History Music / TheWall

''The Wall'' follows a narrative about fictional rock star "Pink" and his rise and fall, which are caused by his deliberate isolation and his distancing himself from reality and human interaction. The character of "Pink" is based on both Music/RogerWaters and Music/SydBarrett.

Waters came up with the idea for the album after the last concert of the 1977 ''In the Flesh'' tour for the band's album ''Music/{{Animals|1977}}''. During the concert he spat in the face of an unruly fan who was climbing the fence between the crowd and the band - The fan was *overjoyed* to be spat on. This event caused Waters to realise that he was starting to distance himself from others and that this "wall" was turning him into a cold and destructive person, and he jokingly suggested that the band build a wall between themselves and the fans.

The very personal, intensely emotional themes of one man's inability to connect with the rest of the world are deeply intertwined with the RealLife social and political circumstances of the UsefulNotes/ColdWar. The pointlessness of war and nationalism, GenerationalTrauma, institutionalized child abuse in the form of corporal punishment in schools[[note]]which at least some members of Pink Floyd must have experienced, as it was legal in British state-supported schools until 1986[[/note]], the resurgence of fascism in Europe[[note]]The undoubtedly fascist British National Party was founded in 1982, the same year the movie came out[[/note]], the music industry and the relationship between art and [[SellOut commerce]], addiction and mental illness are all key themes of the story - "The Wall" is the story of one individual isolating himself over his own unprocessed trauma - and it is the story of a world gearing up for WorldWarIII when the deep scars of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII have barely healed; a world where literal Walls had been built to manifest national interests and imprison populations. As documentarian and film critic [[WebVideo/FoldingIdeas Dan Olson]] summarizes The Wall: "Core to the theme of the piece as a whole, no one specific thing is the load-bearing cause. There is no singular source of the sickness in society that isolates us from one another, that suppresses us, that brutalizes us, that exploits us. They are all just bricks in the wall."

''The Wall'' was a major commercial success for Pink Floyd, topping the charts in the US, Australia, Austria, Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, and Sweden, and peaking at No. 3 on the UK Albums chart; the lead single "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2" would also top the charts in the UK, the US, and Norway. It would go on to be certified double-diamond in Canada, diamond in France, platinum 23-fold in the US, platinum 14-fold in New Zealand, platinum 11-fold in Austria, quadruple-platinum in Italy and Germany, double-platinum in the UK, and platinum in Argentina, Brazil, Poland, and Spain. To this day, it remains the second-highest-selling album in the band's entire discography, bested only by ''The Dark Side of the Moon'', and ranks among the biggest-selling albums in music history. As of 2018, it is also the highest-selling double-album of all time, with 30 million copies sold worldwide.

The album was later adapted into a 1982 feature film entitled ''Pink Floyd – The Wall'', directed by Creator/AlanParker and featuring Irish musician Bob Geldof as Pink. It set the music and story of Pink to horrific scenes that shifted from live-action to the aforementioned animation by Scarfe. Most memorable were the animated scenes of [[ItMakesSenseInContext marching hammers]] and nightmarish blitz-era London, as well as the film's stunning climax. Scarfe drew upon his bedridden childhood to come up with the grotesque imagery featured prominently in the concerts and film.

''The Wall'' was heavily inspired by the RealLife trials and tribulations of Waters, who came up with the idea for the album after the last concert at Montreal, Canada's Olympic Stadium during the 1977 ''In the Flesh'' tour in support of the band's album ''Music/{{Animals|1977}}''. During the concert he spat in the face of an unruly fan who was climbing the fence between the crowd and the band. The fan was overjoyed to be spat on. This event caused Waters to realise that he was starting to distance himself from others and that this "wall" was turning him into a cold and destructive person, and he jokingly suggested that the band build a wall between themselves and the fans.

The album and movie share the same story, albeit with a few minor differences. The first half of the movie and album introduce us to Pink and [[StartOfDarkness his insanely crap-tastic childhood]]. Events and circumstances in his childhood life—an overbearing/overprotective mum, a father who died in UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, and authoritarian teachers—cause him to shun human interaction because he's afraid he'll be hurt, every incident that causes him pain serving as just another brick in the "wall" that he is constructing between himself and the outside world. As an adult, Pink becomes a super-famous rock star and fills the "empty spaces" of his wall with the typical vices of the rich and famous: SexDrugsAndRockAndRoll.

With us so far? Right.

After Pink finds out that his wife cheated on him, he trashes his hotel room and scares away a groupie before he finally [[HeroicBSOD snaps]] and completes his wall, shutting himself out entirely, and the album and movie take us inside the mind of Pink for the second half. After being revived from a drug coma and forcefully shot up with even ''more'' drugs by his managers to get him on-stage, he imagines that he has become the very same force that started his wall—Fascists (okay, "hammer army")—and begins to order the audience to hate on various minority groups. Eventually, he retreats further into his mind during a moment of brief clarity. Wondering if he's "been guilty all this time," Pink puts himself on trial with a literal giant arse as judge and warped visions of his childhood fears as jury, and forces himself to tear down his wall as a result.

''The Wall'' was a major commercial success for Pink Floyd, topping the charts in the US, Australia, Austria, Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, and Sweden, and peaking at No. 3 on the UK Albums chart; the lead single "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2" would also top the charts in the UK, the US, and Norway. It would go on to be certified double-diamond in Canada, diamond in France, platinum 23-fold in the US, platinum 14-fold in New Zealand, platinum 11-fold in Austria, quadruple-platinum in Italy and Germany, double-platinum in the UK, and platinum in Argentina, Brazil, Poland, and Spain. To this day, it remains the second-highest-selling album in the band's entire discography, bested only by ''The Dark Side of the Moon'', and ranks among the biggest-selling albums in music history. As of 2018, it is also the highest-selling double-album of all time, with 30 million copies sold worldwide.

-->''All in all you're just another brick in THE WALL''

* DropTheHammer: Hammers are a motif in the lyrics ("Let me hammer him today" from "The Trial") and in the animation.

* NightmarishFactory: "Another Brick in the Wall" depicts the post-[=WW2=] British school system as an ominously lit and labyrinthine factory in which children are marched through machines and [[ConveyorBeltODoom conveyor belts of doom]] that morph them into freaks with the same FacialHorror before making them walk down into a meat-grinder.

*** Roy Harper, the guest vocalist on "Have A Cigar", trashed his trailer in July 1975. Roger Waters witnessed this as Pink Floyd were preparing for their epic opening of Knebworth '75 which might have inspired Waters to write Pink's rage song, "One Of My Turns".

*** Roy Harper, the guest vocalist on "Have A Cigar", tashed his trailer in July 1975. Roger Waters witnessed this as Pink Floyd were preparing for their epic opening of Knebworth '75 which might have inspired Waters to write Pink's rage song, "One Of My Turns".