Pink Floyd The Wall
The Wall is a 1979 rock opera concept album by Pink Floyd. The majority of the album was written and sung by Roger Waters. Hailed by critics and fans as one of Pink Floyd’s best albums (along with Meddle, Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here and Animals), the album is known as a rock and roll classic, and its morbid, depressing anthems have inspired many contemporary rock musicians.
A film version of The Wall was released in 1982 entitled Pink Floyd The Wall, directed by Alan Parker and starring Bob Geldof. The screenplay was written by Roger Waters. The film features music from the original album, much of which was re-recorded by the band with additional orchestration, some with minor lyrical and musical changes. These include shortened versions of “Run Like Hell” and “Waiting for the Worms”, and the major change being “Mother” which was substantially re-recorded for the film which and included the above mentioned orchestral background and extro after David Gilmour’s guitar solo to include a dialogue scene between Pink and his Wife, then the song picks back up again with Roger Waters playing an acoustic guitar and finishing the song. Another major change is the film’s version of “Empty Spaces”, which is remixed and includes the song “What Shall We Do Now?”.
Various other songs featured slight changes for the film. “Another Brick in the Wall Part 3” was remixed or re-recorded, “The Thin Ice” has a slightly different intro, and “Bring the Boys Back Home” is extended. The song “Outside the Wall” was orchestrated and extended for the film’s credits.
Another small musical change in film was the small guitar riff that was played during the opening of “In the Flesh?” at the beginning of the film. This opening riff was played during the live shows but was slightly edited on the actual album recording. Also, the film did not include the songs “Hey You” and “The Show Must Go On”.
Bob Geldof sang both versions of “In the Flesh” in the film and apparently gave David Gilmour a very difficult time during the recording sessions, with Gilmour calling Geldof a “bastard”. Interestingly enough, Geldof would appear with Gilmour at one of his solo concerts in 2002 and later developed Live 8, which included a Pink Floyd performance.
The film also includes the two part song “When the Tigers Broke Free”, a song which was cut from the album, because at the time Waters felt it was too personal to be recorded.
There were a couple of non-Pink Floyd songs featured in the film. The classic Vera Lynn song “The Little Boy That Santa Claus Forgot” opened the film, while Pink sang the words to the then-unreleased Roger Waters solo song “5.11 A.M. (The Moment of Clarity)” (which would eventually see release on Waters’ 1984 solo album The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking) in a restroom stall before singing the Pink Floyd song “Stop”.
When the teacher finds Pink’s poetry and reads it aloud, the lyrics are from the song “Money” from the Dark Side of the Moon album.
The song “Hey You” while filmed, was cut from the final edit of the film as it would have made the film too long and also “added to the confusion” and as Roger Waters has commented in the documentary on the DVD, “it was too much”. The song is featured as an “oddity” (special feature) on the DVD and scenes from Reel 7 (which the “Hey You” segment was shot on), were cut together for the “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 3)” and “Tear Down The Wall” segments of the film.
During the scene where Pink finds his father’s items during the second part of “When the Tigers Broke Free” aka “The High Command”, Pink stumbled on his father’s certificate of appreciation. The name on the certificate says “J.A. Pinkerton”. It is assumed that Pink’s real name is Floyd Pinkerton, and that Pink Floyd is his stage name, or that he legally changed his name to Pink Floyd because he didn’t like the name Floyd Pinkerton.
Bob Hoskins appeared in the film as Pink’s Manager.
The film includes Gerald Scarfe’s animations sequences used in the Live Shows these include, “Goodbye Blue Sky”, “Empty Spaces”, “Waiting for the Worms” and “The Trial”.[citation needed]
Originally the film was intended to be intercut with concert footage and a few of the Live Shows in their entirety were actually shot but subsequently not used in the film at all. Footage from these concerts has appeared on different web-sites from time to time and on YouTube. But an official release of this footage by Pink Floyd has not been authorized other than what was used in the documentary Behind the Wall.
