Who knew that childhood friends Roger Waters and Syd Barrett would co-found a band whose legacy lives on? Waters, alongside Nick Mason and Rick Wright, were architecture students at London Polytechnic. Barrett, who was an art student, was Waters’ childhood friend. Together, they formed Pink Floyd. They formed the name based on splicing the names of two old bluesmen, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council, together. It was done as a tribute to the American music they loved.
Later on, in 1968, David Gilmour joined them. Barrett left in 1969, thus forming the lineup that’s lived on for most of Pink Floyd’s history. They were a huge success with The Dark Side of the Moon (1973), Wish You Were Here (1975), and Animals (1977). The Wall (1979) shattered expectations and became a huge success, universally living on for many decades.
The Birthing of ‘The Wall’ by Pink Floyd
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Many factors played into forming the bricks of Pink Floyd’s The Wall. It dates back to Waters, the band’s vocalist and bassist, spitting at a fan during the 1977 In the Flesh tour. “I felt this extreme feeling of alienation from these hundreds of thousands of people, all swilling beer and hooting and shouting,” Waters said. He also felt that the people no longer cared for the profound meanings behind their songs. This gave birth to a visual image of an arena with a wall built across it and a band performing behind it.
Another factor playing into the construction of the concept album is Barrett. He was the pioneer of their psychedelic era in 1967 and 1968. However, LSD took him into trips of insanity. He would dissociate while performing or only strike one chord throughout an entire show. This led to Gilmour joining the band. Barrett’s journey with drugs was another inspiration for The Wall.
The album was released in 1979. Pink Floyd toured around the world promoting the album in 1980 and 1981. They then a movie in 1982 called Pink Floyd – The Wall.
Behind the Scenes of a Legendary Album
Roger Waters Belittles David Gilmour
Waters was so consumed by the ideas of grandeur and isolation that he took the lead in almost everything. As relationships in the group were fragile, it grew during the recording process. Waters said other band members were not involved in the writing. That’s despite Gilmour contributing to writing Comfortably Numb, Run Like Hell, and Young Lust. Waters told Rolling Stone:
“There wasn’t any room for anyone else to be writing… If there were chord sequences there, I would always use them. There was no point in Gilmour, Mason, or Wright trying to write lyrics. Because they’ll never be as good as mine. Gilmour’s lyrics are very third-rate. They always will be. And in comparison with what I do, I’m sure he’d agree. He’s just not as good. I didn’t play the guitar solos; he didn’t write any lyrics.”
Waters Fires Wright
In addition, Waters was so engulfed in his paranoia that he fired Wright. No matter what Wright did, it was never enough for Waters. Waters saw himself as the sole pioneer of Pink Floyd and this album. So much so to the extent that he threatened to take The Wall as a solo project if Wright didn’t leave. The irony is that they hired Wright as a musician and he was the only one of the members to profit from the tour.
A Snapshot in ‘The Wall’
The concept album revolves around Pink, who starts building this psychological wall between himself, life, and people under the guise of his father’s death in World War II. The bricks range from his father’s death and his mother’s smothering over-protectiveness to merciless teachers and schoolmasters imposing a brain-washing educational system. Furthermore, cemented into the wall is an estranged marriage, drug abuse, and a government system that pulls the citizens’ strings. All that is presented and broken down into the songs forming The Wall.
‘In the Flesh?’
A sudden transition from this calm music to the pounding of guitars, monstrous organs, and heavy bass and drums floods the listener. All this foreshadows sudden changes to be witnessed in Pink’s life. Many interpretations have been made of this song.
The first one is that the lyrics are instructions from an omniscient figure on how to live life. The song is about expectations and disappointments. The expectations are that of love and acceptance from the world. But the disappointment comes when the world turns out to be full of “cold eyes” and “disguise.” Pink has to claw their way through them which means that the way to life is violence, not love, in the “show” that is life.
Another interpretation is that Pink is birthing himself into the narrative. It is one of the literary techniques to start with the end to grab the audience’s attention and make them wonder how it all started. Finally, it could be that he sees himself as the warning others are looking for. The listener thinks that he’s here to feel that “space cadet glow.” But instead is struck with hardened lessons about reality. Pink is obliged to tell his story to anyone who will listen, instructing them on what he’s found, the “cold eyes” and “disguise.”
‘The Thin Ice’
The song is The Wall’s infancy. It starts with Gilmour’s soft voice in the first half, being mother-like. The first half gives hope but also plants seeds of doubt as the listener gets into the second half. This is where Waters drops in with harsh reality. “Baby blue” has to go about life carrying the burdens of his predecessors. In this case, it is his father’s death while “skating on the thin ice of modern life.” These burdens could lead to one’s life falling apart as the “thin ice” of life cracks until one falls into its vague depths. This leads to the formation of “The Wall” as a defense mechanism.
‘Another Brick in the Wall Pt. 1’
Without a break, Pink Floyd takes listeners through the first brick in The Wall. It is Pink’s father’s death in the war, which is a parallel to Waters’ life as he lost his father to World War II. His father left him literally across the ocean for the war. Metaphorically, by dying he leaves Waters with nothing but blurred memories from his childhood and “a snapshot in the family album.” This leaves Pink in the second stage of grief: anger. He wonders what else his father has left for him, to which he answers, a brick in his wall of solitude.
He dismissively points out that everything that he’s been through is just “bricks in the wall.” But is it really as minuscule as he makes it out to be?
‘The Happiest Days of Our Lives’
The song introduces us to the second brick in The Wall, which is the social injustice of the educational system. Waters commented in his documentary that this song refers to the bad teachers who simply try to “crush them (the students) into the right shape so that they would go to university and ‘do well’.” The song also talks about Karma as these teachers were known to be abused by “their fat and psychopathic wives,” which is presented by Pink gleefully.
As a result of the teachers and educators who thrive on bringing their students down, the children surround themselves with walls to guard their personal and intellectual weaknesses against their teachers. That’s for fear that rather than addressing these weaknesses productively, the teachers will only use them for ridicule. This leads the students to keep their weaknesses “carefully hidden.”
The teachers themselves have their walls which they project on their students, just like Pink did with the rest of the world. Childhood should be the happiest days of anyone’s life. But in Pink’s case, it was filled with hurt, disillusionment, fear, guarded emotions, and self-doubt. It can be just as emotionally fragile as any point in adulthood.
‘Another Brick in the Wall Pt. 2’
The song is a continuation of The Happiest Days of Our Lives, where Pink is protesting against the educational system. It first starts with Waters and Gilmour singing the “we don’t need no education” anthem. Then, a choir of kids chimes in, making it a universal problem, not just Pink’s. In addition, the double negatives used in the song emphasize the need to cease the brainwashing that the stifling, cruel system has created for one to be able to claim his individuality.
Fun fact: Some have used the song as a rallying cry against any government-mandated form of education. Therefore, some countries, like South Africa, have banned the song from being played on the radio. A few others went so far as to place a national ban on both the album and Pink Floyd.
‘Mother’
In his 1979 interview with Tommy Vance, Waters commented, “If you can level one accusation at mothers it is that they tend to protect their children too much. Too much and for too long.” The song is between a son and his mother. Such a technique has been used by Greek philosophers to illustrate and promote self-realization, believing that such a dialogue form best encouraged mental progression.
However, in this dialogue, the son expresses his desires, ambitions, dreams, and fears to his mother. The mother, instead of nurturing and answering his needs, projects her fears on him. Her idiosyncratic, evasive nursery rhyme-styled answers make them smothering to Pink, shattering his expectations to find self-fulfilling ones.
That over-protectiveness wasn’t birthed the day before. It stems from the loss of her husband to war, which makes her protective of the last part remaining from him, her son. Like a mama bear, she will protect her son from any danger at all costs. This makes Pink inherit yet another brick in his wall, that of his mother. Apparently, her bricks were too large that Pink wondered, “Did it need to be so high?” Others speculate that the “it” refers to the mother’s expectations, or life being this hard for Pink.
‘Goodbye Blue Sky’
The song is all about juxtapositions. It starts with a kid pointing to an airplane in the sky to find it dropping bombs. The music is calm with many soothing oohs to find a sudden intimidating transition with stuttering and talk about “the frightened ones” and “the falling bombs.” Despite the promises of a brave new world, people run for shelter. The transition from the “blue sky” of childhood moves to the throes and cruelty of adult life.
Waters described the song as being a recap, summing up Pink’s life to that point. As Waters says, in its most simplistic form “it’s remembering one’s childhood and then getting ready to set off into the rest of one’s life.” As the flames of Pink’s past are all long gone and yet, his present begs to differ as he still bears the scars from his past, which are the bricks in his wall.
‘The Empty Spaces’
There is a lot of speculation as to who is being addressed in the song. Some say it’s addressed to his wife, which is a foreshadowing of how their relationship will be a tough one due to Pink’s wall. He wonders whether his relationship with his wife qualifies as a brick to add to his wall. Another speculation is that he is addressing his mother. He has gone through a shocking transition from being guarded by her to being naked in front of the “cold eyes” of the world, creating a void that needs to be filled.
Finally, the use of “we” suggests that his message may be universal. He views everyone through his own lens and imagines them to have the same struggles and walls as himself. He wonders on behalf of humanity what we shall use next to fill the void of our post-war, postmodern lives.
‘Young Lust’
The song, as Waters stated, is “a pastiche of any young rock and roll band out on the road.” The song explores Pink’s new profound freedom after breaking free from his mother’s chains and the grueling school system. The song was made to be a satirical cliché to bring the stereotypical Rock’n’Roll life into our minds, one that was lived by Pink. The song is a parody of every rocker whose ego is as large as his image. Also, whose only concern in the world is the pursuit of carnal pleasure.
Arguably, the fact that the song is an imitation of popular rock music of the 1970s reinforces Pink’s lack of individuality at this time in his life. It makes us wonder whether that’s what Pink genuinely wants or whether years of repression have led him to be the polar opposite of what he used to be. His personality is a little more than a flimsy mask thanks to the internalization of these bricks. Now that he’s exploring himself, he has little time and resources (only The Wall) to formulate a proper new personality.
‘One of My Turns’
In the song, Pink is talking about how love is frail and how it’s destined to eventually decay. Love is supposed to be sweet and pain-alleviating but for Pink, with his wife’s infidelity, it just serves as another brick in his wall. In his mind, everything in this world will decay and, at length, cause more harm than good, not that the wall that he has built is the root of the problem.
He also foreshadows the rest of the album’s action while talking about his feelings. The “razor blade” could insinuate Pink’s later turns to violence as we will see in the sudden transition in the song’s second half. The “tourniquet” suggests Pink’s current drug use. And finally, the mention of the “funeral drum” foreshadows his metaphorical death as he cocoons completely behind his wall. Additionally, they carry the notion of being stretched almost to the breaking point. That prepares the audience for what must surely come soon: Pink’s breaking point.
His outburst is projected onto the groupie he brought home out of spite. The song starts with her fascination and questions about the glories of being a rock star, to which he responds sarcastically in his outburst. He calls his breaking point “one of my turns” and that “it’s just a passing phase, one of my bad days,” but is it? The “passing phase” was so striking and threatening that the girl ran away, leaving Pink to the misery of being behind his wall.
‘Don’t Leave Me Now’
One would think that the song is addressed to his wife, begging her to stay while blaming her for the state he’s in, for being a contributing brick in his wall. Waters, however, spoke more about this song with Vance. He states that for him at least, Pink doesn’t sing the song “to anybody; it’s not to her (the groupie) and it’s not really to his wife, it’s kind of to anybody. If you like it’s kind of men to women in a way, from that kind of feeling.”
By generalizing the song, Waters stresses that Pink’s relationship with his wife is pretty much the same as the love-hate relationship he has with everything in his life. The emotional tone can be just as applicable to his feelings for the father who left him for the war; the mother who guarded him a little too much; the fame that built him up while tearing him down; and even the wall that protected him while entombing him.
In Pink’s mind, each relationship follows the same course of expectation and disappointment. As such, the song is both a plea and accusation addressed to his life in general – just as he starts admitting he needs help, his wall-guarded self reminds him that ultimately he can’t trust anyone…and in the end, everyone just ends up running away.
‘Another Brick in the Wall Pt. 3’
The song is a universal condemnation of everything that has led up to this moment in Pink’s life. It is a full frontal attack against the external world itself. He screams that he needs nothing but himself and his wall. The wall that, in his point of view, everyone contributed in one way or another. Waters told Vance that the third brick is Pink “convincing himself really that his isolation is a desirable thing.”
Drugs only furthered the distance between him and the world, his mother’s embrace was smothering instead of loving, and his wife’s treacherous instead of bringing warmth. “The writing on the wall” brings to mind the Old Testament Book of Daniel. That’s where phantom words appear on the wall of the palace of King Belshazzar of Babylon, which the prophet Daniel sees as a dark omen for the king. Later, Belshazzar is indeed slain that very night, leading to the division of his kingdom.
Such a metaphor makes us see Pink as the prophetic figure that predicts downfalls. Also, Belshazzar is the downfall he predicts and the one being foreshadowed is that of his own.
‘Goodbye Cruel World’
The song signifies Pink’s metaphorical and social suicide. He bids farewell to everyone before cementing the final brick in his wall, leading to complete isolation from the world. As Waters told Vance, Pink is “going catatonic, if you like…he’s had enough, that’s the end,” and he submissively does so, with no extra breath in him to fight. He views himself as condemned to this fate, to the desolate isolation of his wall.
In the album, every song transitions into the next but at the end of the first half of the album, and as Pink lays the last brick in his wall, the song ends abruptly, shunning everyone in Pink’s life. Find out how the story goes in our second upcoming article.
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