TEAR DOWN THE WALL

Pink Floyd have been around for ages. And, uncontained by a rampant combination of yes-men, money, recreational substances, and egos, they've had some absolutely appalling ideas. Ideas that, by rights, any sensible person would say "You've Got To Be Crazy" to. Ideas that they, and only they, would take so seriously as to either execute in front of millions, or at the very least, would've done, if it wasn't to expensive. And when something's too expensive for the Floyd , than it s just too darn expensive for anyone. So here goes. Floyds Collection of Great Disasters. There's only one really noticeable one, and boy, is it not going to be a popular choice....

A lot of people love The Wall. In fact, as far as I can work out, as soon as you become aware of music, everyone in the world is forced by law to buy a copy of The Wall and Dark Side Of The Moon. I once found a copy of The Wall, on cassette, at my grandmas house. That's my grandma, who was born in 1919, and seemingly bought it at the grand old age of (at least) 60.

I never asked her about that. Maybe it was the songs about Vera Lynn that she liked.

But The Wall? Lets just look at this. A 30 something multimillionaire producing about 100 minutes of songs, wrapped up in some bizarre narrative, trying to equate the decline of a stupid, immature rock star's descent into madness with abandonment issues because The Germans killed his daddy at Anzio. Now, it wouldn't take a genius to work out that it is, at least in some way autobiographical. And that's before Roger wrote the screenplay and kept using the word "Roger" instead of the word "Pink" . Plank.

So lets look at "The Wall" in its many, many guises : The first one is the album. 81 minutes of torture courtesy of Mr.Waters, almost exclusively written by Mr.Tuneless, with help on a couple of songs from a guitarist that he clearly didn't like. Sure. That's not a problem, until we get to side three, and a tranche of songs about Vera Lynn, Bringing The Boys Back Home (pointlessly re-recorded to neligable effect for a single b-side) and The War. And there's at least eleven songs on the album that would be better off as b-sides : eleven pointless, midpaced dirges of Roger exorcising his neurotic demons that seem lacking in any memorable features (such as guitars, drums, or in fact, on at least one song, any member of Pink Floyd ).

Now, some could say that side one of The Wall, (20.22) and side two (in it's edited form, 18.50) needed to be trimmed in order to fit into the optimum capacity for a vinyl recording. But with those three songs restored side two of the album would come to 22.10 � (on the basis of the film soundtrack)� surely not too long for a vinyl LP? And incidentally, only 27 seconds longer than side four of the album.

All things considered, The Wall would've made a fantastic single album, a painful double album, and an absolutely dreadful triple album. Anyone whose heard The Clash's "Sandinista" will know that that record is 110 minutes too long.

Still, Rog was never one to be put off. "The Wall" was later to appear in another five or six guises. Rog's next great idea was for the band to perform the whole of the album live, but behind a polysterene wall. Naturally, this then resulted in 2000's "Is There Anybody Out There?" live record, which gave us at least two songs that didn't make the final cut - the aforementioned "What Shall We Do Now?" and another, fabulous instrumental piece "The Last Few Bricks".

But there's more. The stage show the band performed in just four cities saw them cocooned behind a big fat wall, surrounded by teacher-shaped ballons that didn't quite work, and generally disappearing up their own bums. Great idea : play the biggest venues in the world, build a big Lego wall in front of the stage and get the crowd to watch cartoons. Yowsa. And Rog still thinks that it is maybe the greatest idea he ever had.

Then there was the film. Rog's story mixed up with Syd's, some highly confused self-aggrandising tale of Rock Star excess, self-pitying, and general stupidity that was lacking in narrative and painful to watch. Especially when that enormous talking bum farted out words for the prosecution. That talking bum, incidentally, was turned into an action figure some 24 years later by Rog desperate to milk his neurosis for a last gasp of cash. In a momentary lapse of reason, I actually toyed with buying it.

THE MOVIE

After this, the fourth incarnation of " The Wall" was the movie - and it's soundtrack. For this, the band, now shorn of long time keyboardist Rick Wright (who was replaced by a whole orchestra), re-recorded and remixed at least seven songs, and one new song that was excised neatly from the upcoming � Final Cut� album.

Enter all-new previously unheard versions of "When The Tigers Broke Free", "In the Flesh", "Empty Spaces", "What Shall We Do Now", "Young Lust", "Mother", "Bring The Boys Back Home", and "Outside The Wall ". The band also wrote an "Overture", a previously unreleased piece that acted as a score for the film, but ultimately wasn't used. Did I use the phrase Overkill yet?

Originally these recordings were meant to be released as a soundtrack album - "Spare Bricks" , alongside songs that were trimmed at the last minute from the triple-album version of The Wall. This was quickly cancelled in favour of a single of re-recordings (�When The Tigers Broke Free�/"Bring The Boys Back Home") and an album of reheated, re-recorded leftovers from The Wall and a couple of new songs that were later released as "The Final Cut". According to Gilmour, the songs weren't good enough to go in The Wall so quite why Rog decided they deserved a seperate release is a mystery to mostly everyone. Including some of the people in the band.

THE FINAL CUT

There wasn�t even a Pink Floyd anymore. By this time, Rog had sacked Richard Wright, Micheal Kamen was playing all the keyboards, Dave Gilmour sang half of one song, Nick Mason didn't bother to play on the last song, and the first note of music actually played by a member of Pink Floyd came in the third song. David Gilmour was so frustrated by the finished product he took his name off the production credits in disgust � but pocketed his share of the production royalties.

Immediately after finishing "The Final Cut", mad Rog took everyone who worked on it bar the members of Pink Floyd, took them to the same studios the month after, hired Eric Clapton to run off some Floyd riffs, and made "The Pros And Cons Of Hitch-Hiking", an album the Floyd refused to record as they didn't think it was� erm� very interesting. And they were right.

Rog STILL wasn't finished with The Wall. For it's fifth and a half (for now) incarnation there came "The Wall In Berlin" . In this final indignity, Rog performed in front of a giant plastic wall to 300,000 pissed up Germans, blew the power, sold the TV rights at the last minute for peanuts, got in guest stars who kept getting their words wrong, and had the sheer brass balls to make a gigantic wall on the site where the Berlin Wall once was, crowed about how Hitler killed his Daddy, and indulge his despot fantasies. Truly dreadful (even if Snowy White's solo in "Empty Spaces" is fantastic). Before the gig, Rog went back into the studio, re-recorded several of the songs from the album, and released a dreadful �Potsdamer Disco Mix� of �Run Like Hell�.

In this particular form, the Floyd�s most neurotic number jiggled much like the Scissor Sisters and was the artistic equivalent of Dali putting smiley faces all over his Guernica. Utter blasphemy.

IS THERE ANYBODY OUT THERE?

There's one last thing. In 2000, the Floyd released their own live version of "The Wall". Brutally edited from at least five shows that were originally filmed for home video release, "Is There Anybody Out There?" was a fantastic live record. Sure, it was too long, but it had been mixed to within an inch of its life, came in a 10" x 6" hardback book and generally had even more overkill than a Motorhead album. But it was much better than any previous version of The Wall even if it was twenty years too late.

From here, there isn�t much more anyone can do to exploit The Wall legacy. Apart from the aforementioned action figures (or �maquettes� as they are poshly known), and a range of garish workshirts for you to treasure, with printed reproductions of Gerald Scarfe styrofoam bricks.

By now, I think its fair to say that, despite its massive commercial success, artistically "The Wall" is an enormous conceit : an artschool project of a grown man exorcising his demons on an obscene scale, endlessly repeating the same motifs and musical ideas, painting some rose tinted picture of childhood tainted by war, death, demon headmasters straight out of children's storybooks, whinging about how dreadful it is being surrounded by sex, money and drugs and generally boring for England, and playacting an illthought undergraduate drama school project. Rog think it may very well be the Best Thing He's Ever Done, but he's in a Minority Of One there.

Let him battle his own neurosis and insult his audience with the whiny drivelling about how being rich, famous, sexy and talented is even worse than working in a factory. In the meantime�

Tear Down The Wall.

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