The WallStudio double albumRecorded: July - December 1978
Released: 30 November 1979
Band lineupRoger Waters (bass, guitar)
David Gilmour (guitar, bass)
Richard Wright (keyboards)
Nick Mason (drums)
All tracks authored by Roger Waters, except where noted.
All lyrics written by Roger Waters.
Side A1. In the Flesh? (3:16)
2. The Thin Ice (2:27)
3. Another Brick in the Wall (part I) (3:21)
4. The Happiest Days of Our Lives (1:46)
5. Another Brick in the Wall (part II) (3:59)
6. Mother (5:32)
Side B1. Goodbye Blue Sky (2:45)
2. Empty Spaces (2:10)
3. Young Lust
(Gilmour, Waters) (3:25)
4. One of My Turns (3:41)
5. Don't Leave Me Now (4:08)
6. Another Brick in the Wall (part III) (1:48)
7. Goodbye Cruel World (:48)
Side C1. Hey You (4:40)
2. Is There Anybody Out There? (2:44)
3. Nobody Home (3:26)
4. Vera (1:35)
5. Bring the Boys Back Home (1:21)
6. Comfortably Numb
(Waters, Gilmour) (6:23)
Side D1. The Show Must Go On (1:36)
2. In the Flesh (4:15)
3. Run Like Hell
(Waters, Gilmour) (4:20)
4. Waiting for the Worms (4:04)
5. Stop (:39)
6. The Trial
(Waters, Bob Ezrin) (5:13)
7. Outside the Wall (1:41)
ReviewIf
Animals was concept over substance, this is self-indulgence over coherence. Supposedly, it tells the story of a rock star named Pink, but there are so many pointless diversions that it's difficult to be certain exactly what it's getting at. Instrumentation is very hit-and-miss; some songs, like Is There Anybody Out There?, are very effective in using sounds to create the intended atmosphere. Other times, like in Comfortably Numb, we get generic rock with seemingly no correlation between the music and the lyrics.
It all starts out so simply; side A begins with what serves as an introduction to the rock opera. The first track isn't part of the story so much as it hints that there is a story to come; Roger is addressing the listener directly as a performer, saying "if you wanna find out what's behind these cold eyes, you'll just have to claw your way through this disguise". I think the intent was that the rest of the album would do just that, although it just seems to make the author's disguise more opaque.
The remainder of side A tells the story of a child Pink's early years, going through losing his father in a war (Another Brick in the Wall (part I)), being abused by teachers at school (ibid., part II) and being fawned over by an overly protective mother (Mother). This would all be very neat and edgy, if not for the fact that it feels like a needlessly long rehash of Speak to Me/Breathe from
The Dark Side of the Moon. Mother has a pretty good guitar solo, I guess, but it hardly redeems the entire side.
Side B is where things start to get confusing. We have a song, Goodbye Blue Sky, which is apparently about young Pink's home town being bombarded in an air raid. You might expect that this is relevant to the story, but no; the next track jumps straight to -- er, to nowhere, because Empty Spaces is a shortened version of What Shall We Do Now? (which appears in full in the film version), except that the lyrics which make the song about something have been replaced with filler. Nice one, Roger.
The rest of side B goes through Pink as a young adult finding a woman to sleep with (presumably a groupie), abusing her, then getting depressed when she leaves him and committing suicide. You might want to read that sentence twice, just to let it sink in. Yes, Pink commits suicide halfway through the album. And then there's another whole two album sides about stuff he did. After he killed himself. Yes.
At least, I
think they're about Pink. It's difficult to tell with songs like Hey You, which is one of Roger's better compositions musically, but seems to be completely irrelevant to the storyline. Is There Anybody Out There? is of interest mainly because it samples David's whalesong guitar from Echoes, but that just made me wish I was listening to
Meddle instead. Nobody Home is surprisingly good, sounding quite different from the rest of the album due to the prominent use of piano (played by producer Bob Ezrin, not Rick).
Vera, Bring the Boys Back Home and Comfortably Numb form a sort of medley, and I can only assume this section was intended to give the listener time for a quick nap before they need to turn over the record again. The lyrics entail Roger mumbling something about a singer called Vera Lynn, before a choir demands that "the boys" be brought home. This is a fairly clear reference to war, and presumably by extension to Pink's lost father, so we can reasonably assume that this is central to the story.
Guess again. Comfortably Numb is a song about a doctor waking up Pink after what seems to be a drug overdose (presumably this is still the attempted suicide from earlier), and Pink saying that he is comfortably numb. Then we get a guitar solo, because hey, who
doesn't want to get up and play the guitar when they can barely stand after poisoning themselves?
Blessedly, we only have one more side to go from this point. It starts off with Pink not wanting to continue to play a show; maybe he realised how boring his solo in Comfortably Numb sounded, and didn't want to inflict that on an audience. Whatever the reason, we then have a "surrogate band" who likes lining various people up against a wall and telling them they should be shot, followed by a couple of songs continuing in that vein which seem to be a parody of Nazi rallies. What this all has to do with Pink's story is anyone's guess.
Finally, The Trial manages to bring some redemption to the whole affair. The story of Pink and his imaginary wall is concluded with him trying himself for his supposed crimes, though to be honest, I'm too confused by now to know what he's supposed to have done. The judge, however, claims that his offences "fill [him] with the urge to defecate", which is quite appropriate, because that's exactly how listening to this album makes me feel.
This album fails to tell a coherent story, it fails to maintain a consistent concept, most of the tracks aren't musically interesting and the lyrics are extremely whiny and self-indulgent. The few interesting moments wouldn't even fill a single LP side, let alone a double album. This is the epitome of '70s rock overindulgence, and the sad thing is that it comes from a band who once produced much better records. Don't buy this record unless you're a collector of ridiculously expensive frisbees.