Same Words, Different ‘Wall’
Same Words, Different ‘Wall’
The music (some written by Pink Floyd’s guitarist, David Gilmour) has barely changed, give or take a few more guitar solos onstage. But with three decades of added perspective Mr. Waters has moved “The Wall” away from personal confession and toward its other theme: an indictment of power and authority misused.
“The Wall” tells the story of a rock star, Mr. Pink Floyd. It touches on the death of his father (in World War II), vicious schoolmasters, a clinging mother, infidelity, divorce, rock-star excesses and the hollowness, paranoia and demagoguery of fame. Fears and drugs combine to wall him away from the world, until, after a surreal trial, the wall crumbles to both expose him and restore his humanity.
“I was a miserable young man all those years ago,” Mr. Waters told the audience on Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden. “I’m happier now,” he added, to moderate applause.
As in 1980, but with newer technology, “The Wall” has animations, giant marionettes and a physical wall that goes up, brick by white brick, in front of the band (and doubles as a video screen). The musicians spend much of the second act performing above and in front of it. The band was dressed in self-effacing black, the better not to distract from the visuals, from animated goose-stepping pairs of hammers to Mr. Waters singing “Goodbye Cruel World” through the last chink in the wall; there was also an inflatable pig, black and with tusks. For one song, “Mother,” Mr. Waters sang along with himself on film from the 1980 tour. True to Pink Floyd’s standards, the audio was a spectacle in itself: a remarkably clear surround-sound system had people looking overhead as the sounds of warplanes buzzed across the arena.
The music echoes the plot’s timeline. Mr. Waters was born in 1943, and when he sang about his youth or longed to regress, the chords came from doo-wop. But when he put on a leather trench coat and sunglasses to become Mr. Floyd the rock star, the music was booming 1970s arena-rock.
The recurring theme in “The Wall” is a rising and falling three-note melody, which in one iteration — “Another Brick in the Wall (Part II),” with a chorus beginning “We don’t need no education” — became a hit single for Pink Floyd in 1979. Members of the Boys’ Club of New York joined the band onstage for that song, wearing T-shirts that read “Fear Builds Walls.”
The 2010 version of “The Wall” had those larger concepts in mind. It showed bombers dropping ideologically charged signs: the star of David, the crescent moon of Islam, the Christian crucifix, the logos of Mercedes-Benz and Shell. (Why not BP?) In the extended, ominous version of “Run Like Hell,” which Mr. Waters as Mr. Floyd introduced with a German accent and a red armband, the screen showed iPod-style phrases like “iLead,” “iHate,” “iKill” and “iPay” (with a graveyard) to suggest the processes of war and terrorism.
During intermission the screen showed the faces and stories of men and women killed in wars and terrorist acts, sent by request to Mr. Waters’s Web site. Over the decades Mr. Waters has realized that his own miserable moments were utterly dwarfed by the sorrows of countless victims of violence.
“The Wall” tells the story of a rock star, Mr. Pink Floyd. It touches on the death of his father (in World War II), vicious schoolmasters, a clinging mother, infidelity, divorce, rock-star excesses and the hollowness, paranoia and demagoguery of fame. Fears and drugs combine to wall him away from the world, until, after a surreal trial, the wall crumbles to both expose him and restore his humanity.
“I was a miserable young man all those years ago,” Mr. Waters told the audience on Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden. “I’m happier now,” he added, to moderate applause.
As in 1980, but with newer technology, “The Wall” has animations, giant marionettes and a physical wall that goes up, brick by white brick, in front of the band (and doubles as a video screen). The musicians spend much of the second act performing above and in front of it. The band was dressed in self-effacing black, the better not to distract from the visuals, from animated goose-stepping pairs of hammers to Mr. Waters singing “Goodbye Cruel World” through the last chink in the wall; there was also an inflatable pig, black and with tusks. For one song, “Mother,” Mr. Waters sang along with himself on film from the 1980 tour. True to Pink Floyd’s standards, the audio was a spectacle in itself: a remarkably clear surround-sound system had people looking overhead as the sounds of warplanes buzzed across the arena.
The music echoes the plot’s timeline. Mr. Waters was born in 1943, and when he sang about his youth or longed to regress, the chords came from doo-wop. But when he put on a leather trench coat and sunglasses to become Mr. Floyd the rock star, the music was booming 1970s arena-rock.
The recurring theme in “The Wall” is a rising and falling three-note melody, which in one iteration — “Another Brick in the Wall (Part II),” with a chorus beginning “We don’t need no education” — became a hit single for Pink Floyd in 1979. Members of the Boys’ Club of New York joined the band onstage for that song, wearing T-shirts that read “Fear Builds Walls.”
The 2010 version of “The Wall” had those larger concepts in mind. It showed bombers dropping ideologically charged signs: the star of David, the crescent moon of Islam, the Christian crucifix, the logos of Mercedes-Benz and Shell. (Why not BP?) In the extended, ominous version of “Run Like Hell,” which Mr. Waters as Mr. Floyd introduced with a German accent and a red armband, the screen showed iPod-style phrases like “iLead,” “iHate,” “iKill” and “iPay” (with a graveyard) to suggest the processes of war and terrorism.
During intermission the screen showed the faces and stories of men and women killed in wars and terrorist acts, sent by request to Mr. Waters’s Web site. Over the decades Mr. Waters has realized that his own miserable moments were utterly dwarfed by the sorrows of countless victims of violence.
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