Pink Floyd The Wall

Comentarios: victor_m@cimat.mx

The Wall es la adaptación al cine del album del mismo nombre que Pink
Floyd editara en 1979. Alan Parker (Londres, 1944) fue el director
elegido para llevar a la pantalla el concepto ideado, escrito y
compuesto por Roger Waters, quien también realizó el guión.
Aunque distintas ideas giran alrededor de The Wall, un tema
principal resalta, y es la alienación, padecida hasta el extremo, en
este caso, por una estrella de rock.
Hay una metáfora constante: los sucesos trágicos y mal asimilados
por el protagonista, -llamado simplemente Pink-, que se se vuelven
ladrillos que uno a uno construyen su muro mental. Cada uno de ellos
cobra una importancia fundamental en Pink. La ausencia de su padre,
asesinado en la guerra ("Daddy's flown across the ocean, leaving just
a memory..."), su madre sobreprotectora, transmisora irremediable de
frustraciones y miedos ("Mama's gonna make all of your nightmares come
true, mama's gonna put all of her fears into you..."), los malévolos
maestros torturadores de su infancia ("When we grew up and went to
school, there were certain teachers who would hurt the children anyway
they could..."). Ya mas grande, los excesos: drogas, alcohol, mujeres,
La ausencia constante del hogar debido a giras y conciertos, la
infidelidad de su esposa.
Todos, uno a uno, son ladrillos en la pared que lo aislan, lo
perturban y provocan al fin su colapso.
Detrás de su muro, ¿qué hay después de ese tortuoso camino? nada más
que maldad, maldad personificada en un Pink convertido en un lider
fascista que aterroriza y lastima por igual a negros, judíos u
homosexuales.
Al derrumbe final de Pink acuden todos sus demonios. Su madre, su
maestros de infancia, su esposa ausente, todos ellos lo juzgan, es
decir, se juzga el mismo a través de sus demonios internos. El
castigo: mostrarse tal cual es, con sus miedos, sus sentimientos y
todo aquello que hace a alguien vulnerable y por tanto, persona.
The Wall estuvo siempre pensado como un album, una puesta en escena
y una película, pero especialmente con la cinta (ya que los shows, por
su naturaleza, fueron restrictivos) es que se comprende cabalmente la
idea de la obra de Waters. Ideas erróneas o al menos incompletas
surgieron cuando el disco se editó por primera vez, mismas que
provocaron se prohibiera la película en varios países, incluido
México.
Ahora se entiende, The Wall no es una película anarquista, tampoco
es una crítica indiscriminada hacia las instituciones de enseñanza ni
es una incitación torpe a la violencia. Es una obra que surge de un
hecho bastante personal (ver +Información) y que refleja mas bien un
sentimiento de soledad, de enajenación, de muros invisibles entre la
gente, de incomunicación y de aquellos sucesos que pueden provocarlo
en cualquier persona propensa a la fama o a las satisfacciones
superfluas o evasivas, y si acaso hubiera algún mensaje moral (pero
solo si acaso) este sería algo conocido y fácil de describir: la
maldad genera más maldad, el auto-aislamiento un aislamiento más
prolongado y el dolor, la humillación provocado a alguien, dará más
dolor espacido por este alguien hacia otros en una cadena
interminable.
El concepto de la película estaba totalmente elaborado cuando Alan
Parker tomó el proyecto, sin embargo su dirección es atinada (con
mucha intromisión de Waters) para dar forma al derrumbe paulatino de
Pink, interpretado por Bob Geldof. Las escenas de guerra están bien
elaboradas, igual se muestra efectivo en escenas impactantes como
aquella de los niños y la máquina de carne, o las escenas de Pink en
su cuarto de hotel, apoyado por las magníficas animaciones de Gerald
Scarfe.
Añádase a esto una música extraordinaria, del album conceptual más
importante en la historia del rock para hacer de esta película una
experiencia siempre disfrutable.

Pink Floyd The Wall (Inglaterra, 1982)

Dirigida por Alan Parker
Escrita por Roger Waters.
Con: Bob Geldof (Pink), Christine Hargreaves (Pink's mother), Eleanor
David (Pink's wife), Alex McAvoy (Teacher), Bob Hoskins (rock
manager).
Roger Waters sobre The Wall. Tomado del Booklet de Is There Anybody
Out There? el disco doble en vivo de Pink Floyd interpretando The Wall
en 1980-1981. Traducción de Víctor.

An explanation of The Wall. Entrevista para la radio con Jim Ladd

hecha en 1980. Tomado de http://www.pink-floyd.org

Roger Waters sobre The Wall

Mucho del impulso creativo para The Wall se derivó de mi desilusión
con los conciertos de rock en estadios a cielo abierto. En los días
anteriores a Dark Side of the Moon la emoción de una presentación de
Pink Floyd recaía en una cierta intimidad de conexión entre el público
y el grupo. Era mágico. Hacia finales de los setentas esta magia y
esta oportunidad se había desvanecido, aplastado, según mi punto de
vista, por el peso muerto de los números.
Es parte de una vieja historia ahora, pero quizás esto tiende a
repetirse: hubo un momento en el escenario del Estadio Olímpico en
Montreal, durante la gira Animals cuando me vi forzado a confrontar
todos los aspectos negativos de esas circunstancias y mi
consentimiento de ellos.
Un fan adolescente enloquecido, gritando su devoción, empezó a
agarrarse de la red que separaba al grupo del redil de ganado humano
[tomar en cuenta que estaban en la gira Animals] al frente del
escenario, y el hervidero de mi frustración finalmente explotó. Le
escupí en la cara. Inmediatamente después de eso me quedé impactado
por mi comportamiento. Me di cuenta que lo que una vez fue un
intercambio manejable y que valia la pena entre nosotros (el grupo) y
ellos (el público) había sido completamente pervertido por la avaricia
corporativa y el ego. Todo lo que quedó fue un arreglo que era
esencialmente sadomasoquista. Tengo una imagen muy vívida de un
público siendo bombardeado -de bombas siendo lanzadas desde el
escenario- y una sensación de que esas personas, siendo golpeadas
salvajemente, se regocijaban de estar en el centro de toda la acción.
Al poco tiempo de esto me vino la idea de construir una pared durante
el concierto. La idea se me quedó desde esa vez. Aparte de este
significado personal, pensé que sería una gran pieza de teatro-rock.
The Wall es parte de mi narrativa, mi historia, pero pienso que los
temas básicos resuenan en otras personas. La idea de que nosotros,
como individuos, generalmente encontremos necesario evadir o negar los
aspectos dolorosos de nuestras experiencias, y de hecho a menudo las
usamos como ladrillos en una pared detrás de la cual algunas veces
encontramos refugio, pero detrás de la cual podríamos volvernos
fácilmente confinados, aprisionados, es relatívamente simple de
exponer y fácil de comprender. Hay un montón de gente lidiando con
ellos mismos. Ellos reconocen esto en sus propias vidas.
En mi vida esta lucha tuvo lugar detrás de las paredes de un grupo de
rock sumamente exitoso. En un grupo de rock te encuentras a ti mismo
en una posición privilegiada y bastante envidiada. Es aparentemente la
materia de lo que están hechos los sueños. Tienes un montón de poder,
ganas montones de dinero y ahí está todo el falso glamour. Te vuelves
fácilmente adicto a esas cosas y cuando lo haces prefieres olvidar
todos los elementos negativos concomitantes. Te vuelves
confortablemente insensible [comfortably numb]. Para permanecer en ese
sueño, eso es una condición requerida. Pero cuando finalmente te das
cuenta de esto, como me pasó a mi, tienes que enfrentarte a una
decisión. Te quedas dentro del sueño porque, habiéndolo soñado, puede
ser demasiado confortable para dejarlo ir o reconoces que esto no es
tan fabuloso y te mueves de ahí.
Empecé a ver que no valía mas la pena perseguir ese sueño, o al menos
que la realidad de la situación no era ya tan tentadora como lo
parecía el sueño. De hecho, ya había llegado a esa conclusión en Wish
You Were Here. Incluso entonces, no estaba ya dispuesto a "cambiar un
paseo como extra en la guerra por un papel principal en una jaula" [de
Wish You Were Here]. Y estar en una de esas grandes bandas de rock n'
roll es una jaula. Es una gran jaula con una gran cantidad de jugetes
seductores, pero una jaula al final.

(arriba)

An Explanation of The Wall

Broadcast in 1980

This interview seems to have been put together from a full

conversation with Roger Waters and Jim Ladd. They then mixed in some
songs here and there and edited out some rambling.
JL : Jim Ladd
RW : Roger Waters

JL: Good evening everbody. I'm Jim Ladd and tonight we begin part
three of our interview special of Pink Floyd. This is only the second
time in Pink Floyd's career that they have agreed to speak to national
radio. The first was when Interview brought you lead guitarist David
Gilmour and for their second only national radio special Interview is
proud to introduce you to writer, bass guitarist, and vocalist: Roger
Waters. Interview will change it's structure tonight and next week to
bring you this special program with only one commercial interruption.
We're doing this so that we may present a verbal commentary of Pink
Floyd's epic concept album, The Wall, from beginning to end in four
segments -- one for each side of the ablum. Pink Floyd's album The
Wall, is, if you will, a conceptual novel set to music and tonight you
will meet the author -- Roger Waters.

RW : What we talk about now is going to be healpful for people when

they're listening to the album.

JL : What you will hear tonight is a song-by-song explanation of

side's one and two of Pink Floyd's album, The Wall. A work that took
nearly ten months to write and almost a year to record.

RW : Ten months until I had it in a state where I could play it to

anyone. I started in September and it was the next July I played it to
the other guys in the band -- a demo tape that I did at home. And then
we started rehearsing it and fiddled about with it and started really
recording it properly in April.

JL : Alright. We're going to start now with the first song, side one
called 'In the Flesh?' Which in listening to it and reading the lyrics
is kind of like an overture or a prelude to what's going to happen,
right?

RW : That's exactly what it is, yeah.

JL : It almost appeared to me after the second time listening to it,

that 'In the Flesh?' was someone who this 'Wall' experience had
already happened to and he speaks first and we hear from him. Is that
correct?
RW : Well spotted. That's exactly right. The piece on its simplest
level is about the situation of a rock concert and feeling alienated
from an audience, from the point of view of being on stage. Which is
the point of view that the character is expressing in that song.

[In the Flesh?]

RW : And then when we get to the end of that first tune, everything
else is then flashback.

JL : Now, at the end of this first tune, you hear this -- which sounds
to me like a military aircraft -- and begins this other analogy. The
first to me is this thing of an artist trying to relate to his public,
but then there's also this subtheme of war that keeps coming through.

RW : Yes. That's a personal thing for me, but also I think for a lot
of my generation 'cause I was born during the war. In fact, my father
was killed in the war. And I come from a generation that grew up out
of the ashes of the second world war. I didn't really want it to be
that specific. It's just a kind of feeling of being threatened by
something. A parent saying to a child watch out -- here it comes.

[The Thin Ice starts]

RW : It's supposed to be about how...I think it's about how parents

start inducing, almost inject, their own fears and worries into their
children from a very early age. Particularly in my case when they had
just been through a world war or something like that -- we all go
through devestating experiences and we tend to pass them onto our
children when they are very young -- I suspect.

[The Thin Ice]

JL : From there we go to 'Another Brick In The Wall' and this is where

the father leaves home and the actual wall begins. 'Daddy's flown
across the ocean / Leaving just a memory / Snap shots in the family's
album' So this is a real personal song then if you told me that your
father died in the war. This is a....

RW : Yes it is for me, but it's also meant to be about any family
really where either parent goes away for whatever reason. Whether it's
to go and fight somebody or to go and work somewhere. In a way it's
about rock stars leaving home for a long time as well to go on tour
and leaving their families behind. And maybe coming back dead, or more
dead than alive as has happened to some of them.

[Another Brick In the Wall, Part I]

RW : It's not meant to be my autobiography. Obviously parts of it are

drawn from my own, but a lot of it is drawn in from what I have
observed from other people's lives as well. But the idea of going away
to fight or going away to perform -- being a similar kind of thing --
is meant to be there.

[The Happiest Days of Our Lives starts]

JL : In the next song, 'The Happiest Days of Our Lives', we hear an

uncompromising attack of school systems and of teachers who at a
highly vunerable period of Pink's life help to begin building a wall,
that to some extent surrounds all of us.
RW : Obviously not all teachers are what we have to fear. The school I
was at -- they were really like that. They were so fucked up that was
they had to offer -- was their own bitterness and cynicism. Some of
them, I may say, were very nice guys and understood what was going on.

JL : But this line here about when they get home 'Their fat and
psycopathic wives would thrash them within inches of their lives'?

RW : We actually, at the school I was at, had one guy who I would
fantasize that his wife beat him. Certainly she treated him like shit
and he was a really crushed person and he handed as much of that pain
onto us as he could and he did quite a good job of it. And it's funny
how those guys, when you get those guys at school, is they will always
pick on the weakest kid as well. So the same kids who are susceptible
to bullying by other kids are also susceptible to bullying by teachers
as well. It's like smelling blood. They hang in on fear and start
hacking away -- particularly with the younger children.

JL : Would he do this in a physical way or mental torment?

RW : Mentally. Sarcasm. Sarcastic bastard.

[Happiest Days of Our Lives]

JL : Do you believe that most people would be better off without a

formal education -- the way formal education is today?

RW : As far as England is concerned, no I don't think they would be

better off without it. I mean you can't just take away what's there
and leave a vacuum. Most kids haven't been provided with the necessary
tools to educate themselves. You've got to help children to learn. I
agree with you that most children will be willing to learn if you help
them to. Follow interests that they have, but the machinery that you
would need to give them that help can probably only be derived from
changing the existing system rather than wiping it all away and saying
that whole formal thing is of no use to anyone. Part of the reason
that this is in this piece is because at the moment there is a great
resurgance in England because educational standards are falling for
all kinds of reasons. Standards and literacy are falling, or so they
say -- so some people say. And there's a great resurgance 'let's make
them sit still and keep quiet and learn to read and write' school of
thinking which I think is a terrible shame. But it's happening because
the inner cities in England are becoming more overcrowded -- I'm sure
it's the same here.

JL : It's exactly the same here. The literacy level is plummeting here
and it's caused great concern.

RW : But lots of people feel that that's because there's no discipline

anymore, which I think is nonsense.
[Another Brick In The Wall, Part II starts]

JL : Now, the last song on side one. The song about mother here.
Because mother always means, especially in this country -- I mean, is
it mother, God, and apple pie. In what order do we run that down in?

RW : Chevrolets

JL : Chevrolets, mother, God, and apple pie. Anyway, she's up there

somewhere in the top three with a bullet in American culture. And
always as the absolute vestige of purity, and warmth, and security,
and all of that. And here in this song you approach mom in that way,
but the very fact that she does all of this stuff is what really is
wrecking the child, correct?

RW : Yeah. Overprotection. If mothers area is often -- well I suppose

some mothers neglect their children, but I think an awful lot more of
them overprotect them. And go on trying to mother you for far too
long. Don't get me wrong -- that's not how I feel about my mother. I
don't feel that that's exactly what she did. In fact, I think that she
gave me, in lots of ways, a reasonable view of the world and what it
was like -- or as reasonable as she could. Nevertheless, I think that
parents tend to indocrinate their children with their own beliefs far
too strongly. My mother was extremely left wing and I grew up really
believing that left wing politics was where it was at. But of course,
all the children of right wing parents all held opposite view. And
it's very difficult for parents to say to their children, 'well now,
this is what I believe, but I might well wrong.' Because they don't
feel their wrong. They've sorted it out and they feel they're right,
but I think you can waste an aweful lot of your life if you just adopt
your parent's view of the world -- or if you reject it completely as
well. If you use their view either positively or negatively to the
exclusion of thinking it out for yourself, you can waste ten / fifteen
years [snaps fingers] like that.

[Mother starts]

JL : This thing about 'won't let any dirty girls get through.'
(laughter) Did your mom check out all your girl friends for you?

RW : No, she didn't actually -- well, yeah actually she did, yeah. I
think she was kind of old-fashioned enough to think that what would be
really bad for me would be to find a nice clean girl and get married
-- and get hooked into some relationship when I was too young. Which
in fact, I did. But that's another story. I can remember her
specifically actually encouraging me to go out and look for dirty
girls.

JL : Really!

RW : Yeah.

JL : Oh, how great.

RW : Well, I'm not so sure. That was a bit more control. It's up to
you. What you want to do with women is your affair unless you want to
seek somebody's advice. You don't want somebody watching you. I didn't
anyway. Especially not your mother.

[Mother]

JL : We're back now with our interview with Pink Floyd and our guest
Roger Waters. As we begin side two of The Wall. Ok now. Side two of
the album begins with 'Goodbye Blue Sky.' And this is another song
that relates to war and bombings and this is where the child voices at
the sky.

RW : That's like a resume of side one. It's saying that it dealt with
the roots, and the war, and the baby, and things, and the relationship
with your mother, and this is like a resume of it saying 'Ok, where do
we go now?'.
[Goodbye Blue Sky]

JL : So this kind of caspulizes everything. And now we're moving on

to, would you say, adolescence.

RW : Yeah.

JL : Teenage years and so forth.

RW : Well, and beyond. It gets very difficult to follow now.

JL : Ok, we'll see what we can do.

RW : It moves very, very quickly now.

JL : The order is changed here because I have 'Empty Spaces' is next.

RW : Yes.

JL : Is that correct?

RW : It is on the album, yeah.

JL : But it's not on the lyrics.

RW : No, because we realized as we were mastering the thing that side

two was just too long and we had to get rid of something. And 'Empty
Spaces' and another cut that used to be on there called 'What Shall We
Do Now' are the same tune. So 'Empty Spaces' was a reiteration,
musically, of that tune towards that end of the side and so we just
axed 'What Shall We Do Now', but we've left the lyrics on the back
because they help tell the story.

JL : Could I ask you a favor then. Would you mind reciting that for
us?

RW : Absolutely.

JL : We'll will be quiet and you just recite it for us.

RW : Ok, this is after 'Goodbye Blue Sky'. It's 'What shall we do to

fill the empty spaces / where waves of hunger gnaw / shall we set out
across this sea of faces / in search of more and more applause'. And
then there's a list of things to do. Which I'm quite glad isn't on the
album now because it's rather banal. When I heard it, when we'd
finally recorded it, I didn't really like it very much, but it does
help to tell the story so I shall read it to you even though I...
'Shall we buy a new guitar / shall we drive a more powerful car /
shall we work straight through the night / shall we get into fights /
leave the lights on / drop bombs / do tours of the east / contract
diseases / bury bones / break up homes / send flowers by phone / take
to drink / go to shrinks / give up meat / rarely sleep / keep people
as pets / train dogs / raise rats / fill the attic with cash / bury
treasure / store up leisure / but never relax at all / with our backs
to the wall'. So in a way it's a description of modern life.

JL : I can see now how that does fit into the story quite well.
Although it seems it would come later for some reason.

RW : Funny enough it used to come later and then we changed its space
with 'Empty Spaces' I can't remember exactly why. It was so difficult
in the later stages of making this record to make any sense of it at
all. Having lived with it for so long -- having got so close to it, in
so much detail -- it's then very hard to take a broad view of it and
make the right decisions about how best to tell the story. I think it
would have been in the right place there.

JL : But in 'Empty Spaces' which is still in here it seems to be the

first acceptance of this musician, or this artist, or this person
goes...would you say that's true for 'Empty Spaces'?

RW : The first time that he recognizes.

JL : Recognizes the need?

RW : Or that it's there. It's already been happening

[Empty Spaces -- Young Lust]

JL : Ok, 'Young Lust'. This is where I see the adolesence, the youth
really starting to feel frustrated. Searching for something to
override this loneliness or to blot it out. More noise, more diversion
and we get into the dirty girls and you finally get yourself a dirty
girl.

RW : Yeah, well this is meant to be the first answer to that. And this
is where it gets really hooked into rock and roll, specifically.
Occasionally throughout our career we have done tunes that are a
pastiche of something else and this is one of them. And it is meant to
just a pastiche of a, quote, rock band.

JL : I want to ask you about these phone calls.

RW : I've been in that situation. My first wife got involved with

another man while I was on tour several years ago. The operator says
'I have a collect call to Mrs.Floyd from Mr.Floyd. Will you accept the
charges?' And it's a guy answering, that's the point. We set that
situation up. We phoned a guy in England and said, 'OK, we're going to
call you up and the operator will say something like this to you and
when she does, just hang up.' The operator was wonderful. The way she
immediately recognized what was going on....which I really liked. And
then he's obviously upset and then he takes this girl, just anybody --
a groupie, back to his hotel room and she's wondering about.

[One of My Turns starts]

RW : The picture is that he's gone. He's just slumped. She keeps
talking to him and he doesn't want to be annoyed, but he then feels
one of his turns coming on and starts getting violent about the whole
thing.

[One of My Turns]

JL : In 'Don't Leave Me Now', this seems to be one of his last

contacts with someone real outside of this wall that he has. Who is he
talking to?

RW : He's talking to his old lady. 'Don't Leave Me Now' is a very

general song about men and women -- some men and some women. The song
of the surprised male who wonders why they finally leave after they've
been treating each other badly for a very long a period of time.
[Don't Leave Me Now]

JL : These bricks that are put in the wall...could they be interpreted

as defenses against all the stuff that's happened to him so far?

RW : Yes. You can say, on the simplest level, when something bad
happens he isolates himself a little bit more. ie. symbolically he
adds another brick to his wall.

JL : Now on the simplest level -- that's where I understand it -- so

where is it really at. Is that what you are implying here?

RW : When it's expressed using the symbols that I used in the songs
like that, on the symbolic level that's how it is. No, you interpret
it however you want to, but yeah the idea is as simple as that.

JL : That each and every time something happens to him, he adds

another brick so that won't happen again.

RW : Yeah, just to protect himself from anything or everything.

[Another Brick In The Wall, Part III]

JL : Now at the end of side two, and the end of the first album, it
ends with 'Goodbye Cruel World'. Which at first listening you think
'well gee maybe that should be at the end', but this is where, as I
hear it, the wall is completed and he is cut off, correct?

RW : That's right. In terms of how the way the thing should work as
theathre he is walled off symbolically, but he has also shut himself
off in this room -- in this specific room somewhere in America.

[Goodbye Cruel World]

JL : In the stage show now, which we will at the end of this will go
back and explain, let's say that someone is watching the show and
you're playing this song. Is the wall completed except for the
triangle or is it totally completed at this point?

RW : Well, we haven't explained any of that about the show.

JL : We'll go back on this...just say for my own edification.

RW : Ok, while I'm singing 'Goodbye Cruel World' the idea of the show
is to do it just behind the plane of the wall and to backlight me very
strongly, with strong lights shining behind so that there's light
coming out through the hole that's there and as I'm sing the song to
be filling in the last, say, ten bricks. So that there's just one left
that slots in at the end of the song.

JL : We must stop now, but we'll return next week with Roger Waters
and pick up with the second half of The Wall and the conclusion of our
four part interview special with Pink Floyd. I hope you join us then.
I'm Jim Ladd.

JL : Good evening everybody. I'm Jim Ladd. Tonight we are very proud
to present part four of our exclusive national interview of Pink
Floyd. Our guest this week, as last week, is writer, bass guitarist,
and vocalist: Roger Waters. Last week we present the first half of
Pink Floyd's amazing concept album The Wall and this week you will
hear the second half of the story and some insights into the live
stage performance of what became the most complex and visually
exciting concert ever presented on a Rock and Roll stage. The
performance of The Wall, which was filmed for a later release as a
movie, was in fact so complex that the phyisical requirements of
production made it literally impossible to take this concert on the
road. And for that reason, Pink Floyd presented The Wall in only two
American cities: Los Angelas and New York.

RW : Yeah, we looked at the logistics of the thing and the only way we
could even approach maybe breaking even was to just do two large
centers of population over here and one in Europe...London. We are
doing LA, New York, and London. And some of the central characters
like the Mother and the School Master, and the Wife, and the School
Master's wife in fact, appear earlier in the piece as inflatable
puppets. They're big. They're 30, 40, or 50 feet tall. They're huge,
these puppets. They're wonderful. The only real reason for doing this
live is in order to inpose the discipline of making it work as a live
show. Because it's really a movie.

JL : We'll now pick up where we left off last week at the beginning of
side three of The Wall and we'll hear first what inspired this
possibly Pink Floyd's greatest work to date. Roger Waters.

RW : The starting point of this whole project was me feeling bad about
being on a big stage and feeling that there was an enourmous wall
between me and the audience. Albeit and invisible one, but one that I
really felt was there. And looking at the faces of the people that I
could see in the first fifteen of swaying heads, it looked as if they
were experiencing it as well. It's like when you are singing a very
quiet song with an acoustic guitar on stage and there's about ten
thousand people are shouting, screaming, whistling...which happened a
lot on the Animals tour. There was always at least twenty people that
I could see whistling, and shouting, and screaming. They were trying,
maybe, to kind of be with me, but it doesn't help...'Wooo, Hey, Yeah,
Get down'...you know and you're trying to fucking sing these quiet
little songs.

JL : Does it make you feel that your audience doesn't understand what
you are doing.

RW : Well, obviously they don't. The ones who are making the noise.
The problem is that you know that there are thousands of other people
there who do and who want to listen to it. If they were all like that
then you could just say, 'Ok, they're just a bunch of mindless pigs.
Let's take their money and run.' But you know that there are people
out there who do want to listen to it, and who are interested, and
they do understand.

[Hey You starts]

RW : The starting point of this project was me thinking, 'Wouldn't it

be theatrical to do a show and to physically construct this wall that
I feel between me and them during the show. And to just cut the songs
off to really antagonize the audience and let them really find out for
themselves how they feel about that. So in the show, we do do that,
but we don't leave it at that. In terms of the structure of the piece,
the wall gets finished at the end of side two -- or in terms of the
show -- about halfway through the show.

JL : I see. So 'Hey You' is next and he is now speaking to the

audience from behind the wall.
RW : Yes. The lyrics, in fact, work quite well. And as a piece of
narrative 'Hey You' works quite well 'cause it's him, from a very
isolated position, pulling himself together and sort of trying to
reestablish contact...but only inside his own mind. And then it's the
middle of the song is sung by a third person who narrates the fact
that he can't actually make contact -- 'The wall was too high as you
can see.'

[Hey You]

RW : He then becomes susceptible to the worms. And the worms are

symbols of negative forces within ourselves...and we decay. But the
worms can only get at us because there isn't any light or air in our
lives...symbolically speaking.

JL : Then it goes on to 'Is There Anybody Out There' which is the

extreme isolation and down loneliness. That's it. He's caught.

RW : Right.

JL : Anything else you want to say on that?

RW : Not really.

[Is There Anybody Out There]

JL : Now this one -- 'Nobody's Home'. This sounds a little like Randy
Newman to me. I don't konw if you are influence by him or not.

RW : Probably. I like his work certainly.

JL : So why don't you elaborate on this one for me. I like this one a
lot.

RW : 'Nobody Home' is really a song about him sitting alone in a room

reflecting upon his life and also reflection upon that fact that he
can't even make contact with his old lady.

JL : Got those swollen hand blues. Every once in a while you come
right off of Cosmic land into the bathroom. I just got to bust you on
that one.

RW : I don't know what you think that's a reference to.

JL : Masturbation.

RW : No.

JL : No? Not at all?

RW : No, no, no, no (laughing).

JL : What's it a reference to?

RW : It's a reference to another song that comes later on called

'Comfortably Numb' that's about fever. And it says in fact my hands
felt just like two toy balloons. But anyway, I like your's better.
This song actually skips back tens years from now to the late sixties.
One line in it is specifically Syd Barrett. The elastic bands on the
shoes. That was him. He used to have elastic bands around his boots
'cause the zippers were always breaking and you couldn't get the
buttons done up and... the Hendrix perm in those days, in the late
sixties ... they were patterned. I didn't of course. But Syd did, Syd
had a Hendrix perm and everybody from Eric Clapton on.

JL : So again we can just sum this up by saying, someone who's harking

back to something more real while he's surrounded by all of this.

RW : Yeah, that's why he says 'I've got fading roots' at the end of
it.

[Nobody Home]

JL : Ok. Now let's go on to 'Vera.' This is not the same woman that
you refer to in 'Don't Leave Me Now.' Is that right?

RW: No, no, no. Vera Lynn is...if you were English, you would know who
Vera Lynn was. Well, she's still alive. She still works in fact, but
in the war she was the force's sweetheart in England. All her songs
are about the soldiers going away. So in 'Nobody Home,' he skips back
to 1968 if you like, and now he's going all the way back to the war.

[Vera]

RW: The 'Vera' song finishes up saying "Does anybody else in here feel
the way I do." And then that how he feels. Bring the boys back.

[Bring the Boys Back Home]

JL: 'Comfortably Numb' is that last on side three.

RW: Yeah. In the original scenario for the making of the album there
were people banging on the door going 'Come on, it's time to go.' The
idea is that they come to get him to take him to the show and he's in
no state, so they get a doctor in so that they can actually get him
standing up and wheel him out...and wheel him on stage.

[Comfortably Numb]

JL: Are there a number of rock and roll doctors that way, in real
life? He's kind of a maniacle cat. I mean, he's really kind of evil,
this doctor, in a way.

RW: Yeah. I had one guy once who thought I'd got food poisioning for
an upset stomach. And he thought I had stomach cramps...he wasn't
listening to me at all either. In fact, I discovered later on that I
had hepatitis. He gave me this tranquilizer, it was in Philadelphia,
and boy that was the longest two hours of my life. Trying to do a show
when you can hardly lift your arm. If he'd just left me alone, the
pain I could have handled. It was no sweat. I could hardly lift my
arms or move any of my limbs. God knows what he gave me, but it was
some very heavy muscle relaxant.

[Comfortably Numb Continues]

JL: We are now at the end of side three of The Wall and we'll take a
short break and in a moment we'll return with Roger Waters and the
conclusion of our interview of Pink Floyd's The Wall

JL: Welcome to the conclusion of our four part special interview of

Pink Floyd and side four of The Wall
[The Show Must Go On begins]

JL: After listening to the first three sides of this album and then
you get here and the first thing you hear is the Beach Boys. That
really kind of turned my head around.

RW: They agreed to do it. We asked them to do it. And they were going
to do it and then they went off and toured Japan or something instead.
I think they were quite into doing it. Mind you, they hadn't all seen
all the stuff about the 'racialist' stuff that comes in some of the
songs we asked them to sing. I don't know how they would have
responded to that. Because Bruce Johnston actually came down and did
some. He's credited on the sleeve in fact as one of the backing
singers. Well, I like that sound that they make, a lot, and it
epitomizes a lot of that sound.

[The Show Must Go On continues]

JL: Now 'In The Flesh' comes next, correct?

RW: Yeah.

JL: There is a substitution made. That Pink is supposed to come out,

but he doesn't, and they put a surrogate band in. Is that correct?

RW: Well, at the beginning of the show, we will be in disguise and at

this point we are as well.

JL: Ok, now why does this happen?

RW: It's the idea that we've been changed from the lovable old Pink
Floyd that we all know and love into our evil alter-egos.

JL: Because of this wall that has been built. And this alter-ego is
the one who is speaking about: 'there's a Jew' and 'there's one with
spots.'

RW: Yeah. This is our nasty side coming out. We've now decayed.

[In The Flesh]

JL: We went from the Beach Boys to heavy metal. That was incredible.
So this one is 'Run Like Hell.'

RW: Actually it's sort of a disco tune isn't it. Would you say?

JL: Is this the warning to run from the worms?

RW: Yes. Interesting you should ask that. Originally it always was,
but then slowly I tried to move the emphasis away from that and it's
just supposed to be this kind of crazed rock and roll band doing
another sort of Oom-Pah number.

[Run Like Hell]

JL: 'Waiting For The Worms.' This is a little more blatant. Facist.
Things come in with the putting on the black shirts and weeding out
the weaklings and the dead wood. I'm surprised you don't have anything
here about genetic breeding in the song.
RW: I'll make note of that and try and slip it in to some future work
if you'd like.

JL: Really...or you could just call the album back and mix something
in there, Roger. I don't think that would be too much of a problem.

RW: The thing that is really important about 'Waiting For The Worms,'
mainly as you've spotted it's just a kind of long rambling, ranting
piece of nonsense, is that it's beginning to wear off....in the story,
whatever it is that the doctor has given him is beginning to wear off
and he's kind of flipping backwards and forwards from ranting and
raving to saying it starts off sitting in a bunker.

[Waiting For The Worms]

RW: And then he keeps flipping into the other persona which is the
raving, facist persona that he has adopted. I could explain one thing
and that is that all that shouting, the bullhorn stuff is actually
describing a march from a place in south London. It's a heavily black
populated area of south London where the National Front is
particularly active. And it describes a march from a place called
Brixton Town Hall and it just describes the roads and things and which
bridge they come over and where they're going. And they're going
towards Hyde Park Corner to have a rally in Hyde Park. And at the end
of it, I don't know if can hear, they're saying hammer. And that's
another thing. On side four, the audience who start off in between
'The Show Must Go On' and 'In The Flesh'...you can hear them chanting
Pink Floyd, but slowly that gets taken over by Hammer. The idea was
for a rock show to turn into a rally.

JL: These last few lines in 'Stop': "Because I have to know / Have I
been guilty all this time." Is Pink asking himself, 'Am I a
contributor to this very Hell that I have made for myself?'

RW: Yeah. Exactly that.

[Stop]

JL: And what's your judgement on that?

RW: Well...it all comes out in the next song.

JL: Which is 'The Trial.'

[The Trial begins]

JL: And here you bring back the characters of the school master, the
wife, the mother.

RW: And he has been obviously. We have been. We did do Aneheim stadium
last time where the first people in the audience are 120 yards away
because they won't let you on the infield. A dreadful place to do a
rock show. The only reason for doing it is money. The defense of doing
huge gigs like that, where nobody can really hear anything or see
anything, is 'well gosh, we're so popular...there are so many people
who want to come see us that we have to do these very large venues in
order to accomadate them.' Which is a very nice gently out, but the
reason that we all do it is for the bucks. And don't let any rock and
roller tell you different because it ain't true. So, he decides that
he has, we have. All those big stadium gigs. As it's himself that's
trying himself. The worst thing that he thinks can happen to him is
that he should expose himself, and his fears, and his feelings, and
anything to make himself vunerable.

JL: Now wait a minute. You say that he's judging himself?

RW: Yeah. This is him hallucinating. This is him breaking down.

[The Trial]

JL: But the penalty...after all this that society has done to the guy,
the penalty is to tear the wall down and expose him as a real person
to all these other people behind the wall.

RW: The worst thing that he feels can happen to him is that he be
exposed; when in fact, it's the best thing.

JL: The last song on this epic work here is 'Outside the Wall.' It
says here, this last line, which I think may be the best line of the
whole album: 'Banging your heart against some mad bugger's wall.' Now
seems to be back outside of this whole situation and now we have the
artist or the "bleeding heart" who has spent his whole life trying to
get through all these walls that people set up. Do you think that the
artist is a person who is without walls? Are you saying that you are a
person who has survived through life without them?

JL: This ain't TV Roger. Don't do that to me.

RW: No, I can't say anything about the last song.

JL: Really. Too close?

RW: No, I like it and I....I like it as enigmatic. And I like that
about it and I wouldn't care to discuss it. I don't even really want
to think about it myself.

JL: Do you see yourself as someone who is constantly banging his

heart, in a literal sense, against...?

RW: I don't want to talk about this song.

JL: Really?

RW: Yeah!

JL: Ok. The Wall.

[Outside The Wall]

RW: I just hope people like it because I like it and it's rare to work
on something for a long time and you think....

JL: You're proud of it.

RW: Yeah.

JL: Thank You.

RW: You're welcome.

JL: Before saying goodnight, I would just like to say that this has
been a very special project for me and for all of us here at
Interview. [Jim Ladd thanks a bunch of people]