PINK FLOYD
PINK FLOYD:
David Gilmour: Lead and Backing Vocals, Acoustic Guitars, Electric Guitars, Fretless Bass Guitar
Nick Mason: Drums and Percussion
Roger Waters: Lead and Backing Vocals, Acoustic Guitars, Bass Guitar
Richard Wright: Piano, Organ, Keyboards, Synthesizers
All music and lyrics by Roger Waters
except "Young Lust," "Comfortably Numb" and "Run Like Hell" music and lyrics by David Gilmour and Roger Waters
and "The Trial" music and lyrics by Bob Ezrin and Roger Waters
Produced by Bob Ezrin, David Gilmour, James Guthrie and Roger Waters
Released November 30, 1979
Celebrating the 35th Anniversary of the original release of "The Wall"
Sometimes the gift of music takes considerable time to be fully received...
At the age of 10 years old on Christmas morning 1979, my life was changed forever. I woke and entered my living room and surrounding the couch by the Christmas tree was what appeared to my eyes to be a veritable record store lined end to end with a series of new albums for my listening pleasure. Some albums (quite possibly ones from Electric Light Orchestra, Queen, The Eagles and one of those solo KISS albums) fit perfectly into my personal wheelhouse. I also received "In Through The Out Door" (released August 15, 1979), my very first album by Led Zeppelin. A most happy surprise was found in receiving Fleetwood Mac's double album "Tusk" (released October 12, 1979), an album that I ultimately never warmed to for over 10 years after it was released...but that is another story.
Then, there was one more album that seemed to be completely out of place from all of the remaining albums. I saw an album jacket that looked like nothing else but a white, brick wall and upon further investigation, I discovered that I had received a copy of "The Wall" by Pink Floyd, a band I knew absolutely NOTHING about aside from having heard of the name and of course, being a devotee of the hit single, the bass driven and nearly disco groove of the otherwise venomous "Another Brick In The Wall Part 2" with its iconic schoolyard chant "We don't need no education!" (itself a roof raiser on the school bus).
I spent that Christmas morning listening to my new album collection one after the other and if memory serves me correctly, I possibly saved "The Wall" for last as it was the most unfamiliar. Regardless of listening order of the day, I can express to you that once I removed the plastic from the album itself and opened up the gatefold jacket, I was more than a little confused as to what I saw on the inside.
The inside of the album jacket contained an image of the same white brick wall but now broken in the middle to display a barrage of surrealistic imagery of which I was completely unused to seeing and it disturbed me greatly. A stadium complete with militaristic marching hammers and a fearsome looking airplane descending into the arena was striking enough but the gargantuan mutant creature with backwards legs reaching upwards to reveal an equally giant anus was as confusing as it was grotesque. Further along the gatefold were other displaced bricks with more indescribable, distorted and downright appalling looking monsters emerging from the spaces. And at the very bottom was what looked to be a tiny man underneath a series of spotlights. I did not know what to make of what I was seeing in any conceivable way. Even the liner notes and lyric sheets looked to be written in the illegible scrawl of a madman. And so, with curiosity and much trepidation, I placed Side One of "The Wall" onto the turntable and began to listen...
Dear readers and listeners, before I go any further, I should inform you that at that age, I had only listened to AM rock and soul radio. I hadn't even discovered FM radio and its album rock formats yet. My ears were used to pop songs quite frankly. Not rock operas, concept albums or anything remotely dark, so to speak. In fact, even with my passionate devotion to The Beatles, I often found myself skipping past songs like "Revolution #9" or hurrying to the record player to just miss hearing Ringo Starr screaming about the blisters on his fingers at the conclusion of "Helter Skelter" as they each sounded too strange and even frightening to my ears. Even "Strawberry Fields Forever" just sounded wrong to me, so you can only imagine just what I was in for when I began to hear "The Wall" for the very first time.
By now, the story of "The Wall" is most familiar but for the uninitiated, the album unfolds as follows. "The Wall" tells the story of Pink, a rock star bunkered down inside of his hotel room while on tour and trapped inside a psychological and partially drug induced mental catatonia otherwise known as the wall.
In a non-linear fashion over the course of Sides One and Two, we learn Pink's backstory and discover all of the "bricks" that have constructed his wall. Pink grew up in post war England never knowing his Father as he was killed during World War II, an absence that fuels his emotional disconnect. Pink is therefore raised by his suffocating Mother, is tortured at school by a tyrannical teacher, eventually becomes a musician and rock star and enters into an embittered marriage where his elevating disconnect alienates his wife who soon develops a philanderous relationship.
All the while, Pink's precarious psychological state worsens as his feelings of isolation and mounting depression unleash "the worms," all of his negative thoughts, fears and demons which threaten to swallow him entirely. Feeling completely despondent and broken from his wife's infidelity, Pink violently lashes out against a groupie after a concert in his hotel room, which he soon demolishes. Pained from trying to navigate an increasingly harsh outside world, Pink fully and finally completes the wall as a barrier between himself and reality.
If Sides One and Two represent Pink's retreat, then Sides Three and Four represent his desperate need to reconnect with life and humanity. This stretch of the album, while more linear, fluctuates between Pink's oppressive existential sorrow, hallucinations and nightmares while he stares at a television screen broadcasting one World War II themed movie after another.
The breaking point arrives before Pink's next scheduled concert on the tour when his handlers, plus a physician, enter the hotel room to drug and revive the incapacitated rock star for the night's performance. Pink's self-loathing and megalomania in his specialized world of rock and roll excess metamorphoses itself into a harrowing sequence where Pink re-imagines himself as the leader of imaginary fascist group The Hammers, a mob of neo-Nazis who unleash their repugnant reign of terror over Pink's legions of fans and society at large.
The final strains occur when Pink inititates a self imposed trial starring the key figures from his life as witnesses. The conclusion is revealed when the judge (visualized as the mammoth anus), sentences Pink "to be exposed before your peers" and decrees at long last to "TEAR DOWN THE WALL!!!!" This action returns Pink to the world of reality as a thinking, feeling, fragile individual spiraling through existence alongside all of the rest of us thinking, feeling, fragile souls.
Dear readers and listeners, I nearly jumped ten feet straight upwards into the air as the first sonic boom opening notes of the volcanic "In The Flesh?" exploded through my speakers and I remember feeling completely shaken by the final and blessedly gentler strains of "Outside The Wall." Hearing "The Wall" that very first time was a listening experience unlike any other at that time of my life and frankly, I really haven't had a listening experience like that one ever since, save for my first listen to Nine Inch Nails' "The Downward Spiral" (released March 8, 1994).
Pink Floyd's "The Wall" was a exquisitely terrifying experience for me that first time as I had never heard anything that sounded so anguished, so horrific, so startling, raging, fragile, and even nightmarish. The three dimensional sound effects of descending war planes, crying babies, destroyed television sets, screams that sounded like howls in the dark, repetitive disembodied voices rattling around the speakers as if they were the darkest, most pained thoughts in your head were completely threatening to my ears. Even the actual music itself seemed to turn on me. That any time, I seemed to find my bearings, whether through a guitar solo, beautiful harmony vocals, or more familiar sounding rock and roll rhythms and power, Pink Floyd upended me all over again by presenting an album where every song sounded wrong, including "Another Brick In The Wall Part 2," when placed within its full context was transformed from subversive radio hit to something more impassioned and violent.
When I first heard "The Wall," there simply was no safe place. On that Christmas Day, I listened to all four sides of the double album in one sitting and by the end, I was convinced that what I heard was evil! I scoured the liner notes again and was also surprised to discover that there was not even as much as a band photo, something to signify that actual human beings truly created something this traumatic. I was so scared from the experience that I packaged the album back up and actually hid it deep within my Father's record collection as I just did not even want to see it again.
And yet, it somehow became one of my favorite albums of all time and I cannot imagine my life without it. It is just unbelievable to me to realize that it has been a full 35 years since I first heard the album, especially as the experience still feels so fresh. And truth be told, I still get the shivers when I think about that first time.
Perhaps weeks or even months later sometime in early 1980, when I actually had finally discovered FM album rock radio, I heard a song that sounded somewhat familiar and yet I couldn't quite place it at that moment. "Hello...is there anybody in there?" sang the lyrics and as the song ventured onwards, it dawned on me that perhaps the song was from that nightmare album I received on Christmas Day. But, this song didn't sound so scary within those moments and in fact, I found myself quite liking it a lot. My mind then endured some serious thought over "The Wall," as I wondered if I should dig the album back out from its hiding place and try it again. I do not remember if I tried it that day or some time after hearing the song on the radio but I did indeed unearth the album and I listened to it, quite fearfully to be honest, all over again. And then, I listened again. And again and again and again until it became a point of obsession as I just had to figure this thing out.
By the end of 5th grade, Pink Floyd's "The Wall," while it still frightened me, became my personal pilgrimage. Some friends of mine had also heard the album, mostly thanks to older siblings who owned it, and so then, I had someone to talk to about it as we all tried to figure out just what the hell was this thing. At home, I poured over the lyrics, which I now know backwards and forwards. Over time, even my own handwriting eventually began to transform as I naturally gravitated towards a certain free hand/cursive hybrid that looks like a collection of loops and harsh lines, like the scrawl on the lyrics sheets.
Years later, I became a devotee of the 1982 hard R rated feature film adaptation as directed by Alan Parker and featuring the sinister, surreal artwork and animation of Gerald Scarfe, which my Father took me to see on opening day when I was 13 years old (a decision I still wonder if he regrets due to his personal distaste of the film). The film also became a regular touchstone of my college years as it was featured as a midnight movie at the campus multi-screen theater which is now defunct.
But the original album itself is one that has remained a constant in my life. It is one I listen to at some point nearly every single year and due to growing, living and aging, its power has only increased while the initial fright has long diminished. As I think about all that this album gave to me and must importantly taught me, I am compelled to share with you in order to properly commemorate its 35th anniversary.
Pink Floyd's "The Wall" was the very first album I heard in my lifetime that functioned far beyond being a collection of songs or even as a full musical statement which served to extend the art of the album. "The Wall" was the album that pushed the boundaries of rock and roll as I knew them back when I was 10 years old, as it showed me how the album as a whole could weave and hold a full narrative, much like a film or a novel. And in existing as some sort of audio literature or movie, the album was also able to encapsulate the theatrical elements of radio plays, rock operas and psychological dramas.
The faceless nature of Pink Floyd as a band also served the dramatic quality of the music and story of "The Wall" extremely well in regards to the vocals of both David Gilmour and Roger Waters, who often trade lead vocals within the same song, therefore making every moment sound as if it is arriving from the same voice. Finally, those aforementioned three dimensional sound effects augmented the story and Pink's turmoil so superbly that it truly feels as if you are trapped inside of Pink's brain...worms and all.
All of those sonic qualities would mean absolutely nothing without Roger Waters' timeless, peerless lyrics which remain some of the finest I have ever heard. The lyrics of "The Wall," in addition to introducing me to elaborate, decidedly adult and psychologically driven concepts, also began to build and expand my vocabulary.
Words like "reproach" from "The Thin Ice," "psychopathic" from "The Happiest Days Of Our Lives," "unfurled" from "Goodbye Blue Sky," "obligatory" and "inevitable" as used in "Nobody Home," "receding" from "Comfortably Numb" and "surrogate" from "In The Flesh" were examples of language that did not appear in the standard pop song and they often made me race to either my parents or the dictionary just so I could understand the album even more. Even the profanities contained in the music (for example, "I've got thirteen channels of shit on the TV to choose from" in "Nobody Home") felt more artistic than self-consciously vulgar. My parents never expressed their distaste as I gathered they realized that what I was listening to was theater and not smut.
As always, context is everything and throughout "The Wall," Roger Waters' lyrics, which often housed a brutal acidity, often unearths his voluminous empathy and sensitivity. "The Wall" revealed Waters at his most personal as the character of Pink clearly was a Waters stand-in, as Waters' own Father was killed in World War II, a loss and absence that had haunted the musician and had found its way into his lyrics throughout his tenure in the band. Yet, by the time of "The Wall," this particular anti-war protest theme became especially explicit as the lyrics showcased the long range effects and damage that war can produce. Yes, we have the straightforward "Bring The Boys Back Home" which pleads "Don't leave the children on their own/No! No!" But even more provocatively, as the lyric exclaim in plaintive sorrow during the grim acoustic based selection "Goodbye Blue Sky," David Gilmour sings, "the flames are all long gone but the pain lingers on."
The seemingly endless cycle of violence and abuse is not cemented solely in acts of war. In "The Wall," we are also given songs like "The Happiest Days Of Our Lives," where schoolteachers viciously torment all of their students only to return home and be confronted with their "fat and psychopathic wives who would thrash them within inches of their lives" just to inflict torment upon the children at school again the next morning.
The painful and bleak truths of adult relationships that flew way over my head as a child also make their due within "The Wall." Just hear the juxtapositions contained in the wrenching "Don't Leave Me Now," as the vague doo-wop by downers structure shows how quickly the emotional states of adult relationships can twist and turn from the romantic to the dangerously ferocious. "Don't leave me now," begs Pink to his unfaithful yet long suffering wife. "How could you go?/When you know how I need you/To beat to a pulp on a Saturday night."
And in the opening and darkly poetic moments of "One Of My Turns," a song where "loves turns grey/like the skin of a dying man," Waters' composes a defeatist passage where Pink muses, "I have grown older/And you have grown colder/And nothing is very much fun anymore."
The unquestionable power of Roger Waters' lyrics also carried a huge hand in why I was so worked over by "The Wall." When the false lullaby of "Mother" proclaims, "Mama's gonna make all of your nightmares come true/Mama's gonna put all of her fears into you," that was more than enough to make me take the needle off of the record right then and there. But even earlier, on the album's second track "The Thin Ice," Waters' creates a lyrical passage of shattering, harrowing despair.
"If you should go skating
On the thin ice of modern life
Dragging behind you the silent reproach
Of a million tear stained eyes
Don't be surprised, when a crack in the ice
Appears under your feet
You'll slip out of your depth and out of your mind
With your fear flowing out behind you
As you claw the thin ice"
DAMN!
Even with all of the terror and anguish, the greatest gift Pink Floyd's "The Wall" gave to me was the realization that elegance, poetry and artistic beauty can be found in the abyss. While "The Wall" exists as personal statement from Roger Waters as well as explores themes of isolation, alienation and psychological scars, concepts that are so seemingly solitary, it is remarkable just how universal of an album it is, certainly the profound element that has contributed to its massive longevity. "The Wall" is an album of towering humanity, as Waters' semi-autobiographical journey and Pink's inner odyssey completely mirrors our own as we have all experienced forms of loss and tragedy to varying degrees, and we also combat our own personal worms who threaten to eat into our brains.
We all carry our own baggage as we voyage through life. We all have our walls and the variety of bricks that construct those walls of varying heights and thickness. The humanity rests within how we connect and help each other along through life and when one of us does indeed disconnect like Pink, how we still try to forge a re-connection and continue onwards together, As the track so richly describes in "Outside The Wall":
"All alone or in twos
The ones who really love you
Walk up and down outside the wall
Some hand in hand
Some gathered together in bands
The bleeding hearts and the artists
Make their stand
And when they've given you their all
Some stagger and fall
After all it's not easy
Banging your heart against some mad bugger's wall"
There's a massive brick in the wall of the life experience right there.
Out of all of the albums in the Pink Floyd monumental discography, "The Wall" is my forever favorite. Its provocatively adult themes and sensibilities that also tap into a powerful adolescent angst make this a timeless achievement of enormous reach and volume. From the story and lyrics to the outstanding caliber of songs from one end to the other, most notably, the towering monolith that is "Comfortably Numb," Pink Floyd crafted a musical experience with grit, class and rock and roll swagger unlike most releases and with massive influence.
And that very first listen nearly made me ignorant to this incredible, audacious experience. that art doesn't always have to make one feel comfortable. For sometimes, it is within that sizable discomfort that we discover vast riches.
That is why Pink Floyd's "The Wall" is one of this DJ's favorite albums of all time.
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