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The Wall

This article deals with the Pink Floyd album. For the war memorial, please see Vietnam Veterans Memorial

The Wall
LP by Pink Floyd
Released	November 30 1979 (UK) December 8 1979 (US)
Recorded	1979
Genre	Rock
Length	39 min 19 s (1) 42 min 01 s (2)
Record label	Columbia Records
Producers	Bob Ezrin, David Gilmour and Roger Waters
Professional reviews
RollingStone review	Favorable	link
Pink Floyd Chronology
Animals (1977)	The Wall (1979)	A Collection of Great Dance Songs (1981)

The Wall is a rock opera/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 concert tour for Animals. 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 which would later develop into the album.

Table of contents

1 Concept 2 Hit singles 3 Live dates 4 The movie 5 Post split 6 Track Listing (album version) 6.1 Disc one 6.2 Disc two 6.3 Additional tracks from the film 6.4 Album tracks not included in the film 6.5 Tracks from the live concert 7 Quotes 8 External links

Concept

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.

Hit singles

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".

Live dates

Pink Floyd only performed a concert version of The Wall a handful of times. It was performed in New York, Los Angeles, London, and Dortmund.

The performances included film clips of Gerald Scarfe animations.

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 exception to Wright, who earned money from his fixed salary for the concerts.

The movie

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. It drew on (auto) biographical material from Floyd members Roger Waters and Syd Barrett, combining Waters' early childhood (Waters' lamentation over the loss of his father in World War II was well known to Pink Floyd's fans) with Barrett's withdrawal and mental breakdown. This storyline was intercut with animated sequences by Gerald Scarfe.

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."

Post split

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.

Track Listing (album version)

1. "Hey You"
2. "Is There Anybody Out There?"
3. "Nobody Home"
4. "Vera"
5. "Bring the Boys Back Home"
6. "Comfortably Numb"
7. "The Show Must Go On"
8. "In The Flesh"
9. "Run Like Hell"
10. "Waiting For The Worms"
11. "Stop"
12. "The Trial"
13. "Outside The Wall"

• "When the Tigers Broke Free" (Released on Echoes: Best of... Disc 2, Track 05 and on the 2004 re-release of The Final Cut)
• "What Shall We Do Now?" (Extended version of "Empty Spaces" during the wall-building sequence)

• Pink Floyd lyrics for The Wall
• Album trivia
• Complete Analysis of the Lyrics