How “The Wall” was Built
BY Abigail Tice
Growing up, I was always surrounded by music. My dad, Tom Tice, is by far one of the biggest music fans I know. In his 53 years, he has been to almost 700 concerts and written a book about how music shaped him as a person. In my father’s unpublished book, entitled Fifty Years of Music: How I Got Here, he discusses hundreds of artists and bands in fourteen brief chapters. While there are over 100 pages of wise words and analysis from my father, I found that his comparison of church and music in the introduction thoroughly describes how I have grown to think of music: “Some would argue that going to church makes them better people; I would argue the same of myself and concerts” (Tice). Living my life with him as my father, this musical philosophy and curiosity absolutely rubbed off on me.
Since I have been blessed, or cursed, with a curiosity to learn everything, my ability to keep track of time when researching a topic of interest often disappears. I recently found myself scrolling on TikTok, when I came across a video that sent me on a long journey of research. The video revolves around the plot of the movie The Wall, which was based on Pink Floyd’s concept album of the same title. The creator of the TikTok, jenninjaa, joked around by generalizing that the very specific life of Pink, the protagonist of The Wall, is a shared experience. The creator comedically argued that, “becoming a deranged rockstar and slowly slipping into insanity” is common in the world. I found the video funny, but my curiosity and preexisting interest in Pink Floyd drove me to do more research. Since the TikTok had to do with the film that was based on an album that I was familiar with, I decided to further inform myself about the timeline and significance of The Wall. As I conducted my research, I made sure to regularly refer back to the original questions that I had: What is the meaning behind The Wall? What made the album so influential? What lasting impact did it leave on the world?
Before I could re-listen to the twenty-six song album with a more complete understanding of its meaning, I felt it necessary to find out what inspired its creation in the first place. The first article that I found, entitled “The Horrific Incident That Inspired Roger Waters to Write Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall,’” was published in Far Out Magazine in 2021. Author Joe Taysome explains that the inspiration for the concept album came when Pink Floyd was on tour in Montreal in 1977: “Waters disgraced himself earlier that night by spitting in the face of a rowdy fan.“ I came to more fully understand the story in Jorge Romero’s article “Roger Waters’ Poetry of the Absent Father: British Identity in Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall.’” In his article, Romero explains that at Pink Floyd’s 1977 Animals tour, the rowdy behavior of a fan pushed Waters over the edge. He suggests that by spitting in this fan’s face, Waters began to develop the idea of building a metaphorical wall between himself and his audience (Romero et al.).
Once I pinpointed the event that inspired The Wall, I devoted my time to figuring out what the meaning behind the album was. I began very simply on a website that provided a complete analysis of Pink Floyd’s concept album. Bret Urick, the owner and author of “A Complete Analysis of Pink Floyd’s The Wall,” originally wrote his analysis in 1997 based on a Roger Waters interview in 1979. On the homepage of the website, Urick explains that the album was created with both imagination and the author’s life in mind. He claims that after the concert in Montreal, “Waters began drawing from the well of his alienation as well as the loss of his own father during World War II to flesh out the fictional character of Pink.“ Urick goes on to explain that some other aspects of the character were inspired by the original frontman of Pink Floyd, Syd Barrett. The overall plot of The Wall follows along as the protagonist Pink, living in post-World-War-II England, self-isolates and separates himself from the rest of the world. The death of Pink’s father in World War II and his overprotective mother are the first two bricks put in the wall that is continually built throughout the album.
Pink’s lack of a relationship with his father is first demonstrated in the third song of The Wall, entitled “Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 1.” In the song, Roger Waters explains how his, or Pink’s, father’s absence is a reason for the isolation he experiences later in life: “Daddy’s flown across the ocean/Leaving just a memory/A snapshot in the family album/Daddy, what else did you leave for me?/Daddy, what’d ya leave behind for me?/All in all, it was just a brick in the wall” (Waters). Waters’s description of how Pink’s father’s absence contributed to the wall that he built to isolate himself begins to tell a larger story to the listener. Similarly, the relationship dynamic between Pink and his overprotective mother is outlined in a dialogue in The Wall’s sixth song titled “Mother.” In the beginning of the song, Waters asks a series of questions addressed to Pink’s mother, “Mother, do you think they’ll drop the bomb?/Mother, do you think they’ll like the song?/Mother, do you think they’ll try to break my balls?/Ooh, mother, should I build the wall?” (Waters). These questions clarify the validation that Pink craves from his mother, along with the kind of relationship that they have. Their relationship is further explored in the chorus when David Glimour, another member of Pink Floyd, sings from the perspective of the mother: “Mama’s gonna make all of your nightmares come true/Mama’s gonna put all of her fears into you/Mama’s gonna keep you right under her wing/She won’t let you fly, but she might let you sing/Mama’s gonna keep baby cozy and warm” (Gilmour). These words, spoken by Pink’s mother, reveal how she treats her adult son as a child and limits his ability to do things without her. The chorus concludes as the lyrics reveal the effect that this relationship has on the protagonist, “Ooh baby, of course mama’s gonna help build the wall” (Gilmour). Both of these songs demonstrate the ways that these relationships contributed to Pink building a wall around himself. After I read Urick’s analysis and connected them to the lyrics in some of the songs, I felt a stronger connection to the album. I understood the 1979 album as a piece of art that tells the life story of a person struggling with personal relationships in the postwar period.
Though Urick’s explanation helped me come to know the deeper meaning of The Wall, I decided to consult my father’s written opinion. In the chapter about Pink Floyd in my dad’s book, he describes The Wall as “a document about the cost of war and trauma on both individuals and societies” (Tice). He goes on to further praise how the album embodies the struggles that many have faced: “No other album demonstrates so well the toll that worldwide events take upon the psyche of the individual” (Tice). Since I have a personal connection to my father and understand his authority to make such statements, his claims deepened my appreciation of the political meaning of the album. As the son of an army veteran, an English teacher of nearly 30 years, and a lover of music, the insight that my father’s book provided for me strengthened my understanding of the political undertones of The Wall.
In discovering the meaning of The Wall, the reason for the album’s success and influence became obvious. Roger Waters’s personal aspects in the album were relatable for many people in his generation. The Wall successfully told the story of the struggles of a boy who grew up in post-World-War-II England. The effects of war that materialize for the protagonist in The Wall are similar to the effects that many others in the postwar period likely experienced as well. I then discovered the historical influence of The Wall in the article “Rocking the Culture Industry/Performing Breakdown: Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’ and the Termination of the Postwar Era,” where author Zeno Ackermann argues that Pink Floyd’s 1979 concept album The Wall played a role in the ideological shift of postwar Britain. Towards the end of Ackermann’s article, he states, “At the historical turning-point when the postwar era dissolved into a new ideological alignment, The Wall stands as a monument in the triple sense of the term. It is, simultaneously, a monumentalization of seminal postwar discourses, a tombstone to postwar hopes, and a memorial to the victims of totalitarianism” (Ackermann). The way in which the audience was able to connect with the protagonist throughout the album was different from their other albums at the time. Ackermann explains how the difference between The Wall and Pink Floyd’s previous albums also drew attention to the album, “The music of The Wall is powerful but structurally simple. Untypical for Pink Floyd, whose popularity had hitherto depended on the success of entire albums rather than individual songs” (Ackermann). The relatability of the content of the album and the strength of the message it portrays both contribute to the ways in which The Wall became one of the most successful and influential rock albums.
To this day, The Wall continues to impact people in so many different ways. Not only is this album significant as one of Pink Floyd’s most successful works, but it can also be seen as the beginning of the end of the band. In “Pink Floyd – ‘The Wall’: Why It Mattered,” Luke Saunders explores the idea that the album can be considered the indicator of the end of Roger Waters as a member of Pink Floyd. He explains how Roger Waters had a lot of the control when it came to the composition of the album. While the protagonist of The Wall is based in part on the life of Waters, his want for creative control continued to damage his already damaged relationships with his bandmates. In 1983, four years after the release of The Wall, Pink Floyd released The Final Cut. The Final Cut was viewed as a sequel to The Wall, and many people consider it a solo album. Two years after the release of the Final Cut, Waters grew accustomed to the idea of a solo career and officially left Pink Floyd. Though the remaining members of the band continued to make music without Waters, Pink Floyd was arguably never the same. While the impact of The Wall as a marking of the end of Pink Floyd with Roger Waters might not be evident at first glance, the personal relationships between Waters and the other members of the band were altered.
Another significant impact that The Wall left was Roger Waters’s live performance of the album at the Potsdamer Platz. On July 21, 1990, 11 years after The Wall’s release and five years after Waters left the band, a concert was held to celebrate the downfall of the Berlin Wall less than a year before. Although the band was already broken up, Roger Waters’s performance of The Wall helped to unite the audience and celebrate the historical event. While this concert took place more than 30 years ago, there are still examples of how The Wall continues to impact people to this day. Just as I planned to start bringing my research on the album to a close, I encountered a short news article from February of 2021. Written by Sally Murrer and published in a U.K. newspaper, this article confirmed the continued impact of the concept album. The short article with the headline “Milton Keynes boy, 10, rewrites Pink Floyd song to demand Boris Johnson improves his education,” tells the story of a young boy and his campaign. In the article, the young boy is quoted, stating, “We have rewritten the words to the awe-inspiring song by Pink Floyd but with the emphasis on returning to school so all pupils can have the greatest chance of reaching their full potential” (Murrer). I decided to conclude my research journey on the topic of Pink Floyd’s The Wall after the way that this recent article made me feel. Not only was it interesting to see that the lyrics in this 43-year-old album have the capacity to resonate with a 10-year-old boy, but seeing what it compelled him to do is inspiring. This boy’s use of a popular song as a political argument to the prime minister is not something that is seen everyday. It serves as proof of the lasting impact that Pink Floyd’s album The Wall has left on society.
The research that I conducted in order to come to understand The Wall more fully was all over the place. Trying to differentiate between information that I already knew because of my parents or siblings and information that I recently discovered with my own research was exhausting. For the past few weeks, my mind has been circulating with endless questions about the meanings of each and every one of the songs on the album. I constantly worried about the possibility that there was important information that I had somehow missed, and that my understanding of the album was a complete lie. As I began to organize my thoughts and sift through the research that I had done, everything became more clear to me. At the start of my research journey, I really only considered thinking about the literal meaning of this music. While the literal meaning of the lyrics was integral to the questions that I was trying to answer, when I concluded my research, the literal meaning seemed insignificant.
Through my discovery of the history of The Wall, what made it successful, and how it was impactful, the way in which I look at not only this album, but all music, has shifted. By uncovering multiple layers of information about the album, the complexity of it struck me. Though I only really came to understand one album more fully, I feel like my research helped me understand music in general more fully. Now that I know of some of the endless layers of information and meaning that can hide beneath the lyrics or chords in The Wall, I have realized that all music is complex. Music is often a way for artists to express themselves or their emotions, and I think that in my attempt to deepen my understanding of The Wall, I have deepened my understanding of Roger Waters as an individual and Pink Floyd as a band. By intentionally taking my time to analyze the art that many individuals worked together to create, I have grown to understand the artists and have ultimately become a better person because of my newfound understanding.
Works Cited
Ackermann, Zeno. “Rocking the Culture Industry/Performing Breakdown: Pink Floyd’s The Wall and the Termination of the Postwar Era.” Popular Music and Society, vol. 35, no. 1, Feb. 2012, pp. 1–23.
Jenninjaa. “Untitled TikTok.” TikTok, 2 Oct. 2021, https://www.tiktok.com/@jenninjaa.
Murrer, Sally. “Milton Keynes Boy, 10, Rewrites Pink Floyd Song to Demand Boris Johnson Improves His Education; A 10-Year-Old Boy with Autism Has Written to the Prime Minister in a Bid to Get a Year’s Grace to Catch up with the Schoolwork He’s Missed during Lockdown.” Milton Keynes Citizen (England), 10 Feb. 2021.
Romero, Jorge Sacido, et al. “Roger Waters’ poetry of the absent father: British identity in Pink Floyd’s The Wall.” Atlantis, revista de la Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos, vol. 28, no. 2, Dec. 2006, pp. 45+.
Saunders, Luke. “Pink Floyd – ‘The Wall’: Why It Mattered.” Happy Mag, 12 Apr. 2022, https://happymag.tv/pink-floyd-the-wall/. Accessed 10 Nov. 2022.
Taysome, Joe. “The Horrific Incident That Inspired Roger Waters to Write Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’.” Far Out Magazine, 23 Mar. 2021, https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/roger-waters-spit-fan-inspired-pink-floyd-the-wall/.
Tice, Tom. Fifty Years of Music: How I Got Here. 2019.
Urick, Bret. “A Complete Analysis of Pink Floyd’s The Wall.” The Wall Analysis, May 1997, http://thewallanalysis.com/.
About the Author
Abigail Tice is a rising sophomore at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus. She plans to double major in Sociology and English, with a minor in Philosophy. Abby grew up in Orange County, California, but she loves traveling and living in New York City. Always inspired and supported by her parents and two older siblings, Abby is eager to reunite (and go to concerts) with them in London this summer.