The Wall: 40 years later, a reappraisal

Cafe Society
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(Yeah, I know I’m on hiatus, but I had this one mostly written and put a date in my calendar so I could make this one post… and, really, given the subject matter and the demographics of our readers, it is a topic which goes to many of our hearts. And y’all are going to hate me for this post, so I got that going for me too, I guess.)

Forty years ago, November 30th, 1979, saw the release of the last great concept album of the Classic Rock era, and one of the greatest albums of all time, Pink Floyd’s The Wall. I’ll leave it up to the more musically inclined and knowledgeable to talk about the guitar playing, the production, the story behind the making of… the Wiki article is a good start, especially with the linked resources at the bottom. I’m not even the biggest Pink Floyd fan, so I’ll also leave the band for y’all to discuss. This is a fantastic work, but I’m not qualified to speak of the details of the production

So why this thread?

I’m kind of more interested in the culture in which this album was released, and how music has changed since then, our views of what we want out of art and pop culture, more. Because, to me, while this is a great album… can it now even be called “influential”? When listening to today’s music, what elements from The Wall still exist?

I was 12 when this one came out, 13 when “Another Brick…” hit #1, and if there is a greater album for a young teen to smoke weed to and try to figure out what the fuck it meant, I can’t think of it. The Wall was a moment, a blow against the chirpy and poppy and effeminate disco which had been dominating the charts, which any white hetero teenage boy growing up in the suburbs (in this case, Atlanta) had to openly profess disdain, if not outright hatred, towards. The Wall was a true Piece of Art which showed the Donna Summers and the Bee Gees of the world what genius really was, and why Rock and Roll would never die and why Disco well and truly and forevermore Sucked.

Well!

I have been more wrong in my life, but at least on this topic I was wrong with almost everyone I knew at the time, so I guess that makes it better?

As I referenced in my Rapper’s Delight retrospective (also 40 years old in 2019!), 1979 was an interesting crossroads in American music – “standards” were big - updated to reflect current musical tastes, true, but simple love songs have always been a thing - rock and roll was going strong for its 15th straight year, and the beginnings of modern pop music – disco – was ruling the charts. The cultural battle was between rock and rollers and the disco teams (no one really cared to hate on James Taylor, Ambrosia, and Captain and Toni T), and then… and then….

And then in September of '79 this really weird song hit. A novelty song, or so it seemed at the time, Rapper’s Delight was ALSO just as big a sensation to the 12yo male set as The Wall was to be 2 months later. And this is where 12 year old me… and all my friends, and the music critics, and my sisters and their friends, and that crowd at that baseball game… this is where we got it all wrong:

Disco wasn’t going to kill rock and roll: Rap was. Disco, as it turns out, wasn’t even a threat.

The Wall is a fantastic album. Wonderful production values, great songs, masterful instrumentation – just top notch through and through. If I didn’t listen to it 100 times between 1979 and 1989, it wasn’t for lack of trying.

But… it’s weird, guys. I mean deeply, deeply, weird:

This is the opposite of “fun”, in no way optimistic, and these lyrics were framed in a larger story about a kid in an English boarding school. Like I said: Weird, especially to a teenager in the New South suburbs. And this isn’t unusual for the genre! Led Zep sang songs of druids, Styx had a massive hit about a guy being taken up in a spaceship (Come Sail Away) (and not to mention the whole Mr. Roboto thing), Bruce Springsteen never stopped singing songs of the angst of being an auto mechanic, more. And none of this had any resonance in my life.

The Wall, like much of 1970s rock and roll, is an album of alienation and societal separation. Unfortunately for its influence, it was released a mere year before the Reagan election, a man who offered a far more positive and upbeat attitude* than the rather dour seventies, a man with a vision of America better matched to a musical aesthetic which offered lyrics such as:

The contrast couldn’t be more obvious. One genre is singing songs of alienation, anger, and druids, the other singing about how to make bank, bang chicks, and be a star, all while feeling proud of these material desires and accomplishments. One was perfect for the Age of Watergate, the other was perfect for the Age of Wall Street. Both genres presented sharply contrasting views of masculinity, one where being an adult was painful and a drudge, a world where even growing up was just a dreary, oppressive pain in the ass, the other where owning your life meant money, girls, fame, and good times.

I mean, I know what message I prefer.

And so now when I listen to The Wall, I’m reminded most of Scorsese’s 1980’s film Raging Bull – a film which in many ways is the culmination of the 70s idealization for its form, released at the very time the larger culture was moving away from it. And when I listen to my daughter’s music… and the child has an extremely wide taste of music…. I hear Donna Summer. I hear the Bee Gees, I hear the Sugarhill Gang, hell, no matter how much I feel, I can even draw a line from Ambrosia to, say, Ed Sheeran…

But I don’t hear Pink Floyd.

*Don’t @ me, I was there.

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THE WALL is/was about masculinity, or, rather, about being male and being alienated from it.

It’s certainly about the main character’s relationship to his father, and via that, militarism and war as Manly Things.

It’s about sexuality and relationships (and failures on both fronts, alienation from masculine expectations etc)

It’s about homophobia and hostility towards the ones who don’t look right in the spotlight.

It’s about xenophobia and general hatred for “the other” as militaristic masculine (i.e., patriarchal, colonialist) thought.

And tearing down the wall and finding the ones who really love you outside the “mad bugger’s wall”

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What is good is not necessarily popular. What is popular is not necessarily good. The reason you are hearing Donna Summer and the Bee Gees in modern music is because the record executives have figured out that it’s what sells the most records. They are most influential in the sense that Jaws was influential in creating the summer blockbuster, not in the quality of their work. Popular music is as far from the art side of music as the biggest blockbusters are from Oscar bait. If you dive down into any of the many splintered genres that exist outside of the most popular stuff, you’ll find more artists creating for art’s sake rather than for making oodles of money. You don’t need to cater to nearly as large of the population worldwide in order to be able to make a living, and so real avant-garde artists don’t bother trying. They see it as better to stand out with new art only a tiny fraction of people like than try to compete with everyone else for the type of music that’s been found to sell the most records. You won’t be able to find these artists on the radio or in the mainstream music press though. So long as they let their material get played on Pandora though, some curious listeners might stumble upon them, having no other method to even find out that such music is even being made by anyone.

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Pink Floyd, even at their most popular, was kind of downer music. It was cool, and it was great, especially with David Gilmour doing the vocals, but it was never really meant to be “top of the pops.” The fact that the Wall and Dark Side of the Moon sold so well is a tribute to the fans with a sense of musical taste. Pink Floyd had an influence on musical culture, but it may be a more subtle one than you were expecting.

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The Wall is about alienation. It’s about Waters alienating everyone else in the band. It’s about Waters thinking he is the only person in the band that mattered. And it’s about Waters being unable to get over his father’s death.

And because of the success if the album, it allowed the Final Cut to be made, which is even more of the same. Waters whinging on and on about how mean the whole world was too take his daddy away, like he’s the only one that ever lost a parent or loved on in a war.

Both albums were made with almost no one reining in the worst excesses of Waters’ songwriting.

Despite that, there are very good songs on both albums.

In 1979, even when it was new, we thought the album was a bit light. After 40 years, I can’t even listen to the fourth side any longer. But the first three are still great.
Interesting fact - today on Sirius XM, the disc jockey played Mother and remarked how the song encapsulates Waters’ feelings about being raised under a controlling and oppressive mother. Which is funny because it’s 180 degrees wrong. Waters said in interviews (Jim Ladd’s Innerview, IIRC) that his mother not only was not the controlling monster of the song, but she actually encouraged him to go out with “dirty girls”. Kids these days - I bet she wasn’t even born when the album came out.

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Your daughter is a small sample set. You hear all of these other artists following in the tradition of pop stars of yore, but when it comes to Pink Floyd, people listen to Pink Floyd. Yeah, I don’t think a lot of bands are in the style of Pink Floyd, but that is because it is inaccessible to most performers. The Wall is way too crisp and way too meaningful an album for a lot of bands to simply follow in those footsteps.

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Loved the Album when it came out, still do. Just thought I would mention the wife and I attended a Roger Waters concert in Bangkok in I think it was 2002, and he played a lot of stuff from The Wall. We were second row, center. It was fantastic.

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And influence is not the only important measurement of art.

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I was a huge Floyd fan in the seventies. Absolutely loved DSotM and WYWH. But *Animals *was a huge disappointment, and The Wall didn’t do much for me either. I completely agree that its theme is alienation, but musically, it just couldn’t complete with their earlier work, in my mind. If it speaks to you, that’s great, and I’m happy that you have found something to love. But I just found it a letdown compared to past successes.

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True true.

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I’ve always found Pink Floyd’s music a bit too clinical for my tastes. Technically brilliant, yes, but also a little cold around the heart. A key component of what makes modern music great is spontaneity,or at least the ability to successfully fake spontaneity, and Pink Floyd sound like they couldn’t jam to save their lives.

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I’m just grateful that someone released a major album with broad cultural acceptance that nevertheless appeals to all of us worn out, cynical, and depressed people. And Roger Waters was even kind enough to throw in The Final Cut for all of us post-WWII discontented veterans.

Tear down the wall!

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Saw Roger Waters do it live a few years ago and it was very good. He had local kids do the chorus part of Another Brick in the Wall. They built the wall at the front of the stage during the first half of the show and then tore it down.

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That’s kind of ironic. During the Syd Barret era, they were famous for improvisation. A lot of older fans hated the early albums, because they never captured the feel of the jam sessions when they performed live.

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I just wanted to add that I hear Pink Floyd in Steely Dan and also Tom Petty. Those guys aren’t up to the minute contemporary, but there ya go.

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Still one of the greatest albums, and the themes/lyrics are more relevant today.

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One of my favourite albums but yes, cold and angry is exactly what it is. Roger Waters is and always has been a very angry man.
On an album of that scope there are bound to be some dips but it feels like a coherent whole and still warrants listening to in its entirety.

Plus, it does have Gilmour’s solo in “Mother”. I’d put it forward for the greatest guitar solo in musical history, perfectly judged, perfectly timed in both length and position. It is 30 seconds that “releases” and balances the whole song for me. A case could be made that that song and that solo is the pivotal moment of the album.

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I don’t think most fans of Pink Floyd turned into fans of rap. It was the music industry that shifted their focus to more ethnically diverse performers and audiences.

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But it is about… getting past that anger, right? Kind of? Like, among other things?

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Well, trying to anyway, even if he ultimately never really succeeds. The themes keep reappearing in the music that came later.