The Wall: 40 years later, a reappraisal

[Cartooniverse]

I’m 57. Was 18 in 1980. That album loomed large. Not because I thought it spoke to ME and my generation, but because it spoke with rage and clarity and nuance and sadness and lonliness to my father and his generation.

The generation that lived WWII and that grew up living the tattered remnants of nation and family that were left behind in the wake of WWII. Unlike much other media that gets blurred in terms of intent and inspiration ( MAS*H wasn’t really about Korea as much as VietNam, etc. ), The Wall was very much just about WWII in England. England’s view of Germany, of Jews, of authoritarian abuse, of oppression, of fragmented sexuality and damaged relationships that result from profound childhood trauma. Those themes aren’t unique to WWII of course, but The Wall IS just about that era and that event and the aftermath.

It spoke to me for familial / personal reasons. The music hooked me, even the lesser known / non-radio played tracks.

I rarely seek out tracks. I’ll listen to the entire album through if I am facing a task that goes for 90 minutes-2 hours. The tale must play out intact to have full effect, IMHO.

Now, people in their 30’s who loved DSoTM, UmmaGumma, Animals etc found The Wall to be a bit overworked and under-crafted. I call bullshit, but I also appreciate the LSD-drenched influences of the earlier works from this band. I knew a lot of the earlier albums, especially Animals and DSoTM. Loved them. Especially with a headset on.

In that era, 1979-1981, I also listened to such disparate artists as Earth, Wind & Fire, Billy Joel, Supertramp, The Clash, Police, Queen and so on. All of that added to Yes, to this day my favorite band.

@Try2BComprehensive

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.

Could not agree more. There are some heavy influences there in both of those bands- and both of the bands’ producers.

[ExTank]

With The Wall and The Final Cut, I feel Pink Floyd is a tad overwrought; it just feels too polished, less raw and real than, say, Animals or Wish You Were Here, much less Dark Side of the Moon.

ETA: sorry, hit subm it too soon. Anyway, I do like TW and TFC, just not as much as earlier efforts. Post-Waters is a whole 'nother discussion.

[mack]

I was more into the music and lush production of it than any particular message it had. It’s one of the rare albums I remember from back then where I preferred the slow songs to the upbeat ones (well, as upbeat as they get on The Wall).

I was 18 and hitch-hiking in England when they did the Earls Court shows in 1980 and was able to hightail it to London in time to see a couple shows as soon I found out about them. It was quite an experience.

[Baron_Greenback]

@DaveRaver

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.

There’s a thriving subgenre on Youtube of young hip-hop heads discovering Pink Floyd. Searching for “Pink Floyd reaction” should get you loads of examples.

[blondebear]

I’m not a huge fan of the album, but oh how I wish I could be transported back to Earl’s Court in 1995 to experience the performance of Comfortably Numb as documented in the *Pulse *video.

[ASL_v2.0]

@Biffster

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

Pink is not the artist, he is the character. The artist is dead.

But then the whole album is cyclical, so…?

[Chronos]

So, the Big Controversial Idea that everyone is going to hate you for is that… Pink Floyd is weird?

[by-tor]

Alessan, you need to listen to some Floyd bootlegs if you think they can’t jam.

And you think modern music sounds spontaneous?

[Just_Asking_Questions]

@ExTank

With The Wall and The Final Cut, I feel Pink Floyd is a tad overwrought; it just feels too polished, less raw and real than, say, Animals or Wish You Were Here, much less Dark Side of the Moon.

Listening to DSotM when it was new, I begun to realize it was about loss, and death. In the subtext, one can surmise that someone close to the songwriter died tragically.

Listening to The Wall, it was much more obvious. Almost too obvious. When the Tigers Broke Free is like an outtake of DSotM, rejected for being unsubtle, too obvious to be included.

In The Final Cut, not only is it obvious Waters hates the world for killing his daddy, he isn’t even subtle. It’ not subtext, it’s just text. And he names names.

Animals, especially Pigs (Three different ones) is just another waters angry screetching screed. At least Dogs is subtle.

[Johanna]

@Try2B_Comprehensive

@JohnT

And when I listen to my daughter’s music…

Your daughter is a small sample set.

My daughter is a big fan of The Wall. She asked me to teach her how to play the guitar part from “Vera.” By contrast, I was in college when The Wall came out, and I never listened to it. I had the other Pink Floyd albums up to Animals, but stopped there. Somehow The Wall never appealed to me. It wasn’t like any of the previous Floyd.

[Smid]

A couple of things here.

We should at least separate the album from the movie. Sure, listen to the former, but the latter is the full work, explanation and presentation. The addition to of the Gerald Scarfe animation alone elevates it to something so much more…

Secondly, some mention should be made of the sides of the albums, and that for some, like me, grew to love the album in separate stages: Side 1, Side 2, Side 4, Side 3. With Side 3 still being my favourite. And that love of that side came from the movie too. It isn’t just Comfortably Numb, the 15 minutes of despair before it makes it…

@JohnT

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.

But third, I cannot remember a single thing which indicates the kid is in a “boarding school”. It has been a few years since watching, so I’ll welcome being corrected.

[Two_Many_Cats]

@AHunter3

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”

Interesting. From my feminine viewpoint, I just saw it as Pink’s descent into madness from all the build-up of anger he was never allowed to express in his life starting from childhood.

[Smid]

@Two_Many_Cats

Interesting. From my feminine viewpoint, I just saw it as Pink’s descent into madness from all the build-up of anger he was never allowed to express in his life starting from childhood.

From my male viewpoint, it is exactly the same: “A musical nervous breakdown” would be my description of it.

This masculinity claims seems to be a 2019 review of a 1980’s album/film. It wasn’t about that. You can perhaps view it through that prism nowadays, but I don’t think Waters was every writing about that. If anything, he had more women in his life, and felt betrayed by one, and hated his fans and his life.

[Siam_Sam]

Just thought of this. During my first sojourn in Thailand, 1988-90, in the days before CDs and music downloads, street vendors sold bootleg cassette tapes. I bought a bootleg copy of The Wall, and while it played okay, the fractured song titles listed on the cover’s playlist were hilarious – for example, “Comfortably Numb” was listed as “Come for Tabby, Numb.”