Pink Floyd The Wall: What happened at the concert?

Cafe Society
1

[Warning: this thread calls for speculation and fanwanking]

For context, here’s a threadbare and possibly inaccurate/subjective timeline (corrections here could change overall outlook):

Let’s start at Young Lust, because up through this point, Pink seemed to be somewhat holding his shit together. This looks like it’s an after-concert party. Pink comes out of a trailer, they leave and go to his hotel. One of his turns comes on, and he smashes up the place; the girl exits stage left (presumably because Rush is in town). Somewhere between One of My Turns and Goodbye Cruel World, Pink has/had what appears to be a psychotic break and ends up watching The Dam Busters. The next evening, his manager knocks on his door and tells him it’s time to go, just at the end of Bring the Boys Back Home. (I don’t know how/if this relates to the opening scene of the maid opening the door, but that’s a different question). Pink’s entourage gets him up, puts him in a limo, and gets him to the venue—after all, The Show Must go On.

What happened at the concert? I don’t mean what was going on inside Pink’s head, I’m wondering what you think Pink did on stage, i.e., from the point of view of someone who bought a ticket to the show. Did he outwardly perform but never leave his mind’s wanderings? Did he never make it to the stage? Make some incoherent rant at the audience? Gave some rant to the audience that seemed in-line with his rockstar past? Was there an actual riot at the stadium? If so, did Pink incite it?

Here’s a puzzling detail. In the hotel room during Comfortably Numb, Pinks head and eyebrows are clearly shaven. But in Stop, it looks like it never happened. Given Waters’ obsessive control-freakishness, I’m disinclined to think that it’s unintentional, but what of it? Does Stop take place months later? Or are the images during Comfortably Numb a blending of Pink’s psychosis and reality?

I realize that this is like asking about 2001—even the filmmakers had different visions, and the crux of the question is never (AFAIK) directly addressed. I’m interested in fan explanations and storytelling, so don’t worry about making up stories as long as they fit within the context of the film/album.

2

It’s been awhile since I’ve watched the movie, but if I’ve got it right, Pink completes his transformation into “Nazi Pink” in response to all the misery he’s either brought upon himself or had handed to him up to that point.

I think that once he reached the arena Pink slogged through another standard show, but he performed it in the spirit of rage and disgust represented by “In the Flesh” (So ya, thought ya, might like to go to the show…)

Three days ago, The A.V. Club posted an excellent article on both the film and concert versions of The Wall.

Here’s a quick snippet that relates to the OP, concerning Roger Water’s attitude towards Pink Floyd fans at the time:

“Along with the frustrating feeling that his so-called fans weren’t paying attention to the music that they had paid to hear, Waters sensed that the newly outsized scale of Pink Floyd’s live show had made the band strangely irrelevant at its own concerts. It was as if it didn’t matter that the real Pink Floyd was there at all. Waters played off this idea on The Wall’s opening track “In The Flesh?,” a goof on arena bombast performed by a look-alike Floyd live in concert, a caustic but insightful comment on how impersonal and faceless mega-selling bands like Pink Floyd had become by the end of the ’70s.”

Full article here. One of the best articles I’ve read in awhile. There’s a lot of interesting information in the comments, too.