated from show to show, reading a list of "do's" and "don'ts". A "surrogate band", which wore masks of their counterparts in Pink Floyd, would perform "In the Flesh?." The sound of a plane crash would be made, and the surrogate band would stop playing. The real Pink Floyd would come into full view, and a giant wall is constructed by roadies out of roughly 100 cardboard bricks throughout the first half of the performance augmented by appearances by an inflatable teacher, wife, and mother. In the second half, the band would still be playing but were completely obscured from view behind the wall. A few bricks revealed David Gilmour playing classical guitar on "Is There Anybody Out There?". Roger Waters sang from an open hotel room on "Nobody Home" and "Vera". During "Comfortably Numb", Roger Waters sang his parts dressed as the doctor wearing a white coat in front of the wall while guitarist David Gilmour was hoisted hydraulically on to the top of the wall singing his parts and playing his famous guitar solos in full view of the crowd. The surrogate band returned, wearing life masks of the four band members while the four Pink Floyd members all wore Hammer guard T-shirts, jeans and shoes/sneakers (Gilmour, Mason and Wright) except for Roger Waters who wore a long leather trench coat with hammer logos and storm-trooper boots. The wall was dramatically torn down during "The Trial", and Pink Floyd themselves joined the surrogate band in front of the wreckage of the wall to perform the finale, "Outside the Wall".
During the performance, giant puppets of the Teacher, Wife, and Mother, designed by Gerald Scarfe, were used, and animations by Scarfe were projected onto a circular area and onto the wall itself. Added to this, a hotel room (where much of the story is set) emerges from the wall midway through the second half for the song "Nobody Home".
The large stage shows required huge equipment (including full sized cranes), and cost an extraordinary amount of money to produce. As such, the band lost money from them, with the exception of Rick Wright, who was retained on a fixed salary for the concerts after being fired during the mixing sessions of the album in Los Angeles. The intent of the band for these concerts was to give the audience a truly theatrical experience instead of a typical rock concert where the band played the songs. As such, during many songs, Waters assumed the role of the anti-hero, Pink, singing despondently from a hotel room (a set on the stage).
- Main article: Pink Floyd The Wall (film)
A film version of The Wall was released in 1982 entitled Pink Floyd The Wall, directed by Alan Parker and starring Bob Geldof. The screenplay was written by Roger Waters. The film features music from the original album, much of which was re-recorded by the band with additional orchestration, some with minor lyrical and musical changes.
Originally the film was intended to be intercut with concert footage and a few of the live shows were actually filmed, but subsequently not used in the film at all. Footage from these concerts has appeared on different web-sites from time to time and on YouTube. However, an official release of this footage by Pink Floyd has not been authorized other than what was used in the documentary Behind the Wall.
[edit] Post-split
After Waters left Pink Floyd in 1985, a legal battle ensued over the rights to the name "Pink Floyd" and its material. In the end, Waters retained the right to use The Wall and its material, as his name has been most closely associated with the album. This meant the sole ownership of all The Wall tracks except for the three Gilmour co-wrote the music for ("Young Lust", "Comfortably Numb" and "Run Like Hell") and images relating to The Wall on the later 1987–1990 and 1994 tours by the three-man Pink Floyd required payments to Waters, including a $400 fee for using the inflatable pig (which Waters had called Algie, and asserted was a sow), although Gilmour narrowly dodged the pig fee by adding testicles to the pig used on these tours.
Waters staged a concert performance of The Wall at Potsdamer Platz in Berlin on July 21, 1990 both to commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall and as a fundraising effort for the World War Memorial Fund for Disaster Relief. This performance has several differences to the original Wall show. "Another Brick in the Wall, (Part II)" is extended with solos by various instruments and has a cold ending. "Mother" has the extended intro but a shorter guitar solo. "Comfortably Numb" features longer duelling solos by the two guitarists as well as an additional chorus at the end of the song. "The Show Must Go On" and "Outside the Wall" are omitted completely, while both "What Shall We Do Now?" and "The Last Few Bricks" appearing in concerts and on the 1981 live album, as well as the song The Tide Is Turning from Roger Waters' 1987 solo album Radio K.A.O.S. are included.
[edit] Track listing (album version)
All songs are by Roger Waters except as noted.
[edit] Disc 1 (side one of cassette)
[edit] Side 1
- "In the Flesh?" – 3:16
- Lead vocals: Roger Waters
- "The Thin Ice" – 2:27
- Lead vocals: David Gilmour and Roger Waters
- "Another Brick in the Wall (Part I)" – 3:21
- Lead vocals: Roger Waters
- "The Happiest Days of Our Lives" – 1:46
- Lead vocals: Roger Waters
- "Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)" – 4:00
- Lead vocals: David Gilmour, Roger Waters, and the Islington Green School Choir
- "Mother" – 5:32
- Lead vocals: David Gilmour and Roger Waters
[edit] Side 2
- "Goodbye Blue Sky" – 2:45
- Lead vocals: David Gilmour
- "Empty Spaces" – 2:10
- Lead vocals: Roger Waters
- "Young Lust" (David Gilmour/Roger Waters) – 3:25
- Lead vocals: David Gilmour
- "One of My Turns" – 3:35
- Lead vocals: Roger Waters
- "Don't Leave Me Now" – 4:16
- Lead vocals: Roger Waters, "ooohh babe.." section at the end sung by David Gilmour
- "Another Brick in the Wall (Part III)" – 1:14
- Lead vocals: Roger Waters
- "Goodbye Cruel World" – 0:48
- Lead vocals: Roger Waters
[edit] Disc 2 (side two of cassette)
[edit] Side 3
- "Hey You" – 4:40
- Lead vocals: David Gilmour and Roger Waters
- "Is There Anybody Out There?" – 2:44
- Lead vocals: Roger Waters
- "Nobody Home" – 3:26
- Lead vocals: Roger Waters
- "Vera" – 1:35
- Lead vocals: Roger Waters
- "Bring the Boys Back Home" – 1:21
- Lead vocals: Roger Waters
- "Comfortably Numb" (David Gilmour/Roger Waters) – 6:24
- Lead vocals: David Gilmour (chorus) and Roger Waters (verses)
[edit] Side 4
- "The Show Must Go On" – 1:36
- Lead vocals: David Gilmour
- "In the Flesh" – 4:13
- Lead vocals: Roger Waters
- "Run Like Hell" (David Gilmour/Roger Waters) – 4:19
- Lead vocals: Roger Waters
- "Waiting for the Worms" – 4:04
- Lead vocals: David Gilmour and Roger Waters
- "Stop" – 0:30
- Lead vocals: Roger Waters
- "The Trial" (Roger Waters/Bob Ezrin) – 5:13
- Lead vocals: Roger Waters
- "Outside the Wall" – 1:41
- Lead vocals: Roger Waters
Total length of album: 1:21:20
[edit] Additional non-album tracks
- "When the Tigers Broke Free" (Used in the movie version of The Wall. Composed prior to the recording of the album, released on a vinyl single, Echoes (Disc 2, Track 05) and on the 2004 re-release of The Final Cut)
- "What Shall We Do Now?" (Used in the movie version of The Wall. The song was left off the original album due to lack of space, the reprise "Empty Spaces" which was originally meant to go between "Don't Leave Me Now" and "Another Brick in the Wall (Part III)" was moved from its original spot on the album and put in its place for the sake of space. It is used during the wall-building sequence during the live show). A majority of writers and aficionados of the album, film, and live show always seem to think that "Empty Spaces" is actually the introduction to "What Shall We Do Now?" and it is not. The Wall engineer James Guthrie has always stated that "Empty Spaces" is a reprise of "What Shall We Do Now?" and not the introduction. However, a rough cut of "Empty Spaces" is used as the introduction to a rough cut to "What Shall We Do Now?" on The Wall 1978 demo tape. See Brain Damage Pink Floyd podcast show under "The Wall - Demos".
The live version of The Wall, Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live 1980-81, included the following tracks not on the original album:
- "What Shall We Do Now?" after "Empty Spaces"
- "The Last Few Bricks" after "Another Brick in the Wall (Part III)"; usually a medley performed while the construction crew was finishing off the massive wall on stage
The album was originally written to be a triple-LP album, although Waters cut it down and left material out for the band's next release, The Final Cut.
- "Is There Anybody Out There (Part II)" features previously unheard lyrics, part of which were later worked into "Hey You"
- "Is There Anybody Out There (Part III)" and "Empty Spaces (Part II)" were cut for time.
- "Your Possible Pasts" later re-written for use on The Final Cut, however, the line "Do you remember me/How we used to be/Do you think/We should be/Closer?" was used in the film.
- "One of the Few" - working title, "Teach" - was later re-written for use on The Final Cut
- "The Final Cut" also re-written for use on The Final Cut. A line from this song goes: "Dial the combination/Open the priest-hole/And if I'm in, I'll tell you what's behind the wall". A gunshot is played over "behind the wall" in the final version of the song, to sever its connection to the album The Wall. The complete lyrics are still written in the inside sleeve of the album. These lyrics can be heard sung (minus the shotgun) on the bootleg CD with the demos of The Final Cut.
[edit] Trivia
- "Empty Spaces" begins with a secret message recorded backwards:
Roger Waters: "Congratulations, You have just discovered the secret message. Please send your answers to 'Old Pink', Care of 'The Funny Farm', Chalfonte..."
[interrupted by engineer James Guthrie who says] "Roger, Carolyn's on the phone..."
- "Waiting for the Worms": Near the end of the track, Roger Waters (as Pink) barks out instructions and directions in street names (most of the words are inaudible):
You are ordered to proceed and going to convene outside Brixton Town Hall where we're going to be… WAITING…to cut out the deadwood. To clean up the city. To put on a black shirt. To weed out the weaklings. To smash in their windows and kick in their doors. For the final solution to strengthen the strain. To follow the worms. To turn on the showers and fire the ovens. Waiting for the queers, coons, the reds and the Jews. The Worms will convene outside Brixton Bus Station. We'll be moving along at about 12 o'clock down Stockwell Road … twelve minutes to three we'll be moving along Lambeth Road towards Vauxhall Bridge. Now when we get to the other side of Vauxhall Bridge, we're in Westminster area. It's quite possible we may encounter some Jew boys…
Brixton Town Hall and Stockwell Road are both areas with large black populations. What was implied in the song is not explicit, but a racial pride "parade"/riot seems a possible inference.
- Trudy Young provided the voice of the groupie for the infamous "oh my God, what a fabulous room" monologue in One of My Turns.
- Despite being a double album/CD, the album was released on one extended length cassette (US, Canada, Japan, Australia, UK) and one 8-track cartridge. Whilst the full 81 plus minute album fit on one extended length cassette, the 8-track cartridge issues featured shortened versions of "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)", "Goodbye Cruel World", "Comfortably Numb" and "Outside the Wall". Also, the famous intro, "we came in", and outro, "Isn't this where", were removed for time constraints on the 8 track as well. Lastly, "Hey You" was split into two parts.
[edit] Quotes
Maybe the architectural training to look at things helped me to visualise my feelings of alienation from rock 'n' roll audiences. Which was the starting point for The Wall. The fact that it then embodied an autobiographical narrative was kind of secondary to the main thing which was a theatrical statement in which I was saying, 'Isn't this fucking awful? Here I am up onstage and there you all are down there and isn't it horrible! What the fuck are we all doing here?'
– Roger Waters, June 1987, to Chris Salewicz
I don't fully agree with the concept of The Wall. To me it's filled with a catalogue of complaints and I don't want to blame everything on everyone else in my life but myself...There's some wonderful stuff on the album. I think that's one of the wonderful things about music is that you can have a doom-laden lyric on top of an uplifting piece of music. It juxtaposes and gives you an uplifting feeling about it. I think the film got too black and bleak. Like I said, I don't fully concur with everything Roger says on it; I think some parts are very good and some parts are outright bleak to me.
– David Gilmour, May 1992, U.S. Radio interview
And my view of what The Wall itself is about is more jaundiced today than it was then. It appears now to be a catalogue of people Roger blames for his own failings in life, a list of 'you fucked me up this way, you fucked me up that way'.
– David Gilmour, February 1993, Guitar World
[edit] Singles
- "Another Brick in the Wall (pt.2)"/"One of My Turns" - Columbia 1-11187; released January 8, 1980 (UK, U.S., France and Italy [with Young Lust as a B-Side])
- "Run Like Hell"/"Don't Leave Me Now" - Columbia 1-11265; released April, 1980 (Holland, Sweden and US)
- "Comfortably Numb"/"Hey You" - Columbia 1-11311; released June, 1980 (US and Japan)
[edit] Charts
Album - Billboard (North America)
| Year | Chart | Position |
|---|---|---|
| 1980 | Billboard's Pop Albums | 1 |
Singles - Billboard (North America)
| Year | Single | Chart | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1980 | "Another Brick in the Wall" | Pop Singles | 1 |
| 1980 | "Run Like Hell" | Pop Singles | 53 |
[edit] Awards
| Year | Winner | Category |
|---|---|---|
| 1980 | The Wall | Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical |
[edit] Credits
- Roger Waters — vocals, bass guitar, co-producer, synthesiser, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, sleeve design
- David Gilmour — guitars, vocals, co-producer, bass guitar, sequencer, synthesiser, clavinet, percussion
- Richard Wright — piano, organ, synthesiser, clavinet, bass pedals
- Nick Mason — drums, percussion
with
- Lee Ritenour — Rhythm Guitar on "One of My Turns" and Acoustic Guitar on "Comfortably Numb"
- Jeff Porcaro — Drums on "Mother"
- Joe Porcaro — Marching Snare drum on "Bring the Boys Back Home"
- Blue Ocean — Marching Snare drum on "Bring the Boys Back Home"
- Freddie Mandell — Hammond Organ on "In the Flesh?" and "In the Flesh"
- Bobbye Hall — Percussion
- Ron di Blasi — Classical guitar on "Is There Anybody Out There?"
- Larry Williams — Clarinet on "Outside the Wall"
- Trevor Veitch — Mandolin
- Frank Marrocco — Concertina
- Bruce Johnston — Backing Vocals
- Toni Tennille — Backing Vocals
- Joe Chemay — Backing Vocals
- Jon Joyce — Backing Vocals
- Stan Farber — Backing Vocals
- Jim Haas — Backing Vocals
- Fourth Form Music Class, Islington Green School, London — Backing Vocals
- Bob Ezrin — co-producer; Orchestra Arrangement; Keyboards
- Michael Kamen — Orchestra Arrangement
- James Guthrie — Co-Producer; Engineer; Percussion; Synthesiser on "Empty Spaces" (in collaboration with David Gilmour), Sequencer; Drums on "The Happiest Days of Our Lives" (in collaboration with Nick Mason), remastering producer
- Nick Griffiths — Engineer
- Patrice Queff — Engineer
- Brian Christian — Engineer
- John McClure — Engineer
- Rick Hart — Engineer
- Robert Hrycyna — Engineer
- Phil Taylor — Sound Equipment
- Gerald Scarfe — Sleeve Design
- Doug Sax — Mastering and Remastering
[edit] Notes
- ^ Waters' spitting incident, from Angelfire.com [1]
- ^ Wright confirmed this on the U.S. rock radio album premiere of Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live 1980-81 in 2000.
- ^ Publius FAQ [2]
- ^ Gilmour confirmed that he was against Wright's dismissal on the U.S. rock radio album premiere of Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live 1980-81 in 2000
