Roger Waters – ‘The Wall Live In Berlin’ Limited Deluxe Tour Edition DVD (Universal)
Written by Andy P
Friday, 17 June 2011 05:00
Since its release in 1979 Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’ has endured for 30 years. There’s been the tour 1980-81, the film adaptation starring Bob Geldof, various reissues, Roger Waters live in Berlin 1990 performance and now the 2010/2011 tour.
“If you don’t eat yer meat, you can’t have any pudding. How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat yer meat?” I just love that phrase from “Another Brick In The Wall part II”. I attended comprehensive school in the late 70s early 80s when caning was still practiced, blackboard erasers were thrown and backhanders dealt out (a quick flick on your rear administered with the back of the hand) and I can remember a pupil being punched by a teacher with ne’er a batted eyelid.
I recall a geography teacher grabbing a classmate by the ear and dragging him to his feet because he’d used a felt pen to colour in a crop rotation diagram and only coloured pencils were allowed, a peculiarity that applied only to that teacher. Then to every answer that displeased him a slap to the back of the head was administered, “Why did you use felt pens?” “I forgot my coloured pencils, Sir” SLAP “Why did you forget your pencils?” “Because I just…forget” SLAP and so on, it kinda reminds me of the “If you don’t eat yer meat….” line, like an Escher drawing that folds in on itself and all the while the teacher is holding him by the ear so he’s on tip toes.
Don’t get me wrong school didn’t feel oppressive it just seemed the norm. So it was within that context that the appeal of ‘The Wall’ resonated with me in its themes of alienation and cynicism coupled with satirical Gerald Scarfe illustrations to boot, I certainly didn’t want to be ‘Another Brick in the Wall’.
Musically speaking school was fractured into punks, two-tone devotees and rockers. Pink Floyd, like Led Zeppelin, were considered dinosaurs and this continued into the popular press of the time. Sounds, the weekly music tabloid newspaper, gave ‘The Wall’ 1 star out of 5. Not that this stopped my older brother from buying the gatefold sleeve album, which was a plain unadorned white brick wall with only a reusable clear adhesive sticker on the outside, which told you that it was a Pink Floyd album.
My brother and I left it too late to get tickets to see the band perform ‘The Wall’ live in 1980 but, as luck would have it, Pink Floyd returned to Earl’s Court with more dates in June 1981 and we were going! Little did I know at the time but this would be one of the last performances by this classic lineup of the group. It was and still ranks as one of my top gigs of all time, an absolute quadraphonic pigflying operatic installation of Floydy goodness.
‘The Wall’ was the penultimate Pink Floyd album with Roger Waters and I never really followed either the Gilmour fronted Floyd or Roger Waters after that split. But I do remember avidly watching ‘The Wall Live In Berlin’ when it was first broadcast on TV and my initial reaction was a mixture of enjoyment and disappointment.
Revisiting that Berlin concert on DVD some 21 years later my thoughts are more or less the same. The sheer scale of the production is undoubtedly impressive and the guest artists a necessary part of the spectacle but The Wall has become synonymous with Roger Waters and it’s hard to hear anyone but him singing the highly personalised and anguished songs. There are some good turns by Bryan Adams and Sinéad O’Connor set against some pedestrian performances by Paul Carrack and a teleprompter-reading Van Morrison. For television it’s natural that they should try and make the visuals as interesting as possible by filming behind the wall but this goes against how The Wall was conceived in the first place and destroys the way it was meant to be seen by an audience.
Luckily Waters takes the helm at crucial stages with performances of ‘One Of My Turns’, ‘Goodbye Cruel World’ and the wonderfully dissonant ‘Don’t Leave Me Now’ – no one could sing that but Roger Waters. Overall the production is perhaps a little too big. With the massive band, backing singers, choirs, orchestra and marching bands it can tend to become a bit like Phil Spector’s wall of sound. The additional 2 audio CDs whilst fine can’t compare to Pink Floyd’s live performance of ‘The Wall’ on ‘Is There Anybody Out There?’ this live CD set is warmer, more cohesive and more powerful in its sparsity.
The extras on the DVD are surprising few too. Well, I guess that they had their hands full at the time and didn’t have the resources to film extensive behind the scenes material. But an interesting half-hour documentary has been put together where Roger Waters talks about the pre-planning, the technical problems that occurred on the day, the artists that couldn’t make it and the mini-rift with Sinéad O’Connor.
At the end you are left amazed by this huge performance that was at once a moving and important celebration for Germany and also just a gig that went by in something of a blur for Roger Waters.
With Roger Waters’ recent tour of The Wall I have a feeling that the next DVD installment (if there is one, after all the shows I went to in 1981 were supposedly filmed but never saw the light of day) will better reflect and depict ‘The Wall’ in all its majesty.