Roger Waters: The Wall

(Part one of a three-part series)

A spectacle based on the album of the same title, Roger Waters’ concert event The Wall brings the 1979 album to life on stage. Presenting the entire album in its full glory, Waters portrays the story of a rock musician building — and then breaking — his metaphorical ‘wall’ of isolation. Choreographed with painstaking focus on detail, this concert event certainly does a great job at presenting the album live.

The concert opened with the wall partially built. Then, there was a short introductory scene with soldiers talking, presumably from World War II, followed by the booming opening chords of ‘In The Flesh?’. The opening and closing segments of the song were accompanied by stellar pyrotechnics and fireworks. To top it off, a model airplane on a zip line swooped in and crashed into the set at the end of the song.

The loud nature of the opening act gave in to the quieter, more drawn-out laments about life in ‘The Thin Ice’. In this song, our main character, Pink, is born, but quickly realizes that life will not be as easy as some people often say it is.

Pink quickly learns this in ‘Another Brick In The Wall, Part 1’. The song is a flashback to the days of World War II, when Pink’s father leaves for war. He is killed in combat in Anzio in 1944, only five months after Pink’s birth, analogous to the death of Roger’s own father. As the song played, images of soldiers killed in combat from past and present wars were displayed.

The song then segued into the famous helicopter intro of ‘The Happiest Days of Our Lives’. Roger’s voice, mimicking that of a stern schoolmaster, pierces the air: “You! Yes, you! Stand… still laddie!” Later in the song, a giant inflatable figure of the iconic schoolmaster caricature from the motion picture came into view from behind the wall.

 As the previous song transitioned into ‘Another Brick In The Wall, Part 2’, the onstage wall became littered with snippets of graffiti. By the second verse, a group of local schoolchildren sang along with the lyrics, albeit not in the original British accent. The solo was extended significantly, and the song ended on a striking D minor power chord.

One of the new additions to the setlist was an alternate version of Another Brick In The Wall, sang in a much calmer style than Part 2. It served as a tribute to an innocent spectator in Britain (heading to one of The Wall shows) killed due to a bad case of police brutality and mistaken identity. Waters then sent a strong message to the Joe Louis Arena crowd: you can never trust the government and the police force.

 
The audience then cheered as the light acoustic strumming of ‘Mother’ faded in. Many supplements to the portrayal of the titular mother were present, including a towering figure of the mother from the motion picture, only shown briefly but with menacing red eyes piercing the dark. In addition, a graffiti message was present on the wall: the iconic “Big Brother” line from Orwell’s 1984, with a big red ‘M’ painted over the ‘Br’ in ‘Brother’. Several sayings in red then scrolled across the wall, often in other foreign languages, depicting the mother’s will to protect and reassure Pink.

Then, the quiet notes of ‘Goodbye Blue Sky’ faded in. Although this song was actually about the Blitz — the World War II bombings of Britain — the animation that went along with the song said otherwise. Instead of bombs, red symbols were dropped out of planes — including the Christian crucifix, the Star of David, the Islamic star and crescent, the Communist hammer and sickle, and many corporate logos, including those of Shell, Mercedes, and McDonald’s.

The wall then turned black, as two flowers emerged from opposite sides of the wall, marking the beginning of ‘Empty Spaces’. The animation was identical to the movie, with the image of the two flowers violently engaging in coitus (bonus: the flowers actually look like certain reproductive parts). Roger, as Pink, then contemplates on how he could complete his metaphorical “wall”, as a real and imposing wall wraps around a city in the background.

Soon after, the wall rushes through several scenes: a flower transforming into barbed wire, a baby turning into a policeman and bashing a homeless person’s skull in, and finally, the wall demolishing a cathedral, as its bricks formed into a neon casino-like structure. ‘What Shall We Do Now?’, the original basis for ‘Empty Spaces’, is a social commentary on mankind’s materialistic tendencies, and although less obvious, it is also a foreshadowing of Pink’s growing craving for material goods.

 Read PART 2 HERE