PINK FLOYD - THE WALL @ 45

 

Released on November 30th, 1979, the eleventh studio album from Pink Floyd, The Wall, turns 45 years old today. Perhaps only second to Dark Side of the Moon in terms of defining a peak of the band's career, it also served as a harbinger of what would cause the band to splinter during its production and after its release.

The Wall, like many of the band's LPs, is a concept album, but for this release, the concept hit much closer to home than some others. By the end of the 1970s, Pink Floyd had reached a kind of status as a band that ultimately put them at odds with their fan base, something that would directly contribute to the creation of this record. Throughout 1977, Pink Floyd were on their "In the Flesh" tour to promote their album, Animals. Bassist and lyricist, Roger Waters, despised the experience – angered by the audience's rowdy behaviour (such as setting off fireworks in the middle of songs) and convinced that they were not really listening to the music. On July 6th, 1977, at the Montreal Olympic Stadium, a group of noisy and excited fans near the stage irritated Waters so much that he leaned over and spat on one of them.

For Waters, the experience was something of a wake-up call, highlighting how degraded the relationship with the audience had become. Instead of the crowds being a source of inspiration and an adrenaline rush, it was all feeling very adversarial and confrontational. The intimacy was completely gone, swallowed up in the grotesque size of the stadiums and driven by corporate profits over artistic merit. It ultimately felt
sadomasochistic, like some kind of perverse torture. Immediately after the experience in Montreal, Waters spoke with producer Bob Ezrin and a psychiatrist friend about the alienation and despair he was experiencing. He articulated his desire to isolate himself by constructing a wall across the stage between the band and the audience. The concept was an instant source of inspiration.

As far as the band were concerned, the situation internally was crumbling, with tensions exacerbated by the fact the band were in dire financial straights. They had hired an investment firm to manage their money, but the firm had put much of it in high risk ventures that did not pay off, so instead of helping with the band's tax burdens, they were facing severe tax penalties, which forced the band to leave the UK to protect what little money they had left. They urgently needed a new record to set their house in order again.

Waters produced a couple of demos with two distinct concepts, one was a 90 minute suite called Bricks in the Wall, dealing with the idea of an isolated rock star struggling with a corrupted relationship between him and his audience. The other demo was about a man's dreams on one night, and dealt with marriage, sex, and the pros and cons of monogamy and family life versus promiscuity. When presented with the two options, the band chose the first, with the second eventually developing into Waters' first solo album, The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking (1984).

For production on The Wall, Waters insisted on hiring Bob Ezrin, who had previously worked with Alice Cooper, Lou Reed, Kiss, and Peter Gabriel, among many other high profile acts. Throughout the recording of the album, Bob would become a critical mediator within the band, as tensions continued to drive the members apart. He also helping develop the album's narrative. Ezrin presented a 40-page script to the rest of the band, with positive results. He recalled: "The next day at the studio, we had a table read, like you would with a play, but with the whole of the band, and their eyes all twinkled, because then they could see the album." Ezrin broadened the story-line, distancing it from the autobiographical work Waters had written and basing it on a composite character named Pink.

The Wall was recorded in several locations. Super Bear Studios in France was used between January and July 1979, and Waters recorded his vocals at the nearby Studio Miraval. Michael Kamen supervised the orchestral arrangements at CBS Studios in New York in September. Over the next two months the band used Cherokee Studios, Producers Workshop and The Village Recorder in Los Angeles. A plan to work with the Beach Boys at the Sundance Productions studio in Los Angeles was cancelled (although Beach Boys member Bruce Johnston does sing backing vocals on "In the Flesh?", "The Show Must Go On", the side 4 version of "In the Flesh", and "Waiting for the Worms").

As work continued on the album, the relationship between Roger Waters and Richard Wright became untenable. For a time, attempts to mend it had Wright taking more of an active role in the production, but the results were not satisfactory to Ezrin and Wright was initially consigned to working only at nights before Waters insisted he be out of the band entirely by the time they got to doing the final mix in LA. Wright ended up quitting the band in the end, only returning to tour as a hired musician, though he would eventually rejoin the band after Waters departed, following the tour for The Wall.

For the album's cover design, it was the first LP by the band not to have a cover by Hipgnosis since the band's debut LP. Waters had fallen out with lead designer/photographer, Storm Thorgerson, a few years earlier when Thorgerson had included the cover of Animals in his book The Work of Hipgnosis: 'Walk Away René', without consultation.

When the album was finally released, it became one of the group's biggest sellers. The album topped the US Billboard 200 chart for 15 weeks, selling over a million copies in its first two months of sales and in 1999, it was certified 23× platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It remains one of the best-selling albums of all time in the US, having sold over 19 million copies worldwide between 1979 and 1990. The Wall is Pink Floyd's second-best selling album after 1973's The Dark Side of the Moon.

The critical response to the album, on the other hand, was decidedly mixed. The Village Voice critic, Robert Christgau, regarded it as "a dumb tribulations-of-a-rock-star epic" backed by "kitschy minimal maximalism with sound effects and speech fragments", adding in The New York Times that its worldview is "self-indulgent" and "presents the self-pity of its rich, famous and decidedly post-adolescent protagonist as a species of heroism". It's an opinion that I very much agreed with at the time of its release, finding the "poor little rich rocker" concept indicative of a kind of bloated rock star life that had been exploded by the immediacy and poverty of punk rock.

It would take many years before I could give this record a second chance and actually discover myself enjoying it. Indeed, the critical reservations at the time of its release have since given way to a general sense of reappraisal and appreciation for its merits. After 45 years, it has stood the test of time to be secure in its place as one of the band's most important and recognized works.