Line #25 Trivia/TheWall


1	[[WMG:[[center:[-Music/PinkFloyd '''[[Trivia/PinkFloyd Main Trivia Page]]'''\
2	''Trivia/ThePiperAtTheGatesOfDawn'' \| ''Trivia/ASaucerfulOfSecrets'' \| ''Trivia/{{More}}'' \| ''Trivia/{{Ummagumma}}'' \| ''Trivia/AtomHeartMother''\
3	''Trivia/{{Meddle}}'' \| ''Trivia/ObscuredByClouds'' \| ''Trivia/TheDarkSideOfTheMoon'' \| ''Trivia/{{Wish You Were Here\|1975}}'' \| ''Trivia/{{Animals\|1977}}''\
4	'''''The Wall''''' \| ''Trivia/TheFinalCut'' \| ''Trivia/AMomentaryLapseOfReason'' \| ''Trivia/TheDivisionBell'' \| ''Trivia/TheEndlessRiver''-]]]]]
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6	* AllStarCast: Music/RogerWaters' 1990 Berlin performance. The performers included Music/SineadOConnor, Music/ThomasDolby, Music/CyndiLauper, Music/JoniMitchell, The Music/ScorpionsBand, Creator/TimCurry, Music/MarianneFaithfull, Music/VanMorrison, Music/BryanAdams and members of Music/TheBand.
7	* ArtistDisillusionment: This is what led to the creation of this album. Roger grew tired of the larger audiences and rowdy fans, and slowly started becoming a cold, destructive person, culminating in his infamous spitting incident in Montreal, which proved to be the spark that inspired this album.
8	** To elaborate: He saw himself and his bandmates being dwarfed by their special effects and deafened by the gigantic stadium crowds to the point where they couldn't even hear themselves play. What's worse, some of the people in the crowds were setting off firecrackers and fireworks during the shows, which are not only [[JumpScare very distracting when trying to concentrate]], but can, to untrained ears, [[ParanoiaFuel sound just like gunshots]].
9	* BannedInChina: The album and movie were banned in South Africa due to anti-apartheid protesters' use of lyrics from "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)" to criticize racially-biased propaganda and curricula employed by the nation's education system.
10	* BlackSheepHit: "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2" topped the singles charts in fifteen countries (including both the ''Billboard'' and ''Cashbox'' charts in the US) and remains the most well-known song from the album. Despite this, its {{disco}} sound is almost completely different from the symphonic rock (emphasis on "symphonic") of the rest of ''The Wall''. Some critics were irritated that Pink Floyd, one of the premier '70s "dinosaur bands", had the first #1 hit of the 1980s (and during the height of the American disco backlash, no less).
11	* ChristmasRushed: Literally so. Creator/ColumbiaRecords, the band's U.S. label at the time, offered them a substantial bonus for completing the album in time for Christmas 1979. Roger Waters jumped on the offer, as the band was in dire financial straits at the time, and stepped up the recording schedule. Richard Wright's refusal to cooperate led to his firing. Despite the rush, [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools it was a massive commercial success]], going on to become the best-selling double album of all time.
12	* CreatorBacklash: At the time the film was released, Waters didn't like it. Chiefly, because Bob Geldof was cast in the lead role instead of himself. Gerald Scarfe was off playing pool instead of attending the New York premiere since he "couldn't bear to see the film again."
13	** The critics have tended to give it mixed reviews over the years. (Creator/RogerEbert '''''[[http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-pink-floyd-the-wall-1982 loved]]''''' it.)
14	** It seems like the only people who really liked it are the fans (and, more recently, Waters himself).
15	* CreatorBreakdown:
16	** Allegedly how this album came into being. Waters' father's death, drug use, and complex relations are referenced in many songs, not to mention Pink's InUniverse breakdown.
17	** Richard Wright was dealing with the breakdown of his marriage, which is probably one of the reasons he didn't contribute much to the album.
18	* CreatorsFavoriteEpisode: Music/RogerWaters ranked this album and ''Music/TheDarkSideOfTheMoon'' as his most essential records with Pink Floyd.
19	* CutSong:
20	** The film replaces "Empty Spaces" with "What Shall We Do Now?", which is longer and has additional lyrics; it was originally intended to be on the album, but was cut at the last minute due to space constraints on the LP release. The longer "What Shall We Do Now" is the version also performed in the live Wall concerts.
21	** The film also includes the song "When The Tigers Broke Free", played when the young Pink finds his late father's effects, given to his mother after being killed in World War II. This song was an outtake from ''The Wall'' sessions, and would eventually be added to ''Music/TheFinalCut'' in 2004.
22	* {{Defictionalization}}: At least one Neo-Nazi group, the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammerskins Hammerskin Nation]] took its imagery from this movie.
23	* DeletedScene: In the film, there is no segment for "Hey You", one of the album's best known songs. One was shot, but not included, both to conserve the movie's runtime and because most of its footage already appears elsewhere. The black and white workprint of the scene appears on the DVD.
24	* DummiedOut: The lyric sheets distributed with the original vinyl release included the lyrics for "What Shall We Do Now?" where "Empty Spaces" is on the record; that song's lyrics are in turn placed right before "Goodbye Cruel World". The movie restores this; the sheets, as was common at the time, had been printed up before the album was finalized and could not be changed.
25	* EnforcedMethodActing:
26	** The infamous phone call that ends "Young Lust" involved Waters and James Guthrie prank-calling Mason via a real-life phone operator, telling her that he was Mr. Pink Floyd, attempting to contact his wife. Her exasperated response, "He keeps hanging up, and there's a man answering!" is genuine. On several tour stops, the band would replicate the call using real phones on stage. The operators that were dialed were also not in on the bit.
27	** In the film, Jenny Wright wasn't told that Bob Geldof would be throwing that bottle at her during his AngerMontage, so her reaction of ducking was totally spontaneous. Geldof also really did cut his hand while filming the sequence.
28	* ExecutiveMeddling:
29	** A positive example is responsible for "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2". Bob Ezrin was the one who pushed the band towards using a {{Disco}} beat for the song, despite David Gilmour's initial reluctance towards the idea. Also, in its original version, the song was only 1:20 long, containing one verse and chorus. Ezrin, recognizing the hit potential, insisted that the song needed two verses and two choruses, to which the band shot back, "Well you're not bloody getting them. We don't do singles, so fuck you." Once they left the studio, Ezrin used the studio's tape recorder to copy the first verse and chorus, placing them after a quick drumfill, and struck on the idea of using the children's choir (inspired by another song Ezrin did, [[Music/AliceCooper "School's Out"]]) to disguise the repetition.
30	** Another of Ezrin's early demands was for Waters to remove dates in the lyrics that would have placed Pink as 36 years old, the same age Waters was at the time, saying that "kids don't want to know about old rock stars."
31	* HeAlsoDid:
32	** Bruce Johnston of Music/TheBeachBoys and Toni Tenille, half of then-husband-and-wife duo Music/CaptainAndTennille contributed backing vocals.
33	** Music/{{Toto}} drummer Jeff Porcaro contributed drums to several tracks when Nick Mason wasn't up to the complexity of the material.
34	* HostilityOnTheSet: Waters and Gilmour often clashed during recording; at one point during the making of "Comfortably Numb", they nearly got thrown out of the restaurant where Ezrin had taken them to try to work things out over dinner. Doubled down on for the film, where Alan Parker had a similar experience with Waters (at one point on the DVD commentary, Scarfe mentions Waters' relationship with Parker, and the bassist immediately responds "''What'' relationship?")
35	* InspirationForTheWork: Music/RogerWaters got the idea for the album following the band's ''In the Flesh'' tour, where he got so fed up with rowdy fans that he expressed a desire to build a wall across the stage between the band and the audience.
36	* IronyAsSheIsCast: Bob Geldof actually disliked Pink Floyd in general and the album in particular (in his memoir, he recalls a conversation where he called it "saloon-bar leftism"), and only agreed to do the movie because he liked Creator/AlanParker and was curious about appearing in a film.
37	* KeepCirculatingTheTapes: Music copyright issues affect this movie. MGM released a VHS tape and Laserdisc when they still had all of the copyrights in their hands, and afterwards, CMV was able to release a Region 1 VHS tape and DVD of the movie. All of these releases are long out-of-print. Better buy a preowned copy on Ebay before the price skyrockets up! Of course, you can watch the movie on Youtube…before it gets taken down for copyright violations. Or you can always buy a Blu-Ray copy of the movie…if you live in Spain…
38	** ''Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live 1980–81'' has been out of print as a standalone release ever since the American rights to the post ''Music/TheDarkSideOfTheMoon'' albums reverted back to Creator/CapitolRecords from Columbia in the U.S. It was released as part of the "Immersion" version of the parent album, but that too eventually went out of print with the sale of EMI and the subsequent back catalog shakeups.
39	* LifeImitatesArt:
40	** The last act of the album features Pink imagining a rock concert as a fascist rally, elaborately depicted in the film as a lavish, Nazi-inspired set. Two years after the film's release, Music/YellowMagicOrchestra would release the ConcertFilm ''Propaganda'', which similarly depicts one of the band's concerts as an elaborate fascist rally themed after Nazi Germany (though YMO themselves didn't ascribe to fascism).
41	** In 2016, footage of a teacher [[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/13/nyregion/success-academy-teacher-rips-up-student-paper.html?_r=0 berating a student for answering a homework question incorrectly]] went viral, in case you thought that the Teacher's tactics from the album were a relic of the '50s.
42	* LimeyGoesToHollywood: Parts of the album were recorded at the Producers Workshop in L.A. and Cherokee Studios in Hollywood while the band were in tax exile.
43	* LimitedSpecialCollectorsUltimateEdition: A boxset of the album was released in 2012 as part of a massive re-release of the band's catalog. It includes a new mix of the album, a new mix of the live ''Is There Anybody Out There'' boxset originally released in 2000, over two hours of early mixes and demos, a DVD comprised of various videos, documentaries, and interviews, a 44-page booklet, and other collectibles.
44	* MidDevelopmentGenreShift: While the album would eventually be adapted to film, Roger Waters originally planned for it to be a movie first, a star vehicle for himself. Plans for that were scrapped when Waters turned in a terrible screen test, and the story was overhauled into a ConceptAlbum.
45	* MoneyDearBoy: The band's financial managers had squandered their money on bad investments, so they needed to record an album to remain solvent. [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools It's still one of their best albums]] and one of the best-selling albums of all time.
46	* NoExportForYou: The original Pink Floyd shows were only played in Los Angeles, New York City, London, and Dortmund, Germany, which meant that fans who lived outside of those cities who weren't willing or able to travel were unable to see the shows. The film adaptation, incorporating Gerald Scarfe's animation for the live shows, was the main visual representation of the album for those who couldn't attend the concerts.
47	* PropRecycling:
48	** The end of "In the Flesh?" used the crashing plane from performances of [[Music/TheDarkSideOfTheMoon "On the Run"]].
49	** Live performances of "Run Like Hell" had the inflatable pig from the "In The Flesh" tour supporting ''Music/{{Animals\|1977}}''.
50	* OnSetInjury: Bob Geldof spontaneously grabbed a window frame covered in broken glass while shooting "One of My Turns" and accidentally slashed his palm open on-camera. The injury and its aftermath were worked into the film because Creator/AlanParker liked the effect; later shots of Geldof's character floating in the hotel pool even show him still bleeding out.
51	* RealitySubtext:
52	** The album was inspired by Roger realizing that he was becoming a cold destructive person after he spat on a fan (and reportedly made said fan's night) during the final show of the ''Animals'' tour. Roger himself said that, if it wasn't for his wife Carolyne, he would have become something like Pink.
53	** While much of the Dark Lord persona comes from that tour, Pink's racism likely comes from Music/EricClapton, who once infamously delivered a drunken rant against England's gradually-increasing black population, structured similarly to the lyrics of "In the Flesh". His contemporaries gave him a collective WhatTheHellHero... but he still refuses to repudiate the opinions when he's asked about them today.
54	** Pink even has a little bit of artist/designer Gerald Scarfe in him: He and Roger both hated school--Gerald even more so, because he had severe asthma as a child, which often left him bedridden and forced to drop in and out of classes with little to no idea of what he was doing. This is where the "Education Sequence" comes from. Indeed, the scenes of an infirm Young Pink are based on Scarfe's recollections of having asthma.
55	** Someone on the Wall Analysis Facebook page pointed out that the Trial, as depicted on the interior gatefold, appears to be taking place in a cartoon fantasia of the Montreal Olympic Stadium... which is where the "spitting incident" happened.
56	* ReferencedBy:
57	** The typography for Music/DavidBowie's ''Music/ScaryMonstersAndSuperCreeps'' was directly inspired by Gerald Scarfe's handwritten liner notes for this album. Bowie himself was a longtime fan of Pink Floyd, and would incidentally duet with David Gilmour on "Comfortably Numb" during part of Gilmour's ''On an Island'' tour.
58	** The helicopter sample that opens "The Happiest Days of Our Lives" is reused at the end of Music/KateBush's [[Music/HoundsOfLove "Waking the Witch"]] and "Experiment IV". Bush couldn't find a better helicopter sound and directly asked Music/RogerWaters to use the one from Pink Floyd's song, which he agreed to in exchange for an acknowledgement in the liner notes.
59	** In the ''WesternAnimation/TheLoudHouse'' episode "Future Tense", Luna screams the lyric line "We don't need no education!" from "Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2)" when her parents sign her up for classes at a community college.
60	** In ''Film/TheSquidAndTheWhale'', "Hey You" forms an important role in the plot, with Walt describing it as a microcosm of his state of mind. Consequently, the song repeatedly appears throughout the movie as a {{leitmotif}} for him.
61	* RefittedForSequel: The unused songs for the album were reworked for ''Music/TheFinalCut'', to David Gilmour's irritation.
62	* SelfAdaptation: Music/RogerWaters wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation.
63	* SimilarlyNamedWorks: "The Show Must Go On" is unrelated to the identically-named closing track of Music/{{Queen\|Band}}'s ''Music/{{Innuendo}}''.
64	* StuntCasting: Those are ''real'' Neo-Nazi skinheads in the film that Parker hired for the roles.
65	* TechnologyMarchesOn: Pink has "thirteen channels of shit on the TV to choose from"; nowadays, it would be much closer to thirteen ''hundred''. The use of collect calling, operator-assisted calls, and payphones also date the album to the pre-Internet-and-cellphone era. MF (multi-frequency) dialing is also audible during the phone calls, as most telephone exchanges still used in-band signaling in 1979.
66	* ThrowItIn: This was the reaction of director Creator/AlanParker to Bob Geldof's accidental cutting of his hand while filming the destruction of the hotel room for the song "One of My Turns."
67	* TroubledProduction:
68	** The band had to leave the UK for tax reasons[[note]]Their managers had sunk their money into a Ponzi scheme and left them bankrupt[[/note]], and so recorded the album in studios in France and the USA. Aside from the ensuing homesickness, Roger Waters became more and more controlling of the recording process, and argued with producer Bob Ezrin. The album's release date was unexpectedly bumped up to November after Creator/ColumbiaRecords promised the band a much-needed bonus [[ChristmasRushed if they could get the album out by Christmastime]], and keyboardist Richard Wright was fired because he didn't want to cut his vacation short, but stayed as a session musician. Finally, the promotional tour was so extravagant that it lost profits--but Wright got off easy, [[{{Irony}} because he was paid as a touring member]]. Tensions between Roger Waters and David Gilmour rose during the making of the album, which would eventually lead to Waters quitting the band after the even tenser production of ''Music/TheFinalCut'' a few years later.
69	** Trouble for the band from the album continued well after it was released due to the use of the schoolchildren singing the second verse of "Another Brick in the Wall Part 2", the album's runaway hit single, and again on the song's video. The children's teacher had had to sneak them out of the school without telling the head teacher since he hadn't asked for permission to do so, believing (probably rightly) that he wouldn't get it. The class's compensation was being allowed to record one of their own compositions at the band's Britannia Row studio. Unfortunately, the British press found out when the single became a huge hit and had great sport over not only that but that the children hadn't even gotten free copies of the album, which Waters arranged for them to get afterwards. That ''still'' didn't stop a few of them from suing the band in the 2000s, arguing they still should have gotten actual money.
70	** The film was victim to CreativeDifferences between Waters, director Alan Parker, and animation director Gerald Scarfe, who frequently clashed with each other throughout the film's production, to the point where Scarfe wouldn't go to the studio [[INeedAFreakingDrink without a bottle of Jack Daniel's]] while Parker [[CigaretteOfAnxiety was driven to chain-smoking]] for the first time; Parker went on to view the film's production as one of the most miserable experiences of his life.
71	* WhatCouldHaveBeen:
72	** Music/TheBeachBoys were scheduled to add backing vocals to "The Show Must Go On", but on the day of the session, Waters inexplicably cancelled and settled for just Bruce Johnston and Toni Tennille. In [[http://www.angelfire.com/ok2/wall/interview.html an interview with Jim Ladd]], Waters explained their absence from the album by saying that they were on tour at the time, and that he doesn't know how they would have reacted if they saw the lyrics of "In the Flesh", "Run Like Hell" or "Waiting for the Worms". On the bright side, only having Johnston & Tenille meant that Pink Floyd didn't have to risk facing a FrivolousLawsuit from Mike Love over songwriting credits (given Love's previous feuds with Music/BrianWilson and the surviving members of Music/TheBeatles).
73	** In the rough-draft stages, Waters' idea was to end the story with the final brick being set. When the album eventually went on tour, this would have had the effect of trolling the audience. The wall goes up; the show is over. Fortunately, common sense prevailed, and he realized that it might be a better idea to see the wall come down.
74	** The follow-up album ''The Final Cut'' was originally intended to be a collection of songs that had been left off of ''The Wall'', with one rumored title being ''Spare Bricks.'' Then UsefulNotes/TheFalklandsWar broke out, and it became a case of RealLifeWritesThePlot, as Roger turned the album into a protest against the War.
75	** Roger originally presented the band with two concepts, one for ''The Wall'' and the other for ''The Pros And Cons of Hitch-Hiking.'' They chose ''The Wall.''
76	*** Waters would go on to record ''The Pros and Cons of Hitch-Hiking'' himself as his first official solo album. It would only reach #31 on the ''Billboard'' Top 200 Albums Chart and generally flop with the critics. ''Rolling Stone'''s Kurt Loder, who had given a glowing review to the otherwise maligned ''The Final Cut'', trashed ''Pros And Cons'' as a "static, faintly hideous record" and that "you could count the actual melodies here on WesternAnimation/MickeyMouse's fingers." He added that David Gilmour's ''About Face'' album, which he had given a modest, unenthusiastic three stars, assumed "new luster in comparison to this turkey." The album received an abysmal one star, thus proving the rest of the band right when they had rejected it in favor of ''The Wall.''
77	** The film was originally going to be a straightforward concert film with Gerald Scarfe's animation interspersed with footage of the band. For some reason, the live footage turned out to be unusable; depending on who you ask, the cameramen either used the wrong film stock for the lighting or weren't able to film any more than three songs. Waters' concert film of his solo ''Wall'' shows gives an idea of what this original concept might have looked like.
78	** The band wanted to tour the album more extensively with a portable stage, but the expense was considered too great. Roger Waters only realized his plans for a full-scale tour of the album with his solo revival of the show.
79	** One of the new pieces considered for the movie was an overture, similar to ''Music/{{Tommy}}''. It would likely have been similar to the "Last Few Bricks" instrumental played in live shows.
80	* WordOfDante: It's widely believed by fans that Pink's name is actually "Floyd Pinkerton", and that "Pink Floyd" is a stage name. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_Floyd_(fictional_character) His page]] on Website/{{Wikipedia}} even states this. This is never explicitly stated, but the plaque in the church and the royal notice proclaiming his KIA status gives his father's name as "J.A. Pinkerton", and his childhood friends call him "Pinky" (a reasonable nickname for someone with the surname "Pinkerton").
81	* WordOfGod: Roger Waters commented on the beginning of "Waiting for the Worms" that he was the one who shouted, "''Eins, zwei, drei,'' Anger!"
82	* WorkingTitle:
83	** For the album: "Bricks in The Wall"
84	** For individual tracks (listed in order they're played):
85	*** In The Flesh?: "The Show?"
86	*** Another Brick in The Wall, Part 1: "Reminiscing"
87	*** Another Brick in The Wall, Part 2: "Education"
88	*** Another Brick in The Wall, Part 3: "Drugs"
89	*** Comfortably Numb: "The Doctor"
90	*** The Show Must Go On: "Who's Sorry Now", "(It's) Never Too Late"
91	*** In The Flesh: "The Show"
92	*** Waiting for The Worms: "Follow The Worms"
93	*** The Trial: "Trial by Puppet"
94	*** Outside The Wall: "Bleeding Hearts", "The Buskers"

Context Trivia / TheWall