("… we came in?")

'The Wall' is one of the most outstanding examples of what we call a concept album, meaning that it is not a mere collection of songs, but a preconceived work of art that tells a story and deals with recurring musical and lyrical themes. It was almost entirely written by Roger Waters, the band's then singer, bass player and lyricist, and centers on the character 'Pink', who incorporates autobiographical features, but also refers to Pink Floyd's founder member Syd Barrett and as well involves fictional elements. 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 "…we came in?" – a hint at the cyclical nature of Waters' theme.

 

Main character Pink's childhood is shaped by the early loss of his father in World War II and his overprotective mother, who smothers him with her affection, but hinders his development. At school, he experiences an authoritarian education, executed by tyrannical teachers who make fun of his first attempts to write poems. This leads to his desire to retreat from the real world, misusing music, sex, and drugs as escapism. Metaphorically speaking, he erects a "wall" around him, enabling him to avoid human contact, which to him has proven to be painful. Ironically, as he becomes a rock star, this makes him even more attractive to fans and groupies. His downward spiral reaches its bottom, when right before a concert he is too heavy on drugs to perform. In a hallucination he sees the concert as a neo-Nazi rally, with himself as a fascist dictator (the picture shows Bob Geldof as Pink in the 'Wall' movie), ordering Jews, blacks and gays to be thrown out of the venue. He feels guilty and so puts himself on a symbolic trial. After that he decides "to tear down the wall", to open up to the outside world and come to terms with the facts of life. Gloomy stuff, you might think, but nevertheless the album has sold over 30 million copies worldwide up to date, and is the best selling double album of all time. It seems like there are still lots of people all over the world who can identify with Pink.

 

Pink Floyd also toured with 'The Wall', playing only a handful of spectacular shows in New York, Los Angeles, London and Dortmund. Whilst the band was playing on stage, a wall made of cardboard bricks, 40 feet high, was built between the band and the audience. This wall was used as a screen on which animations were projected. Several characters from the story were realised as giant inflatable puppets, hovering above the wall. There were new bricks carried upon the stage with every song the band played, until after the final song "Goodbye Cruel World", the last gap in the wall was closed.

 

Even before 'The Wall' was recorded, Roger Waters intended to make a film out of it, then planning to star himself as the main character. Two years after its release, renowned director Alan Parker adapted Pink Floyd's album for the screen and Bob Geldof assumed the role of Pink. The movie 'Pink Floyd The Wall' is quite exceptional, because it features no conventional dialogue. The story of Pink is told mainly using the music of Pink Floyd, a rich symbolic imagery and animation sequences by political cartoonist and illustrator Gerald Scarfe.

 

 

Roger Waters understood 'The Wall' as a symbol of personal isolation and alienation and not as a wall built of concrete, but then again, the Berlin Wall has always been more than just a concrete wall. It was the dividing line between East and West and sometimes between members of the same family. So when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 Roger Waters decided to restage Pink Floyd's 'The Wall' at the Postdamer Platz in Berlin, which used to be a waste land at that time. 200.000 tickets were sold for the concert on the 21st of July 1990, 300.000 people are said to have been there, which makes it the biggest concert in Germany ever. At that time, the PA (power amplifier) system was the largest ever built for a single concert.

 

But not only the production was very special: what made the event unique was that a lot of superstars as diverse as The Scorpions, Sinéad O'Connor or Van Morrisson took part and assumed the different roles in the already legendary rock opera.
This shift in meaning – from the personal to the political – shows that 'The Wall' is much more than a rock-star ego trip. The compelling story of Pink in all its incarnations – as album, movie and concert – has enough potential for new interpretations and is, indeed, timeless.
                            ("Isn't this where...")

 

Thomas Bollwerk