One Of My Turns
The Wall is arguably the most debated album in Pink Floyd’s canon. It splits opinion in the way, say, The Dark Side Of The Moon (universally loved) or The Final Cut (universally unloved) never could. But, love it or loathe it, The Wall is absolutely impossible to ignore. And, lest we forget, 40 years ago it gave Pink Floyd a Christmas No. 1 – now a feat impossible to think of from a band who at the time hadn’t released a single since 1968. At Christmas 1979, my group was top of the pops.
Four decades on, Prog felt it was time to tell the story once again. Like the great tales of yore, it’s worth repeating, to learn of its absolute audacity, and how its mere 31 performances in four cities fundamentally reshaped the concept of the stadium concert.
Going back, we return to that time when the music scene relied on the press and whispers from gurus such as DJs John Peel or Nicky Horne to glean what was happening. Pink Floyd had simply disappeared. Their last album had been released at the very start of 1977. The punk rock explosion that the release of Animals coincided with was over, mutating into new wave, and angry, intelligent people like Elvis Costello and The Boomtown Rats leader Bob Geldof prowled the charts; Pink Floyd seemed like something from a very, very long time ago.
On November 11 1978, the ever-scurrilous Thrills section of NME had been told by a ‘reliable source’ that the title of the “new Floyd waxing is Walls”, and that to present the piece live the Floyd were planning to delve deep into the realms of ‘environmental theatre’ (Beats lasers – Ed.). This was the first word anyone heard about the concept the band had been working on since mid-summer. Fresh from becoming a father for the second time, Roger Waters was thinking big.
We have to go back 17 months earlier for the genesis of The Wall. As Floyd’s US shows to support Animals got bigger, the disconnect between Roger Waters and his audience grew ever more pronounced. The final show of the In The Flesh tour was at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium on July 6 1977. The stadium, nicknamed the ‘Big O’ because of its resemblance to an oversized donut, had been built for the ’76 Olympics, and had been open a week short of a year when Pink Floyd played the stadium’s first paying concert, in front of 78,322 people. In the huge, soulless arena, with its high-banked seats and arcing floodlights, combined with security unused to gigs, fans who had been waiting several hours were getting restive, some letting off firecrackers. When the group eventually came onstage, the restlessness continued, which ultimately led Waters to beckon a fan closer up to the stage, and then hurled a gloop of phlegm toward him.
“Under that schoolyard bully affect, Roger was actually quite a sweet guy. I love David, too.”
Bob Ezrin
“I could see what was
