super groovy delicious bite: the wall

Pink Floyd built a nightmarish disguise to hide from the silent reproach of a million tear stained eyes with metaphorical bricks of alienation and isolation and gave us all an education. The concept for 'The Wall' was born from experiences during the 'In The Flesh' tour that followed their previous album 'Animals'. During the final show in Montreal, Waters became so frustrated with noisy fans near the stage that he spit on one of them. The band took a break for a year, during which David Gilmour and Richard Wright recorded solo albums; Nick Mason produced Steve Hillage's 'Green'; and Waters worked on new material.

Waters reveals: "The starting point of this whole project was me feeling bad about being on a big stage and feeling that there was an enourmous wall between me and the audience. Albeit and invisible one, but one that I really felt was there. And looking at the faces of the people that I could see in the first fifteen of swaying heads, it looked as if they were experiencing it as well. It's like when you are singing a very quiet song with an acoustic guitar on stage and there's about ten thousand people are shouting, screaming, whistling...which happened a lot on the Animals tour. There was always at least twenty people that I could see whistling, and shouting, and screaming. They were trying, maybe, to kind of be with me, but it doesn't help...'Wooo, Hey, Yeah, Get down'...you know and you're trying to fucking sing these quiet little songs...Well, obviously they don't [understand what we're doing]. The ones who are making the noise. The problem is that you know that there are thousands of other people there who do and who want to listen to it. If they were all like that then you could just say, 'Ok, they're just a bunch of mindless pigs. Let's take their money and run.' But you know that there are people out there who do want to listen to it, and who are interested, and they do understand...The starting point of this project was me thinking, 'Wouldn't it be theatrical to do a show and to physically construct this wall that I feel between me and them during the show. And to just cut the songs off to really antagonize the audience and let them really find out for themselves how they feel about that. So in the show, we do do that, but we don't leave it at that. In terms of the structure of the piece, the wall gets finished at the end of side two -- or in terms of the show -- about halfway through the show...And then he keeps flipping into the other persona which is the raving, facist persona that he has adopted. I could explain one thing and that is that all that shouting, the bullhorn stuff is actually describing a march from a place in south London. It's a heavily black populated area of south London where the National Front is particularly active. And it describes a march from a place called Brixton Town Hall and it just describes the roads and things and which bridge they come over and where they're going. And they're going towards Hyde Park Corner to have a rally in Hyde Park. And at the end of it, I don't know if can hear, they're saying hammer. And that's another thing. On side four, the audience who start off in between 'The Show Must Go On' and 'In The Flesh'...you can hear them chanting Pink Floyd, but slowly that gets taken over by Hammer. The idea was for a rock show to turn into a rally...We did do Aneheim stadium last time where the first people in the audience are 120 yards away because they won't let you on the infield. A dreadful place to do a rock show. The only reason for doing it is money. The defense of doing huge gigs like that, where nobody can really hear anything or see anything, is 'well gosh, we're so popular...there are so many people who want to come see us that we have to do these very large venues in order to accomadate them.' Which is a very nice gently out, but the reason that we all do it is for the bucks. And don't let any rock and roller tell you different because it ain't true. So, he decides that he has, we have. All those big stadium gigs. As it's himself that's trying himself. The worst thing that he thinks can happen to him is that he should expose himself, and his fears, and his feelings, and anything to make himself vunerable...This is him hallucinating. This is him breaking down...The worst thing that he feels can happen to him is that he be exposed; when in fact, it's the best thing."

'The Wall' was produced by Bob Ezrin, David Gilmour, James Guthrie, and Roger Waters during a grueling process that drove the band apart as Waters pressured the rest of the group to end their vacations and finish the album sooner than planned. Facing bankrupcy, the band became tax exiles during the recording as well. The album was recorded over fifteen months at Britannia Row Studios in London, England; Super Bear Studios and Studio Miraval in Correns, France; CBS 30th Street Studio in New York, United States; and at Cherokee Studios, Producers Workshop, and The Village in Los Angeles, United States. The sessions featured Roger Waters on bass, vocals, and rhythm guitar; David Gilmour on rhythm guitar, lead guitar, vocals, bass, fretless bass, and mandolin; Nick Mason on drums and percussion; and Richard Wright on keyboards; with Bob Ezrin on organ, piano, synthesizer, and backing vocals; James Guthrie on percussion, synthesizer, and sound effects; Jeff Porcaro on drums;Lee Ritenour on guitars; Joe (Ron) di Blasi on classical guitar; Fred Mandel on Hammond organ; Bobbye Hall on congas and bongos; Frank Marrocco on concertina; Larry Williams on clarinet; Trevor Veitch on mandolin; Phil Taylor on sound effects; "Vicki & Clare" on backing vocals; Harry Waters as child's voice on "Goodbye Blue Sky"; Chris Fitzmorris as the male telephone voice; Trudy Young as the voice of the groupie; and additional vocals by Bruce Johnston, Toni Tennille, Joe Chemay, Jon Joyce, Stan Farber, Jim Haas, and the Children of Islington Green School. Michael Kamen did the arrangements with musicians from the New York Philharmonic and New York Symphony Orchestras and a choir from the New York City Opera.