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| The Wall | ||
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| LP by Pink Floyd | ||
| Released | November 30 1979 (UK) December 8 1979 (US) | |
| Recorded | April-November 1979 | |
| Genre | Rock | |
| Length | 39 min 19 s (1) 42 min 01 s (2) | |
| Record label | Harvest Records (UK) Capitol Records (US) | |
| Producers | Bob Ezrin, David Gilmour and Roger Waters | |
| Professional reviews | ||
| RollingStone review | Favorable | |
| Pink Floyd Chronology | ||
| Animals (1977) | The Wall (1979) | A Collection of Great Dance Songs (1981) |
The Wall is a rock opera and concept album by Pink Floyd. Hailed by critics and fans as one of Pink Floyd's best albums (along with Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here), the album is known as a rock and roll classic, and its morbid, depressing anthems have inspired many contemporary rock musicians.
Roger Waters was inspired to create the album during a 1977 concert tour for Animals, dubbed Pink Floyd - In The Flesh. In Montreal, a fan's disruptive behaviour resulted in Waters spitting in the fan's face. Immediately disgusted with himself, Waters came up with the idea of building a wall between him and the audience, an idea which would later develop into the album.
The album has certified 23 times platinum and sits in third place on the list of best-selling albums ever in the US and hit #1 on the Billboard Album Charts in 1980. Originally released on Columbia Records in the US and Harvest Records in the UK. The Wall was then re-released as a Digitally Remastered CD in 1994 in the UK on EMI. Then Columbia issued the remastered CD in 1997 in the US and rest of the world. For The Wall's 20th Anniversary in early 2000, Capitol Records in the US and EMI for the rest of the world outside the US re-released the 1997 remastered CD.
The album's concept and most of the songs are by Waters. The album's storyline portrays the fictional life of an anti-hero ("Pink") who is hammered and beaten down by society from the earliest days of his life: smothered by his mother, oppressed at school, he withdraws into a fantasy world of his own. During a drug-induced hallucination, Pink becomes a fascist dictator only to have his conscience rebel at this and put himself on trial, his inner judge ordering him to tear down his wall and open himself to the outside world.
During recording, Richard Wright was fired from the band.
Around the world, the album produced a number of hit singles for Pink Floyd, including "The Happiest Days of Our Lives", "Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2)", "Mother", "Empty Spaces", "Young Lust" and "Comfortably Numb".
Pink Floyd only performed the concert version of The Wall a handful of times, in New York, Los Angeles, London, and Dortmund.
The performances included film clips of Gerald Scarfe animations and giant puppets to his desgins.
The large stage shows required huge equipment (including full sized cranes), and cost an extraordinary amount of money to realize. As such, the band lost money from them, with the exception of Wright, who returned on a fixed salary for the concerts.
A movie version of The Wall was filmed in 1982 by MGM, under the title of Pink Floyd: The Wall. The film, directed by Alan Parker and starring Bob Geldof, with a cameo by Bob Hoskins and a minor role by the young Joanne Whalley, was a heavily symbolic, feature-length music video that added new elements to the storyline of The Wall. The film told the story of a boy named Pink Floyd who lost his father in World War II at a young age, and subsequently developed a very close relationship with his mother. Abused at school with few friends he grew up to be a successful rock star, and marries an attractive groupie. His life is ultimatley empty however, and after his wife cheats on him he attempts suicide. He later becomes a leading member of a neo-Nazi group before suffering a total emotional breakdown.
The film had very little dialouge, most of it inconsequential. The story of the movie is told largely through the soundtrack, which reflects Pink's thoughts. Animated segments by Gerald Scarfe and various other surreal sequences are interspliced with the live action.
The film drew heavily on (auto) biographical material from Floyd members Roger Waters and Syd Barrett, combining Waters' early childhood (Waters lost his father in World War II) with Barrett's withdrawal and mental breakdown.
Roger Waters said on Australian radio in 1988 that he:
"was a bit disappointed with it in the end because, at the end of the day, I felt no sympathy at all with the lead character, the character that Geldof played. I found it was so unremitting in its onslaught upon the senses, that it didn't actually give me a chance to get involved with it."
In 2004, it was announced that contracts had been signed for a Broadway musical version, with extra music to be written by Waters. The broadway version will feature all of the music written by waters. It is, however, unknown what will be done with the songs co-written by Gilmour (Young Lust, Comfortably Numb, and Run Like Hell). The show is estimated to be complete by mid 2005.
After Waters left the band, a legal battle ensued over the rights to the name "Pink Floyd" and its material. Waters retained the right to use The Wall and its material, and his name has been most closely associated with the album. Waters staged a gigantic concert performance of The Wall in Berlin on 21 July 1990, with guest artists including Van Morrison, Sinead O'Connor, Cyndi Lauper, The Scorpions, Jerry Hall, and Bryan Adams, to commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall and as a fundraising effort for Vera (1:35)"
The live version of The Wall,
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