Friday night, I saw the show of the summer, if not the year or even the decade. Roger Waters, “The Wall”, it is more than a concert; it is a rock opera of the grandest portion’s using the famed Yankee Stadium as a backdrop. We all know most of the songs, especially the over 30 crowd, from Another Brick in the Wall, Mother, Goodbye Blue Sky, Vera, Comfortable Numb, Run Like Hell, and The Wall Show plays the songs in the sequence the artists of Pink Floyd intended to tell the story of Pink and his wall.
The show has two acts with a twenty minute intermission. The stage is in the outfield with the wall running the length of the outfield and into the stands. Once nightfall struck, the opening song, In the Flesh, began with thunderous applause and the stage came alive with a kaleidoscope of lights and sounds. The sound was everywhere and the song ended with a Spitfire Airplane from the top of stadium, sliding down over 1,000 feet on a zip line and into the wall crashing and bursting into a ball of flames. This was an amazing feat of staging and pyrotechnics. The song was based on Roger Waters emotional loss of losing his father in WWII and possibly the impetus for creating the character Pink and his rock opera.
The following songs all deal with issues many of us experience and is why this album is loved by so many, from loss of family (The Thin Ice, Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 1), to cruel teachers and apathy which was represented by a 40 foot puppet with hideous features in The Happiest Days of Our Lives and Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2, which most know as, we don’t need no education song. This song had local children accompany the band with the famous chorus “another brick in the wall”.
The staging, theatrical props, along with the accompanying video screens were by far the most elaborate I have ever seen at a rock concert. The animation during Mother was impressive and this song begins the process of building “The Wall”, with each trauma Pink experiences, another brick in the wall goes in, from Goodbye Blue Sky, Empty Spaces (ooh I need a dirty woman song and famous infidelity phone call ending), Young Lust, One of My Turns, Don’t Leave Me Now, and Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 3.
Roger Waters takes a stand with his political beliefs by using different animation and video effects during the show from the symbolism used to depict the futility of war by using corporate and religious icons as images of bombs being dropped from airplanes; to paying tribute to ordinary people caught in conflicts where they paid the ultimate price. To Us Against Them and Them Against US logos written on the front of the stage. Roger is just as passionate about justice as he is about his music and it shows.
The most impressive thing about the video displays, they were capable of projecting multiple images over a wall almost 500 feet in length and they were never static and kept changing with each new song. Goodbye Cruel World leads into Hey You and by this time the wall is being bricked up and the band and Roger become harder to see. While we sat in the grandstand and this gives you a greater perspective of the show, it is quite far from the stage and while the videos screens do supersize Roger and the band, I recommend bringing a pair of binoculars to enhance your experience. However there seem to be a fair bit of enhancing wafting in the air around us and it was comical listening to beer vendors shouting out “Beer Here!!” while Roger is singing Is There Anybody Out There?, as though the Yankees were playing.
After the intermission the wall is bricked up and In the Flesh (get him up against the wall) has Roger on stage dressed as a dictator in a black soldier’s uniform with giant logos of crossed-hammers marching on the screens metaphorically replicating the effects of Leni Riefenstahl film to expose Pink’s and mankind’s inner demons and hatred. Run Like Hell was next, followed by Waiting for the Worms, and Stop.
The grand finale ends with The Trial where all of Pink’s demons appear, literally in front of your eyes from the