P i n k F l o y d
THE WALL
(1980)
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Roger Waters was exhausted. Actually, he had gone mad. In 1979, while Pink Floyd were promoting their latest album "Animals", their leader snapped and spit a fan in the face at a gig in Montreal. He´d had enough, enough of the rock circus, enough of business and enough of crazy shows with hyped up flocks of people about to lose control. Back home, he gathered himself for what would turn out to be the band´s - or particularly his - most ambitious project ever. And hence their most pompous and expensive one, too.
Roger Waters decided to build up The Wall. Not only was there a wall erected between the band and their audience at every live show, but also did that wall serve a metaphorical purpose throughout the whole album. In his process of recovery, Waters, along with digesting the experiences of the last tour gone wrong, immersed himself in introspection. What this resulted in was the lyrical and musical depiction of a country and the problems it posed to people growing up from a troubled man´s very subjective point of view.
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"We don´t need no education/ we don´t need no thought control" - simple as they were, the polemics aimed at Great Britain´s educational system and practically the country´s entire society, have been omnipresent to this very day. Youths who weren´t even born when the album came out still sing along, the CD (and the famous live record) can be found it virtually every store. Pink Floyd created a giant rock epic that remains permanently seared into the brains of an entire generation of fans. The analogy they used - a wall being formed and people robotically becoming "just another brick" in it - might have been so obvious it seemed a wee trite, but it was almost uncannily efficient.
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Nevertheless, there are two sides to this bombastic project. "The Wall" was so bombastic it disappointed many long-time Pink Floyd fans. Critics weren´t entirely satisfied either: The album had a lot of snippet-like material and short songs, which to some people was not just complex, but confusing and chaotic. Moreover, Waters had almost completely taken control of the band and to some made the impression of having a megalomaniac solo project with the help of a bunch of friends going.
Hence, it might seem slightly ironic that what is probably the best song on the entire album was the one Waters only co-wrote; "Comfortably Numb" showcases the songwriting talent of guitarist David Guilmore and contains a performance on his instrument that came so close to perfection some found it scary. Along with this beautiful song came a few indubitably great ones by Waters himself though - "Hey You", "The Happiest Days Of Our Lives" or "The Thin Ice" are classics in their own right and impressive work in the context of the album. So while "The Wall" might come in as too bombastic to some, it stands as the most gigantic rock project ever to this day and is the most popular effort by one of the best and most innovative bands in rock history.
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