Pink Floyd In The Studio For The Wall Anniversary

K. Wiggins | 11-27-2019

The 40th anniversary of Pink Floyd's legendary album "The Wall" is celebrated with a two part special from the syndicated radio show In The Studio With Redbeard: The Stories Behind History's Greatest Rock Bands, with part I the focus of this week's episode.

Redbeard had this to say, "One of the more ironic trivia 'bricks' in the original limited staging of The Wall by Pink Floyd upon the album's release four decades ago is that, unbeknownst to hardly anyone then outside the band's tight inner circle, the internal power struggle, dissatisfaction with the contributions of two members, and the thinly veiled attitude of a third, had finally resulted in original Pink Floyd keyboard player Richard Wright being forced out. Ultimately Wright was hired to play on The Wall tour as a sideman.

"The original performances of The Wall were so elaborate, so expensive, tickets so limited (Roger Waters refused to do it in stadiums originally), and the dates so few (about thirty) that Roger, David Gilmour, and Nick Mason all lost money touring it, whereas as a salaried employee with expenses paid by Pink Floyd, Rick Wright was the only one who actually made money!

"'Time has a way of making you behave!', David Gilmour reminded me when recounting performing as a guest with Roger Waters in 2011 at London's O2 Arena, but it could just as easily have been said by the surviving Pink Floyd alumni Nick Mason or even Waters himself, all of whom rejoin me for the first of our two-part peek behind The Wall on its fortieth anniversary. For instance, Roger Waters admitted to me that in 1980 Pink Floyd had been guaranteed one million dollars per night to perform The Wall on a stadium tour. 'And I refused to do it outdoors', Waters tells me in this classic rock interview. 'But how can you do a show that's about the alienation you feel about doing stadium shows, in a stadium?'

"Apparently Waters reconciled that personal dilemma, as evidenced by his multi-year globetrotting tour five years ago. This is part one." Listen to part I here.