| Senior Member
Join Date: Oct 2005 Location: Stumbling toward Shambala (currently Connecticut)
Posts: 857
| A few things I can add.
The moral of the story, or theme of the album, is primarily social isolation. The loss of his father in WWII; his overprotective mother; strict dogmatic teachers; and finally his disillusionment with the adoration of groupies and the fans at large. As the final line of the album says... "And in the end, some stagger and fall, after all, it's not easy... Banging your heart against some mad buggers wall." The walls we put up to keep the world at bay, also make it a real trial for others to love us. The theme of the next to last song. Though keeping an open heart can often be painful, it is what allows people to know and love us for who we are.
With the exception of "Comfortably Numb", written by guitarist David Gilmour, and originally slated for one of his solo albums, nearly the entire album was conceived and written by singer, Roger Waters. This largely proved to be the straw that broke the camel's back, as the rest of the band split off in 1983, only four years later, citing Rogers Waters excessive control of the band's musical direction.
Ultimately, The Wall paralleled many real events in Water's life, including the loss of his own father to the war. By 1979, Roger Water's was beginning to grow very weary of performing and almost resented having to get up on stage and perform. He felt the crowd had begun to demand much of him, and yet, like all performers, their adoration was directed largely toward his public stage persona. Adored by millions, but not for who he really was as a person. Feeling increasingly isolated on stage, he wrote The Wall primarily as a way of exorcising his own demons.
Though often criticized heavily for his neo-Nazi like allegories very evident in the latter half of the story, this was simply Water's way of colorfully describing how he felt about his fans at that time in his life. As he says during the height of the militia rally, the most climactic point in the album... "Stop! I wanna go home. Take of this uniform and leave the show. But I'm waiting in this cell because I have to know. Have I been guilty all this time."
Quite simply, he felt imprisoned by his public image. The price of fame, every performer must contend with.
The Final Cut, Water's final album with the band in 1983, and the most definitive statement of his anti-war beliefs, turned out to be Pink Floyd's poorest selling album ever, and the final nail in the coffin of the band as a whole.
All around, one of the greatest bands of all time. Being a guitarist myself, I rank David Gilmour as my all time favorite. Though, in my own personal opinion, there has near always been some essential bit of magic missing, however large or small, with the untimely absence of Roger Waters.
The feud was ugly, the rest of the band against Waters, arguing about everything from the band's right to continue with the name, to song rights, to who owned the famous flying pig prop. The band tried to circumvent the legal issues of the pig via the addition of a penis, effectively sexing the heretofore genderless pig in a joking attempt to change its legal status. One final parting swing at Rogers. Despite their recent reunion for tsunami relief, the feud primarily rages on as far as anyone knows. This performance was a personal favor to long-time friend Bob Geldof, former frontman of The Boomtown Rats, founder of Live Aid, and incidentally, the star of the The Wall the movie.
Having seen the movie many times, I can't recommend it enough. It truly is a surreal experience. |
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