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Date: Tue, 5 Sep 89 10:22 EDT
From: "Jeremy Crampton =Master Ultan=" <ELE%PSUVM@nervm.nerdc.ufl.edu>
Subject: Complete Roger Waters Interview (repost)
To: eclipse@beach.cis.ufl.edu
Several people have recently asked me to send them parts one and two
of the interview, after I recently posted parts three and four. Since
they're at funny sites I decided it would be simpler to just repost
the entire interview.
=================================CUT HERE=================================
Date: 29 July 1989, 09:59:54 EDT
From: Jeremy Crampton =Master Ultan= ELE at PSUVM
Subject: Roger Waters interview
Well, it seems enough people would like to see this to make it
worthwhile. First, perhaps a little background. When _The_Wall_ came
out in the UK in 1979, it became quite a hit with audiences. I can
certainly remember playing it a lot, finding the secret backwards
message, etc etc. This interview took place before the group had put on
any of their shows (which I did manage to see later, thank goodness),
or even before the movie came out. It was recorded in late 1979.
Tommy Vance was the interviewer, if I remember rightly, he is a Radio
One DJ. I recall the interview was actually broadcast twice, I
recorded it the second time around.
I then transcribed it, and it is this transcription that I reproduce
here. Any errors are mine. It is presumably copyright with the BBC.
I don't have the tape any more, or at least if I do, it's in a box
in my fathers attic in England, so no requests for copies please!
The format of the interview is that Tommy Vance (TV) and Roger Waters
(RW) played the entire Wall album, discussing each song as they
went through it. I'm sure there's no new factual information here per
se, but it's nice to see the architect of the album talking about it.
There might even be some quotable quotes!
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
P I N K F L O Y D -- T H E W A L L
(Part I)
TV: Where did the idea come from?
RW: Well, the idea for "The Wall' came from ten years of touring, rock
shows, I think, particularly the last few years in '75 and in '77 we
were playing to very large audiences, some of whom were our old audience
who'd come to see us play, but most of whom were only there for the
beer, in big stadiums, and, er, consequently it became rather an
alienating experience doing the shows. I became very conscious of a
wall between us and our audience and so this record started out as being
an expression of those feelings.
TV: But it goes I think a little deeper than that, because the record
actually seems to start at the beginning of the character's life.
RW: The story has been developed considerably since then, this was two
years ago [1977], I started to write it, and now it's partly about a
live show situation--in fact the album starts off in a live show, and
then it flashes back and traces a story of a character, if you like of
Pink himself, whoever he may be. But initially it just stemmed from
shows being horrible.
TV: When you say "horrible" do you mean that really you didn't want to
be there?
RW: Yeah, it's all, er, particularly because the people who you're most
aware of at a rock show on stage are the front 20 or 30 rows of bodies.
And in large situations where you're using what's euphemistically called
"festival seating" they tend to be packed together, swaying madly, and
it's very difficult to perform under those situations with screaming and
shouting and throwing things and hitting each other and crashing about
and letting off fireworks and you know?
TV: Uh-huh.
RW: I mean having a wonderful time but, it's a drag to try and play when
all that's going on. But, er, I felt at the saem time that it was a
situation we'd created ourselves through our own greed, you know, if you
play very large venues...the only real reason for playing large venues
is to make money.
TV: But surely in your case it wouldn't be economic, or feasible, to
play a small venue.
RW: Well, it's not going to be on when we do this show, because this
show is going to lose money, but on those tours that I'm talking about;
the '75 tour of Europe and England and the '77 tour of England and
Europe and America as well, we were making money, we made a lot of money
on those tours, because we were playing big venues.
TV: What would you like the audience to do--how would you like the
audience to react to your music?
RW: I'm actually happy that they do whatever they feel is necessary
because they're only expressing their response to what it's like, in a
way I'm saying they're right, you know, that those shows are bad news.
TV: Um.
RW: There is an idea, or there has been an idea for many years abroad
that it's a very uplifting and wonderful experience and that there's a
great contact between the audience and the perfomrers on the stage and I
think that that is not true, I think there've been very many cases, er,
it's actually a rather alienating experience.
TV: For the audience?
RW: For everybody.
TV: It's two and a half years since you had an album out and I think
people will be interested in knowing how long it's taken you to develop
this album.
RW: Right, well we toured, we did a tour which ended I think in July or
August '77 and when we finished that tour in the Autumn of that year,
that's when I started writing it. It took me a year, no, until the next
July, working on myu own, then I had a demo, sort of 90 minutes of
stuff, which I played to the rest of the guys and then we all started
working on it together, in the October or November of that... October
'78, we started working on it.
TV: And you actually ceased recording, I think, in November of this
year? [1979]
RW: Yeah. We didn't start recording until the new year, well, till
April this year, but we were rehearsing and fiddling about and obviously
re-writing a lot. So it's been a long time but we always tend to work
very slowly anyway, because, it's difficult.
TV: The first track is "In the Flesh"?
RW: Yeah.
TV: This actually sets up what the character has become.
RW: Yes.
TV: At the end.
RW: Couldn't have put it better myself! It's a reference back to our
'77 tour which was called "Pink Floyd in the Flesh."
TV: And then you have a track called "The Thin Ice."
RW: Yeah.
TV: Now, this is I think, at the very very *beginning* of the character;
call the character "Pink"...
RW: Right.
TV: ...the very beginning of Pink's [simultaneously] life?
RW: Yeah, absolutely, yeah. In fact at the end of "In the Flesh" er,
you hear somebody shouting "roll the sound effects" da-da-da, and er,
you hear the sound of bombers, so it gives you some indication of what's
happening. In the show it'll be much more obvious what's going on. So
it's a flashback, we start telling the story. In terms of this it's
about my generation.
TV: The war?
RW: Yeah. War-babies. But it could be about anybody who gets left by
anybody, if you like.
TV: Did that happen to you?
RW: Yeah, my father was killed in the war.
[IN THE FLESH]
[THE THIN ICE]
TV: And then comes "Another Brick in the Wall, Part I." Which is
actually about the father who's gone?
RW: Yeah.
TV: Though the father in the album "has flown across the ocean..."
RW: Yeah.
TV: ...now the assumption from listening to that would be that he's gone
away to somewhere else.
RW: Yeah, well, it could be, you see it works on various levels--it
doesn't have to be about the war--I mean it *should* work for any
generation really. The father is also... I'm the father as well. You
know, people who leave their families to go and work, not that I would
leave my family to go and work, but lots of people do and have done, so
it's not meant to be a simple story about, you know, somebody's getting
killed in the war or growing up and going to school, etc, etc, etc but
about being left, more generally.
TV: "The Happiest Days of our Lives" is, er, a complete condemnation, as
I see it, as I've heard it in the album, of somebody's scholastic
career.
RW: Um. My school life was very like that. Oh, it was awful, it was
really terrible. When I hear people whining on now about bringing back
Grammar schools it really makes me quite ill to listen to it. Because I
went to a boys Grammar school and although... I want to make it plain
that some of the men who taught (it was a boys school) some of the men
who taught there were very nice guys, you know I'm not... it's not meant
to be a blanket condemnation of teachers everywhere, but the *bad* ones
can really do people in--and there were some at my school who were just
incredibly bad and treated the children so badly, just putting them
down, putting them down, you know, all the time. Never encouraging them
to do things, not really trying to interest them in anything, just
trying to keep them quiet and still, and crush them into the right
shape, so that they would go to university and "do well."
[ANOTHER BRICK: ONE]
[THE HAPPIEST DAYS OF OUR LIVES]
[ANOTHER BRICK: TWO]
TV: What about the track "Mother"? What sort of a mother is this
mother?
RW: Over-protective; which most mothers are. If you can level one
accusation at mothers it is that they tend to protect their children too
much. Too much and for too long. That's all. This isn't a portrait of
my mother, although some of the, you know, one or two of the things in
there apply to her as well as to I'm sure lots of other people's
mothers. Funnily enough, lots of people recognize that and in fact, a
woman that I know the other day who'd heard the album, called me up and
said she'd liked it. And she said that listening to that track made her
feel very guilty and she's got herself three kids, and I wouldn't have
said she was particularly over-protectice towards her children. I was
interested, you know, she's a woman, of well, my age, and I was
interested that it had got through to her. I was *glad* it had, you
know, if you can... if it means...
[MOTHER]
TV: And then comes the track "Goodbye blue sky." What is actually
happening at this stage in Pink's life?
RW: Since we compiled the album I haven't really clearly tried to think
my way through it, but I know that this area is very confusing. I think
the best way to describe it is as a recap if you like of side one.
(This is the start of side two.) And you could look upon "Goodbye blue
sky" as a recap of side one. So, yes, it's remembering one's childhood
and then getting ready to set off into the rest of one's life.
[GOODBYE BLUE SKY]
TV: And then comes the track "What shall we do now." The assumption
this would be when the emergent adult...
RW: That's right. Now that's the track that's not on the album. It was
quite nice! In fact I think we'll do it in the show. But it's quite
long, and this side was too long, and there was too much of it, it's
basically the same as "Empty spaces" and we've put "Empty spaces" where
"What shall we do now" is.
TV: Because without those words listening to the album....
RW: Yeah it makes less sense.
TV: Well it's not so much that it makes less sense it just means that
there's a period in Pink's life that isn't indicated. I mean he jumps
from the recap of side one immediately into "Young lust."
RW: Right. No, he doesn't, he goes into "Empty spaces" and the lyrics
there are very similar to the first four lines of "What shall we do
now?" But what's different really is this list--"shall we buy a new
guitar, drive a more powerful car, work right through the night," you
know, and all that stuff.
TV: "Give up meat, rarely sleep, keep people as pets."
RW: Right. It's just about the ways that one protects oneself from
one's isolation by becoming obsessed with other people's ideas. Whether
the idea is that it's good to drive...have a powerful car, you know, or
whether you're obsessed with the idea of being a vegetarian...adopting
somebody else's criteria for yourself. Without considering them from a
position of really being yourself; on this level the story is extremely
simplistic, I hope that on other levels there are less tangible, more
effective things that come through. I think it's ok in a show, where
you only hear the words, you probably won't hear the words at all the
way rock and roll shows get produced.
TV: But they're there obviously if you need them?
RW: Yeah. That's why we didn't go into a great panic about trying to
change all the inner bags and things, I think it's important that
they're there so that people can read them. Equally I think it's
important that people know why they're there, otherwise I agree it's
terribly confusing.
TV: And then you come to this track which is called "Young lust." As
far as Pink the rock and roll star, and Roger Waters the writer, was
there ever a young lust section of your life?
RW: Well, yes, I suppose, actually, yes it did happen to me, that was
like me. But I would never have said it, you see, I'd never have come
out with anything like that, I was much too frightened. When I wrote
this song "Young lust" the words were all quite different, it was about
leaving school and wandering around town and hanging around outside
porno movies and dirty bookshops and being very interested in sex, but
never actually being able to get involved because of being too
frightened actually. Now it's completely different, that was a function
of us all working together on the record, particularly with Dave Gilmour
and Bob Ezrin who, we co-produced the album together, the three of us
co-produced it. "Young Lust" is a pastiche number. It reminds me very
much of a song we recorded years and years ago called "The Nile Song,"
[?] it's very similar, Dave sings it in a very similar way. I think he
sings "Young Lust" terrific, I love the vocals. But it's meant to be a
pastiche of any young rock and roll band out on the road.
[EMPTY SPACES]
[YOUNG LUST]
RW: I think it's great; I love that operator on it, I think she's
wonderful. She didn't know what was happening at all, the way she picks
up on..I mean it's been edited a bit, but the way she picks up, all that
stuff about "is there supposed to be someone else there beside your
wife" you know I think is amazing, she really clicked into it straight
away. She's terrific!
TV: And then comes "One of My Turns."
RW: Yes, so then the idea is that we've leapt somehow a lot of years,
from "Goodbye Blue Sky" through "What Shall we do Now" which doesn't
exist on the record anymore, and "Empty Spaces" into "Young Lust" that's
like a show; we've leapt into a rock and roll show, somewhere on into
our hero's career. And "One of My Turns" is supposed to be his response
to a lot of aggro [aggression] in his life and not having ever got
anything together, although he's married, well, no he has got things
together, but he's been married, and he's just had a... he's just
splitting up with his wife, and in response he takes another girl up to
his hotel room.
TV: And he really is, "he's got everything but nothing."
RW: He's had it now, he's definitely a bit "yippee" now, and "One of My
Turns" is just, you know, him coming in and he can't relate to this girl
either, that's why he just turns on the TV, they come into the room and
she starts going on about all the things he's got and all that he does
is just turn on the TV and sit there, and he won't talk to her.
[ONE OF MY TURNS]
TV: Then comes a period in "Don't Leave Me Now" when he realizes the
state that he's in, he still feels, if you like, aggressive, completely
depressed, thoroughly paranoid, and very lonely, and but very lonely, to
the point of suicide.
RW: Yeah, well, not quite... but yes it is a very depressing song. I
love it! I really like it!
TV: There's this line in the song "to beat you to a pulp on a Saturday
night."
RW: Yeah.
TV: Now that's just, I don't know how to phrase that, but it really is
the depths, if you like, of deprived depravity.
RW: Well a lot of men and women do get involved with each other for lots
of wrong reasons, and they do get very aggressive towards each other,
and do each other a lot of damage. I, of course, have never struck a
woman, as far as I can recall, Tommy, and I hope I never do, but a lot
of people have, and a lot of women have struck men as well, there is a
lot of violence in relationships often that aren't working. I mean this
is obviously an extremely cynical song, I don't feel like that about
marriage now.
TV: But you did?
RW: Er, this is one of those difficult things where a small percentage
of this is autobiographical, and all of it is rooted in my pown
experience, but it isn't my autobiography, although it's rooted within
my own experience, like any writing, some of it's me and an awful lot of
it is what I've observed.
TV: But there's also a lot of fundamental truth in it.
RW: Well I hope so, if you look and see things and if they ring true,
then those are the kind of things, if you're interested in writing songs
of books or poems or writing anything then those are the things that you
try and write down, because those are the things that are interesting,
and those are the things that will touch other people, which is what
writing is all about, you know. Some people have a need to write down
their own feelings in the hope that other people will recognize them,
and derive some worth from them, whether it's a feeling of kinship or
whether it makes them happy, or whatever, they will derive something
from it.
[DON'T LEAVE ME NOW]
[ANOTHER BRICK: 3]
TV: "Another Brick:3." "I don't need no arms around around me," he
seems to be in a position whereby he's no longer confused, in other
words he's more confident. Then comes the track "Goodbye Cruel World."
What is happening here?
RW: Well, what's happening is; from the beginning of "One of MY Turns"
where the door opens, there, through to the end of side three, the
scenario is an American hotel room, the groupie leaves at the end of
"One of My Turns" and then "Don't Leave Me Now" he sings which is to
anybody, it's not to her and it's not really to his wife, it's kind of
to anybody; if you like it's kind of men to women in a way, from that
kind of feeling, it's a kind of very guilty song as well. Anyway at the
end of that, there he is in his room with his TV and there's that
symbolic TV smashing, and then he resurges a bit, out of that kind of
violence, and then he sings this loud saying "all you are just bricks in
the wall," I don't need anybody, so he's convincing himself really that
his isolation is a desirable thing, that's all.
TV: But *how* is he in that moment of time, when he says "goodbye cruel
world"?
RW: That's him going catatonic if you like, that final and he's going
back and he's just curling up and he's not going to move. That's it,
he's had enough, that's the end.
[GOODBYE CRUEL WORLD]
RW: In the show, we've worked out a very clever mechanical system so
that we can complete the middle section of the wall, building downwards,
so that we get left with a sort of triangular shaped hole that we can
fill in bit by bit. Rather than filling it in at the top, there'll be
this enormous wall across the auditorium, we'll be filling in this
little hole at the bottom. The last brick goes in then, as sings
goodbye at the end of the song. That is the completion of the wall.
It's been being built in my case since the end of the Second World War,
or in anybody else's case, whenver they care to think about it, if they
feel isolated or alienated from other people at all, you know, it's from
whenever you want.
TV: So it would be accurate to say that at that moment in time he's
discovered exactly where he's at, and the wall is complete, ion other
words his character, via all the experiences he's had, has finally in
his eyes anyway, been completed.
RW: He's nowhere.
TV: And then comes the beginning of side three, which actually starts
with a different song than on the sleeve.
RW: Yeah. Bob Ezrin called me up and he said I've just listened to side
three and it doesn't work. In fact I think I'd been feeling
uncomfortable about it anyway. I thought about it and in a couple of
minutes I realised that "Hey You" could conceptually go anywhere, and it
would make a much better side if we put it at the front of the side, and
sandwiched the middle theatrical scene, with the guy in the hotel room,
between an attempt to re-establish contact with the outside world, which
is what "Hey You" is; at the end of the side which is, well, what we'll
come to. So that's why those lyrics are printed in the wrong place, is
because that decision was made very late; I should explain at this
point, the reason that all these decisions were made so late was because
we'd promised lots of people a long time ago that we would finish this
record by the beginning of November, and we wanted to keep that promise.
TV: Well the guy is now behind the wall...
RW: Yeah, he's behind the wall a) symbolically and b) he's locked in a
hotel room, with a broken window that looks onto the freeway, motorway.
TV: And now what's he going to do with his life?
RW: Well, within his mind, because "Hey You" is a cry to the rest of the
world, you know saying hey , this isn't right, but it's also, it takes a
narrative look at it, when it goes... Dave sings the first two verses of
it and then there's an instrumental passage and then there's a bit that
goes "but it was only fantasy" which I sing, which is a narration of the
thing; "the wall was too high as you can see, no matter how he tried he
could not break free, and the worms ate into his brain." The worms.
That's the first reference to worms...the worms have a lot less to do
with the peice than they did a year ago; a year ago they were *very*
much a part of it, if you like they were my symbolic representation of
decay. Because the basic idea the whole thing really is that if you
isolate yourself you decay.
[HEY YOU]
RW: So at the end of "Hey You" he makes this cry for help, but it's too
late.
TV: Because he's behind the wall?
RW: Yeah, and anyway he's only singing it to himself, you know, it's no
good crying for help if you're sitting in the room all on your own, and
only saying it to yourself. All of us I'm sure from time to time have
formed sentences in our minds that we would like to say to someone else
but we don't say it, you know, well, that's no use, that doesn't help
anybody, that's just a game that you're playing with yourself.
TV: And that's what comes up on the track "Nobody Home," the first line
being "I've got a little balck book with my poems in."
RW: Yes, exactly, precisely, yeah, after "is there anybody out there"
which is really just a mood piece.
TV: So he's sitting in his room with a sort of realisation that he needs
help, but he doesn't know how to get it really.
RW: He doesn't really want it.
TV: Doesn't want it at all?
RW: Yeah, well, part of him does, but part of him that's you know,
making all his arms and legs, that's making everything work doesn't want
anything except just to sit there and watch the TV.
TV: but in this track "Nobody Home" he goes through all the things that
he's got: "he's got the obligatory Hendrix perm..." all the things that
we know are pretty real in the world of rock and roll.
RW: There are some lines in here that harp back to the halcyon days of
Sid Barret, it's partly about all kinds of people I've known, but Sid
was the only person I used to know who used elastic bands to keep his
boots together, which is where that line comes from, in fact the
"obligatory Hendrix perm" you have to go back ten years before you
understand what all that's about.
TV: Now when he says I've got fading roots at the very end...
RW: Well, he's getting ready to establish contact if you like, with
where he started, and to start making some sense of what it was all
about. If you like he's getting ready here to start getting back to
side one.
TV: Which he does via the next track which is called "Vera," very much
world war II...being born and created if you like in that era again.
RW: This is supposed to be brought on by the fact that a war movie comes
on the TV.
TV: Which you can actually hear?
RW: Mentioning no titles or names! Which you can actually hear, and
that snaps him back to then and it precedes, what is for me anyway, is
the central song on the whole album "Bring the Boys Back Home."
TV: Why?
RW: Well, because it's partly about not letting people go off and be
killed in wars, but it's also partly about not allowing rock and roll,
or making cars or selling soap or getting involved in biological
research or anything that anybody might do, not letting *that* become
such an important and "jolly boys game" that it becomes more important
than friends, wives, children, other people.
[IS THERE ANYBODY OUT THERE?]
[NOBODY HOME]
[VERA]
[BRING THE BOYS BACK HOME]
TV: So physiologically what stage of the character Pink for the track
"Comfortably Numb"?
RW: After "Bring the Boys Back Home" there is a short piece where a tape
loop is used; the teachers voice is heard again and you can feel the
groupie saying "are you feeling ok" and there's the operator saying, er,
"there's a man answering" and there's a new voice introduced at that
point and there's somebody knocking on the door saying "come on it's
time to go," right, so the idea is that they are coming to take him to
the show because he's got to go and perform that night, and they come
into the room and they realise something is wrong, and they actually
physically bring the doctor in, and "Comfortably Numb" is about his
confrontation with the doctor.
TV: So the doctor puts him in such a physiological state that he can
actually hit the stage?
RW: Yes, he gives him an injection, in fact it's very specific that
song.
TV: "Just a little pinprick"?
RW: Yeah.
TV: "There'll be no more aaaaaaaaaaah!"
RW: Right.
[COMFORTABLY NUMB]
RW: Because they're not interested in any of these problems, all they're
interested in is how many people there are and tickets have been sold
and the show must go on, at any cost, to anybody. I mean I, personally,
have done gigs when I've been very depressed, but I've also done gigs
when I've been *extremely* ill, where you wouldn't do any ordinary kind
of work.
TV: Because the venue is there and because the act's there...
RW: And they've paid the money and if you cancel a show at short notice,
it's expensive.
TV: So the fellow is back in the stage, but he's very...I mean he's
vicious, fascist.
RW: Well, here you are, here is the story: I've just remembered;
Montreal 1977, Olympic Stadium, 80,000 people, the last gig of the 1977
tour, I, personally, became so upset during the show that I *spat* at
some guy in the front row, he was shouting and screaming and having a
wonderful time and they were pushing against the barrier and what he
wanted was a good riot, and what I wanted was to do a good rock and roll
show and I got so upset in the end that I spat at him, which is a very
nasty thing to do to anybody. Anyway, the idea is that these kinds of
fascist feelings develop from isolation.
TV: And he evidences this from the center of the stage?
RW: This is him having a go at the audience, all the minorities in the
audience. So the obnoxiousness of "In the Flesh" and it *is* meant to
be obnoxious, this is the end result of that much isolation and decay.
[THE SHOW MUST GO ON]
[IN THE FLESH]
TV: And then seemingly in the track "Run like Hell" this is him telling
the audience...?
RW: No...
TV: Is this him telling himself?
RW: No, "Run like Hell," is meant to be *him* just doing another tune in
the show. So that's like just a song, part of the performance,
yeah...still in his drug-crazed state.
[RUN LIKE HELL]
RW: After "Run like Hell" you can hear an audience shouting "Pink Floyd"
on the left-hand side of the stereo, if you're listening in cans, and on
the right-hand side or in the middle, you can hear voices going "hammer"
they're saying ham-mer, ham-mer...This is, the Pink Floyd audience, if
you like, turning into a rally.
TV: And then comes the track "Waiting for the Worms," the worms in your
mind are decay, decay is imminent.
RW: "Waiting for the Worms" in theatrical terms is an expression of what
happens in the show, when the drugs start wearing off and what real
feelings he's got left start taking over again, and he is forced by
where he is, because he's been dragged out his real real feelings.
Until you see either the show or the film of this thing you won't know
why people are shouting "hammer," but the hammer, we've used the hammer
as a symbol of the forces of oppression if you like. And the worms are,
the thinking part. Where it goes into the "waiting" sections...
TV: "Waiting for the worms to come, waiting to cut out the deadwood"
RW: Yeah, before it goes "waiting to cut out the deadwood" you hear a
voice through a loud-hailer, it starts off, it goes "testing, one two,"
or something, and then it says "we will convene at one o'clock outside
Brixton Town Hall," and it's describing the situation of marching
towards some kind of National Front rally in Hyde Park. Or anybody, I
mean the National Front are what we have in England but it could be
anywhere in the world. So all that shouting and screaming...because you
can't hear it you see, if you listen very carefully you might hear, er,
Lambeth Road, and you might hear Vauxhall Bridge and you might hear the
words "Jewboys," er, "we might encounter some Jewboys" it's just me
ranting on.
[WAITING FOR THE WORMS]
TV: Who puts him on trial?
RW: He does.
TV: He puts himself on trial?
RW: Yes. The idea is that the drugs wear off and in "Waiting for the
Worms" he keeps flipping backwards and forwards from his real, or his
original persona if you like, which is a reasonably kind of humane
person into this waiting for the worms to come, persona, which is
crack!, flipped, and is ready to crush anybody or anything that gets in
the way...which is a response to having been badly treated, and feeling
very isolated. But at the end of "Waiting for the Worms" it gets too
much for him, the oppression and he says "stop." I don't think you can
actually hear the word "stop" on the record, or maybe you can, anyway it
goes "STOP," yeah, it's very quick, and then he says "I wanna go home,
take off this uniform and leave the show," *but* he says "I'm waiting in
this prison cell because I have to know, have I been guilty all this
time" and then he tries himself if you like. So the judge is part of
him just as much as all the other characters and things he
remembers...they're all in his mind, they're all memories, anyway, at
the end of it all, when his judgement on himself is to de-isolate
himself, which in fact is a very good thing.
TV: So now it has really turned full circle.
RW: Almost, yeah. That kind of circular idea is expressed in just
snipping the tape at a certain point and just sticking a bit on the
front, that tune, you know this "Outside the Wall" tune, at the end.
TV: So the character in "outside the Wall" says "all alone, or in
two's...mad buggers wall," and that really is the statement of the
album.
RW: And which I have no intention of even beginning to explain.
[THE TRIAL]
[OUTSIDE THE WALL]
TV: Roger, what will it actually be like when we see "The Wall" in
concert?
RW: Just like it normally is for a lot of people, who're all packed
behind PA systems, and things, you know like, every seat in the house is
sold so there's always thousands of people over the sie who can't see
anything, and very often in rock and roll shows the sound is dreadful,
because, because it costs too much to make it really good, in those kind
of halls, you know, the sound will be good mind you in these shows, but
the impediments to seeing what's going on and hearing what's going on
will be symbolic, rather than real, except for the wall, which will stop
people seeing what's going on.
TV: Is the wall going to remain there?
RW: No, not forever.
TV: Who's going to knock it down?
RW: Well, I think we should wait and see about that, for the live show,
I think it would be silly really for me to explain to you everything
that's going to happen in the live show that we put up, mind you,
anybody with any sense listening to the album will be able to spot
whereabouts in the show it is that it comes down!
TV: That's the physical wall, what about the physiological wall?
RW: Ah, well, that's another matter, whether we make any in-roads into
that or not, is anybody's guess. I hope so.
TV: Roger Waters describing The Wall.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
As I said before the first two parts to this, it was recorded in the UK
in 1979 by the radio DJ Tommy Vance (TV). I believe the war film
referred to is "The Battle of Britain," anybody know for sure? They
show part of it in the movie version. Brixton, Vauxhall Bridge and
Lambeth road are in London. The National Front is a white
supremacist/skinhead group that sometimes runs for office in the UK, but
never gets anywhere. Their tactics should be familiar from the movie.
I think the story about Montreal Stadium has been mentioned before, I
hope this adds some details.
jeremy..