7 ms·
Pink Floyd's 'The Wall': A Complete Analysis
- genter 2y agoRoger Waters bloviating for 90 minutes about not having a dad.
- schnable 2y agoGood tunes, though.
- genter 2y agoGilmour can write good music. Too bad Wright was suffering from depression/drug addiction to be very productive. The best Pink Floyd songs are them working together.
- dylan604 2y agoDivision Bell came out and took me a while to appreciate, but man I like that album as much as Dark Side and Meddle. I'm not saying they are all equal, just that I like them all equally. Gilmour is definitely my favorite bender of strings.
- bojanz 2y agoPeople are sometimes unkind to the Division Bell, but it contains one of my personal favorites: "Wearing the inside out". Wright's lyrics and vocals (first time since The Dark Side of the Moon), Gilmore's guitar, it all comes together.
- flir 2y agoIt's a theme he.... revisited. This is the best visit, though.
- westmeal 2y agoTook me dad in the war yeah
- 01100011 2y agoYeah. Love the music but I stopped being able to listen to it a few years ago because it's so.. self-indulgent and emo. It kind of ruined PF for me since I became aware of those themes in their other albums with Waters. I still love and respect PF, but I don't listen much these days. I guess it also correlates with less substance abuse in my life.
- dylan604 2y agoJust as a fan of the music, I picked up the DVD set he released a few years ago. It was delivered to the office I was working at the time, and it was a slow day so we popped it in for a watch. Talking about a let down. It was the exact Waters droning on sentiment the GP had.
- duderific 2y agoI recently took a long car trip solo and was able to listen to Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety without interruption. It still holds up in that kind of scenario; you almost have to listen to whole thing nonstop to fully appreciate it.
- worik 2y ago> I still love and respect PF Me too. My teenage years sitting in the sun smoking pot listening to these incredible sounds.... As a grown up I love everything they did before Dark Side of the Moon: That was when Roger Waters really started complaining. Atom Heart Mother is my favourite
- desertrider12 2y agoI don't think the self indulgence is unbearable until The Trial and "you stand accused of showing feelings of an almost human nature". The Trial is comedy/satire but since the rest of the album is serious and autobiographical, I roll my eyes at what a diva he sounds like there.
- mmooss 2y agoWhy is that an inappropriate theme? 90 minutes isn't long or large for a single work of art, and many artists return to the same themes over their lifetimes.
- aanet 2y agoThanks for posting this! one of my fav albums of ALL time. <3 Growing up in a developing country, where rock music wasn't really the preferred or even the available kind, _The Wall_ was foundational to me as a young teen and in early college years. The angst, the lyrics, the music - I drank heavy doses of Pink Floyd with whatever was available (bootleg cassette tapes, mostly, listened to on portable tape players and boomboxes). Much later did I learn that the original PF foursome had disbanded even before I started listening to them. That was a crushing blow :-( Those were the pre pre-Internet days. I still listen to PF today, roughly 30+ years after I first heard them. And still find new nuances that I eluded my initial thousand listens. Thanks for posting this <3 You've made at least one person nostalgic. And happy.
- encoderer 2y agoThe wall was performed live in only 4 cities (LA, NYC, London, Berlin) because it was too big and expensive to move. My dad saw it and to this day it’s one of his favorite experiences. They literally built a styrofoam wall in front of the band as they played until at one point you can’t even see them. Well anyway about 15 years ago I’m showing the old man YouTube for the first time. And I ask him, is there any old memories we should go look up, he says, see if there’s any videos from The Wall. And there is! An entire bootleg of the concert from 1981. It was magical, I gave my dad a Time Machine. Thanks YouTube!
- gapan 2y ago> They literally built a styrofoam wall on front of the band as they played until at one point you can’t even see them. I never had the chance to go to a Pink Floyd concert, but I saw Roger Waters a few years ago and the huge wall was there too, along with a helicopter if I remember well.
- ericzawo 2y agoChristmas is coming, I suggest gifting him The Wall: Live in Berlin 1990 on DVD if you can find it. Or just forwarding him this URL: https://youtu.be/SU2m7uOiAZI https://youtu.be/SU2m7uOiAZI One of my favourite live performances of music of all time. Playing at the Real wall to several hundred thousand people. Just amazing stuff.
- dylan604 2y ago> One of my favourite live performances of music of all time. As a broke college kid, my friends and I all camped out for tickets (remember those days) to the Division Bell tour in 1994. We got phenomenal seats, and the show is definitely the bet live performances I have seen. The second act as a complete play through of Dark Side. Lots of great memories from that entire night including sitting in traffic to get to the venue. Getting lost in the parking lot in pouring down rain to the point of asking the cops for directions to where we parked. I got into Floyd from my dad, and he never got to see them live. The closest he got was 15 years later when we went to see Aussie Floyd. It was the closest thing to the real thing I had ever seen and told him it was a really damn good 2nd place.
- lc9er 2y agoI love Pink Floyd and The Wall, though I think it works better with visuals than a standalone album. It's a shame they were unhappy with their own footage of the few stage shows they performed of The Wall. My dad saw the New York show, for which I'll forever be jealous. If you're a casual PF fan, I'd recommend two overlooked albums of the 70's - Meddle and Animals. Meddle is probably the first album to sound like what the public recognizes as Pink Floyd. Animals is, to me, a masterpiece. Gilmour and Wright, especially, are amazing. It's dark and cynical, but maybe not as hopeless as The Wall. "Dogs" may be the best guitar work Gilmour has ever done, aside from "Comfortably Numb". Sadly, it seems like most of the band didn't like Waters controlling behavior and the dark turn his lyrics took on this album.
- encoderer 2y agoAs a fan of Waters I would add The Final Cut to that list.
- UberFly 2y agoFinal Cut could really be considered Waters' first solo album. One that the other members contributed to, so to speak.
- encoderer 2y agoYes, very much agreed, and when you compare that to his works like Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking you see that being in the band really did bring out his best. I am too kind to comment on Pink Floyd’s albums without Roger, though.
- UberFly 2y agoI was at a Brit Floyd concert (cover band super highly recommended) and during the few Division Bell songs everyone was running to use the bathroom so as to not miss the real Floyd music. :)
- 2y ago
- chasd00 2y agoI grew up in the country so during HS the only music i knew was either country/western or heavy metal. I didn't hear this album until college, i fell in love with it but my more sophisticated friends didn't think that highly of it. I still listen to The Wall end to end on long trips driving by myself.
- JimiofEden 2y agoWow it's impressive to see that this page has remained up for so long! I used to email the owner a long time ago when I was really getting into Pink Floyd in high school. It was one of the first times I can really recall about having long, ongoing conversations online about something I was becoming increasingly passionate about. I really enjoyed the debate and back and forth that they were willing to entertain with me. Sadly it looks like those conversations have been lost to time/old email addresses. But the idea that people would be open and willing to chat about their hobbies is really what defined the internet to me of that age.
- technothrasher 2y agoI had a similar relationship in the 90's with the guy who started the Magnum Mania website for fans of the show Magnum PI. It was fun to communicate directly with somebody who was even more enthusiastic about the show than I was, and fun to send him pictures when I bought my Ferrari 308 after seeing the car on the show and literally saving up for it for 20 years. I haven't talked to him in many years now, and he doesn't seem to update the website as much these days, but the forum there is still pretty active, and there's still tons of info available.
- singleshot_ 2y agoThere is an episode of the original run of Magnum wherein a character picks up a phone and dials “9, 1,” as though they are about to call emergency services, and then hangs up the phone instead. I think, but am not sure, that the caller is using a phone on the Masters estate. Any idea which episode I’m referring to?
- technothrasher 2y agoSure, that’s easy. Season 1, Episode 8, titled "Deadly Manuevers“. (Ok, to be fair, I cheated. I asked ChatGPT)
- defrost 2y ago
- ohm 2y agoMy physics teacher played the whole album in high school class as we were doing our work. The door to the classroom was open and the music was echoing through the whole floor. I was surprised none of the teachers next door said anything.
- wingspar 2y agoMy jr high recollection was a teacher complaining about the bad grammar. “We don’t need no education…”
- clarge1120 2y agoI got hooked on Pink Floyd's "Momentary Lapse of Reason". Listened to it on a 10 hour drive back home from Houston in my custom VW beetle. It was custom because I "built" it out of several broken down beetles and so it was a tense drive home, checking my car's vitals every so often. I have never forgotten that long intense drive home, in the summer, with no air conditioning, and playing Pink Floyd on full volume the whole way. Because of this, "The Wall" has always been Floyd's second best album.
- cosmic_cheese 2y agoA Momentary Lapse of Reason is right up there with Dark Side of the Moon in number of listen-throughs for me. Back when I was in high school it was one of the albums I’d put on prior to getting lost in working on something or another in Photoshop.
- xcf_seetan 2y agoOne of my most strange and wonderful audio adventure i ever had. I remember the first time i got my hand on "The Wall" album and listened to it in complete darkness, lights out. It got me into an adventure through all the album. I could not understand the lyrics at the time, as i am not a english native speaker, the sound alone told an incredible journey through emotions and i swear i could see lots of things in the darkness. I remember that when i finished listening to the album i was emotionally in tears...
- GlibMonkeyDeath 2y agoI was in 8th grade when this came out and it was like catnip for angst-y teens. Our music teacher actually went over the lyrics of Another Brick In the Wall (Part 2) line-by-line with our class. He was not a fan. He tried to explain how wrong-headed each and every line was. Needless to say, he didn't win any hearts and minds, but we did appreciate listening to PF in music class. Bear in mind, this guy also paddled the hell out of a kid who threw a pencil ("you could blind someone that way!") And by paddle, I mean a cricket-bat sized piece of wood, hands up against the lockers. Teacher, leave them kids alone!
- ryandrake 2y ago> Our music teacher actually went over the lyrics of Another Brick In the Wall (Part 2) line-by-line with our class. He was not a fan. He tried to explain how wrong-headed each and every line was. Hahah, next thing you know, the police academy instructors will go over the lyrics of Fuck Tha Police and conclude that every line is wrong-headed :)
- soulofmischief 2y agoI got paddled by my school before by a wannabe dictator administrator, that guy ended up going to jail for literally breaking some kid's ass. Obviously The Wall resonated well with me :)
- tristanMatthias 2y agoOne day after school, my dad and I arrived home and he told me, "Sit down in the lounge room, and don't talk". I thought I was in some kind of trouble, but when he didn't turn on any lights, and walked over to the CD player I knew something was about to happen. "We're going to listen to something, and I don't want to say anything until it's done", he said. Then he proceeded to play "A Momentary Lapse of Reason". It changed my life. It was the first time I realised you can listen to music like you'd watch a film. The depth of the soundscapes still influence me as a musician today. Thanks dad.
- metalman 2y agoI love the coments, everybody is riffing on varios pink floydian experiences and nobody has read the article just the title of the article is way way out there, like what kind of mad heavy drugs do you have to take to go so far as to build a web site devoted to ,oooooooooooo, wow, mang, like, did you get the total asomosity of that mang, toadaly awsome, the complete analyis, complete with 2 sheets of blotter, a car with 4 more people than seats, and three more in the trunk, cheap night at the drive in movies playing the wall. so you think you can tell anylise that
- soulofmischief 2y agoFor someone so willing to criticize the interests and hobbies of others, your spelling and grammar need a lot of work.
- mrandish 2y agoIt's a well-written and insightful analysis, which is hard to do. A Rolling Stone Magazine writer once said something like "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." So, good writing about music deserves appreciation.
- unzadunza 2y agoWhen I was 14 or so I took a long bus ride downtown to buy The Wall on vinyl. The ride back home was torture, gazing at that beautiful art work and not being able to listen.
- Terretta 2y ago// Did read the article. Try Roger Waters' “The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking”, the album that nearly was instead of The Wall. From Wikipedia: In July 1978, Waters presented the concepts and played demos of The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking as well as what was then titled Bricks in the Wall, which became The Wall, to his bandmates in Pink Floyd, asking them to decide which should be a group album, and which should be his solo album. After a long debate, they decided that they preferred the concept of Bricks in the Wall, even though their manager at the time, Steve O'Rourke, thought that Pros and Cons was a better-sounding concept, and David Gilmour deemed Pros and Cons stronger musically. The entire story is framed in real time as a fitful dream taking place in the early morning hours of 4:30:18 am to 5:12:32 am on an unspecified day. ... Eric Clapton plays lead guitar, David Sandborn sax, and Michael Kamen piano (plus his orchestra). It's worth the time, if for no other reason than to see if your experience is the same as Rolling Stone's: Roger Waters' first official solo album will be of sustained interest mainly to postanalytic Pink Floyd fetishists and other highly evolved neurotics who persist in seeking spiritual significance amid the flotsam of English art rock. I can't imagine that anyone else will sit more than once through this strangely static, faintly hideous record, on which Waters' customary bile is, for the first time, diluted with musical bilge. No "highly evolved neurotics" here, of course.
- histories 2y agoSeeing Roger Waters performing the entirety of The Wall in 2013 was nothing short of life-changing for me