On February 7, 1980, progressive rock group Pink Floyd began its tour for “The Wall,” in Los Angeles. Almost 31 years later, on November 28 and 29, the band’s frontman Roger Waters returned to play this prolific album once again at the Staples Center.
At 8 p.m. the massive arena was packed, a half-built wall of large gray blocks looming over the sides of the stage. As the lights dimmed, the crowd—a mass of mostly 40-somethings hoping to relive the show they saw years earlier—went wild.
Fireworks burst off the stage, illuminating the musicians in a surreal red glow, and the album’s opening track “In the Flesh?” had the concert off and running. As deafening mock machine gun fire (a sound effect used in the song) filled the Staples Center, a miniature plane disconnected from its spot on the ceiling and soared into the existing part of the wall, exploding in a dramatic end to the song.
As the concert progressed, various other props accompanied the tracks, including a massive puppet of a mutilated teacher (a character from Pink Floyd’s movie version of “The Wall”), an enormous pig covered with propagandist pictures and political messages that floated above the crowd and a glaring statue of another character—the overbearing mother. These visuals helped to tell the abstract story of the “The Wall” while adding a unique thrill to the show.
“The Wall” is a bizarre and intellectual rock opera focusing on the life of a character named Pink, who is largely based on Waters himself. The album tracks Pink’s journey through a difficult life culminating in his depressing rockstar career of muddled and torn relationships, drug use and violence problems. Each trauma Pink faces adds a brick to a metaphorical wall that barricades him from society and human interaction. Pink’s mind becomes overrun with insane immorality, and the wall is finally torn down.
The album delivers strong anti-war messages, now adapted to attack contemporary war (as well as war in general). Water’s had previously placed emphasis on the corrupt motives of war, and he continued this idea only altering the specific companies and institutions he considered responsible
Throughout the show, a steady stream of stagehands moved bricks to the wall until it towered 40 feet above the stage, completely hiding the musicians. When the album was originally created, Roger Waters used this prop to represent the isolation he felt from his often-disrespectful fans, who cared more about the drugs and energy of a concert experience than about the actual music.
The wall formed an immense screen onto which many visuals were projected. Ranging from hateful attacks on modern war to videos from the original wall tour to clips of the movie, the graphics complimented each track individually while ultimately displaying many of the themes and ideas that the album was composed to convey.
The concert climaxed at the popular track “Run Like Hell,” which was accompanied by visuals that indignantly mocked modern companies. The show finally ended with the symbolic toppling of the wall that had been constructed. Waters and the rest of the band filed off the stage as the audience showed its appreciation with earsplitting applause.
Musically, the concert was as precise as the contemplative but technically impressive studio album. However, the band delivered an unbridled emotion and energy that surpassed anything it could have recorded. While Roger Waters was the only original Pink Floyd member playing, the studio musicians did a fantastic job capturing and expressing the moods of each track.
“The Wall” carries a certain air of intelligence and sentiment in the brooding darkness of both the instrumental work and the lyrics. Roger Waters successfully supplied this intense and cerebral bitterness while keeping the show musically and visually engaging.
Roger Waters’s performance of “The Wall” blended the ideologies and story of the original album with modern issues in an intense and poignant illustration of Pink Floyd’s unsurpassed musical skill and sophistication.
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