[see first part here, taken from an ongoing poll on my site. I wasn't going to post this so soon after the first part, but the comments on the Frampton post are turning into a Pink Floyd discussion]
I love Pink Floyd. My relationship with that band goes way back. I mean, I was seven years old when I first heard Careful With That Axe, Eugene. And all these years later, I'm still listening. My 12 year old son is listening. My 66 year old mother listens obsessively. I guess PF is somewhat of a family tradition. So I feel comfortable in sitting here explaining to you why The Wall is overrated. I'm not some PF play hata throwing rocks at Roger Waters. I'm a fan who can admit when an album just over reaches.
First, I'm not a big fan of double studio albums (see, Frampton Comes Alive). More often than not, you end up with six or so good songs and lots of filler. Most of the time, that filler is a songwriter's narcissistic exercise in hearing himself think. And so it goes with The Wall.
Most of the album is an acid-fueled ego trip for Roger Waters. It personified angst before Cobain put on his first flannel jacket. It was emo before the guy from Dashboard Confessional ever shed his first heartbroken tear. It was the epitome of mother issues set to music before all those nu-metal bands made parental abandonment a niche market. It's a group therapy session at a drug detox center set to music.
And it is the music that saves The Wall from being nothing more than a pretentious, self-absorbed LiveJournal entry. From the frenetic pace of Run Like Hell to the sheer poetry of Gilmour's solo on Comfortably Numb, it is the sounds and not the words that held this album together and kept it from falling into the cut-out bins of record stores everywhere. Yet even the music in some parts contribute to the "what the hell were they thinking" aspect of this album, most notably the disco background of Another Brick in the Wall. The whole song is tedious - it's as if their goal was to come up with an anthem that the kiddies would sing along to, that would resonate with them and make them believe that this album was about them, too. "We don't need no education" was the Pied Piper line of The Wall. It suckered in millions of teens and young adults who shouted along with the lines and bopped their heads to the disco beat and never gave thought (at least not until their later years) to the fact that Waters and company were pounding out the disco beats (also on Run Like Hell and Young Lust, which makes the "dirty woman" line feel somehow justifiable) just a year after disco was declared dead. Was he being ironic? Was the whole album ironic? Who knows. The message sort of got muddled in between the Oedipal odes and the admonishments of eating your whole meal before you have dessert.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Convex
Sadly, Waters hasn't and doesn't do that much drugs. I'm not sure if thats good or bad for this album. Without the drug aspect, it makes it more of a teenage angst tirade. Comfortably numb is about him being sick with a fever and being made to go on stage anyway, not about drugs. Its an actual event during the 75 tour.
The Wall movie, Roger didn't have much to do with what the finished product became. Listen to his commentary track. The album stands apart from the movie and stands apart from the stage show. Waters original version of the movie would have video of the band performing live interspersed.
The point is, I agree the album is over-rated, but not because its an acid induced vision. It isn't. When you rip away the legend of drug use in this band (after Syd left) you are left with an even worse base-angst/anger concern left behind by most of us as we leave the teenaged years.
2 - Eric Olsen
totally agree Michele, a grotesquely bloated, self-indulgent, self-pitying overrated album. Impressed your mother is a Floyd fan!
3 - BRICKLAYER
My mother is a huge Cattle Decapitation fan. Just kidding. She likes George Jones, though.
4 - Vern Halen
I think you're mostly right - The Wall is tedious, ,etc. etc., but you're going to make a whole bunch of Floyd fans extremely upset for bad mouthing their monolith. I enjoyed Aninals much more, maybe because there was much less of it. Brevity is the soul of wit & all that.
BTW, The Wall is to this day the only movie I've seen where people walked out of the theatre halfway through.
5 - Rodney Welch
So, along with the rest of us, you regularly listen to parts and pieces of an album you think is bloated and self-indulgent. Strike this up as a major victory for Roger Waters; hate him all you want, but he has conquered us all.
Personally, I love "Another Brick in the Wall," and like millions of others -- and probably most of those reading this -- I turn up the radio whenever it comes on. It has such a great sense of menace and drama to it, especially the way the guitar part drops in after the teacher speaks at the beginning. Another one: "Waiting for the Worms." Ditto "Comfortably Numb," ditto "Run Like Hell."
6 - michele
Rodney, I have no doubt that I am Roger Waters' bitch.
7 - Eric Olsen
well Rodney, you've named the only songs on the double-album
8 - Rodney Welch
Micelle -- Honey, it's no crime; we are all his bitches. He speaks to the whiner in us all.
Tell me what you think of this: The Final Cut is the greatest Pink Floyd album ever made. It begins as the story of how Waters lost his dad in the war; it concludes as an all-encompassing anti-war statement. It starts in the 1940s, it ends with Thatcher and Reagan. Between the two is an absorbing confessional, a meditation of the marketing of martyrdom -- "Hollywood waits at the end of the rainbow" -- and the hardest rocking, most impassioned music the band ever made.
Am I nuts or what?
9 - Tom Johnson
Awesome. Let me repost my comment from your Frampton post:
And Rodney: I'll agree with you on The Final Cut - it's really quite excellent. What it is not is immediately engaging to the masses, which is why it flopped. Musically and thematically is so much more mature and intriguing than The Wall, but it fell on deaf ears who only wanted more anthems like "Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2."10 - Rodney Welch
True, Tom. It sank like a stone. I think it was Parke Puterbaugh's review in Rolling Stone -- or was that Kurt Loder? -- who made the best case for it. Anyway, I loved it as soon as I heard it. Another thing it had going for it: concision. 45 or so minutes, and it hits you between the eyes.
11 - JR
When I asked him how he likes The Wall, though, he said "I only listen to it for the guitar" in much the same way, a few years from now, he will say "I only read it for the articles."
Hmmm, you sure about that analogy?
I bought The Wall the day it came out, with high hopes after the previous three albums. I was very disappointed at the lack of music; I heard lots of talking and sound effects, but hardly any music (even the big radio hit that got played to death doesn't count because little kids can't sing).
I have the same problem with The Final Cut - too much "meaning", not enough music.
12 - Dawn
Animals is also my favorite - but I like everything from PF except The Wall. It took years of arguing with Eric and honing my own musical tastes to realize that compared to their earlier albums The Wall was an utter failure to what makes Pink Floyd so great: the atmospheric nature of their superb brand of psychodelia.
I have no problem with angst (hey I love Trent Reznor), I have no problem with anti-war (I voted for Kerry), I have no problem with feeling sorry for myself and blaming my parents for my miserable life (I went to a shrink), but I do have a problem with Waters forcing all the world to endure this lone, self-indulgent piece of shite and then being pissed off at the world forever for enjoying his pain so immensely.
I also am annoyed that he has become such a dickhead superstar in his own mind, over-inflating his own importance in a world that has long since stopped caring about what he has to say.
He ruined Pink Floyd and for that, he will forever be tarred a douchebag.
13 - Eric Olsen
no, we are not all Roger Waters's bitches
14 - Vern Halen
I once saw a cover band in a bar close their show with "Comfortably Numb." I never saw a room deflated so fast in my life. Perhaps it was the wrong time & place for the song; perhaps the song is so powerful it can shut down a whole room full of happy people in minutes; or maybe it's just a real bad song that no one likes.
I'm guessing that it all depends on your point of view - Pink Floyd is either one on the most brilliant bands in the history of rock, or else they're the logical result of a bloated & overindulgent music industry that lucked out and tapped into a particular audience, and a large audience at that.
I think they have their moments, but I wouldn't spend days on end listening to The Wall, that's for sure. Might make me shave my eyebrows or something.
15 - Eric Berlin
I can dig where your coming from, Michele (I find the album a bore for the most part) but I'm not sure about your reasoning. You seem to have loved this album until you a) saw the film and b) started to listening to individual tracks instead of the album as a whole.
I think you shouldn't base the music based upon the film -- they're separate entities. I sat through the film exactly once, by the way, and while I found bits freaky cool I desperately wished there was a window nearby that I could jump out of. And this is the classic concept album, isn't it? It's meant to be listened to as a whole.
I must be one of those suckered kids, by the way, because I like "Brick in the Wall." It's got a good beat, by God. Thank God.
Finally, I like Dark Side about 50 times better than the wall -- so much more pleasing and evocative, really.
16 - Al Barger
I'm not generally a big Pink Floyd fan. I'll take Skynyrd 10 to 1. However, I will defend The Wall.
Michele talked about liking it as a whole, but not standing up as you take it apart. I have exactly the opposite reaction. I don't give a fig about the storyline, but there's some really good individual songs. There's some less interesting songs, but there are probably at least ten totally kick ass songs.
Song by song, this rates easily as the best Floyd album. At least half of Dark Side still sounds to me like spacey noodling, not songs or real compositions. For individually memorable songs with strong hooks and melody, The Wall rates much higher.
I will specifically defend the bits of disco rhythms on The Wall. This was a great creative move, bringing out more rhythm and groove than this band had ever exhibited.
17 - Jaime Nichols
I love this series! Personally, I never recovered from a perenially stoned college boyfriend who exhorted me one to many times to "listen to this guitar solo," and made me watch that bag of anvils of a movie that went along with this. In fairness, I don't think I've ever been able to give The Wall it's fair day in court, but I've always categorized it as the epitome of overrated.
Something by Rush or Jethro Tull has got to be coming next!
18 - Eric Berlin
Jaime -- that's hilarious, that "listen to this guitar solo" bit.
When in the history of time has it been worth it to focus when someone says, "listen to this guitar solo" or even, "check out this bit right here"?
19 - Vern Halen
Check out this guitar solo: Television - Marquee Moon; Richard Thompson - Cavalry Cross (live); Velvet Underground - I Can't Stand It (live boot La Cave Cleveland Oct '68).
But yes, usually, it's not that great, kinda like people who play you Monty Python albums and wait for you to laugh at the funny parts.
20 - SFC SKI
"The Wall" definitely meets my criterion for overrated. (and I agree 100% on "Animals") The singles off that album have long since passed into the category of "Songs I Won't Miss If I Never Hear Them Again" where they take their place next to "Stairway to Heaven" and "Keep on Lovin' You".
21 - mrbenning
That's really creepy. I just read this, and "Keep On Lovin' You" came on the radio.
22 - Eric Berlin
Maybe someone's trying to tell you something...
23 - Zunk
Come on? Where are all the defenders?
I love The Wall, and after reading some of the reasons why you dislike it so much, I can certainly understand your perspective.
Perhaps my love for this album is related to my discovery of it. I was born in 1977. So needless to say, I wasn't a fan until my teenage years. My first taste of Pink Floyd was The Wall (in all it's played-out-ed-ness), and it's that sound that I fell in love with. "Comfortably Numb" is what did it for me. It's so hypnotic and trancy, threaded with Gilmour's brilliance. It's that complete album (it's diversity, themes and reprises) that made me decide to go out and buy DSOTM, WYWH, Animals, then go way back to Saucer and Piper.
Like most true fans, I've got every single PF album, and the great thing is, no two are the same. It's an amazing evolution of music over the span of 30 years, and The Wall has its proper place in that.
I will agree that most non PF fans always know that "Another Brick in the Wall" is PF when they hear it on the radio. PF has almost been typecast by that song, and perhaps some of the songs on The Wall are played out (give me Dogs any day on the radio instead). But overrated? No way.
You also stated something about how Waters wrote ABITW to be some sort of catchy pop tune. I totally disagree with that. The whole obsurdity of the album and it's meaning is that Waters was trying to distance himself from what rock-in-roll had become, huge stadium arenas and screaming fanatics. I doubt that he's going to purposefully write some catchy single to sell more records.
24 - michele
The whole obsurdity of the album and it's meaning is that Waters was trying to distance himself from what rock-in-roll had become, huge stadium arenas and screaming fanatics.
Hence the huge stadium world tour for The Wall complete with light show and screaming fans?
They played five nights at the Nassau Coliseum, February 24th to 28th. I was there for three of those nights. They may have been in some ways the shows of a man who was distancing himself from rock and roll, but they were more like monolithic tributes to the genius of Roger Waters, performed, directed and produced by Roger Waters.
25 - Eric Berlin
I saw my first ever rock concert at Nassau Coliseum, Michele, probably around 1988 or so. Skid Row opened for Aerosmith -- the Pump tour.
Never saw so much black leather in my life, before or since. Tyler put on a hell of a show... and so did Bach, actually.
It was a good time until our ride never showed up, leaving us at the outskirts of a pretty crappy area (Uniondale?) for a good three hours or so.