Roger Waters
MEN Arena
Saturday 21 May 2011
 

The two most important albums in my formative years of listening to rock music were both double albums and they were both in largely white, gatefold sleeves - The White Album by The Beatles and “The Wall” by Pink Floyd. Both albums took up huge chunks of my time, which would have been much better spent trying to find a worthwhile career or learning about girls - but hey, the songs, production and concept were magical and I don't regret that they have come to define my life in many ways since. I knew every song word for word and the production in detail: you could say that I was almost obsessed by the albums, indeed, for all practical purposes I felt that they were in effect one and the same - and I think that they are the foundation that all modern pop and rock music are built on. The possibility of seeing the White Album being performed live disappeared almost as soon as I got to know it, as John Lennon died - but seeing Pink Floyd doing The Wall was always a possibility, if extremely remote - and indeed, it still hasn't really happened, because this concert featured only one member of the group - Roger Waters. Of course, whilst The Wall might have been billed as a Pink Floyd album, it's always been a bit of a pretence, because it was always a Roger Waters solo project - Dave Gilmour may have co-wrote "Comfortably Numb" and provided one of the world’s best ever guitar solos on the track, but that's just about the limit of his role, and it's debatable how much anyone else actually even played on the album. Thus, following on from his immensely successful playing of "Dark Side of the Moon" in concert a few years ago, I was very keen indeed to see what "The Wall" would be like, and I nearly had to get a second mortgage to afford the ticket!
 

Well then, what is it that makes The Wall such a special album? I have to say that a good deal of its attraction is simply down to the circumstances when I heard it - last year at school, Mam and Dad, living at home, 32 years ago, innocence, the times - you name it. It was what I liked when I first started listening to music and it was inevitably what everything coming after it was judged by. It's a concept album on the grandest possible scale and the very definition, culmination and fulfilment of everything that progressive rock stood for. Coming just two years after punk had supposedly killed such dinosaurs for ever; it was a mighty achievement to even think of doing such an album. Of course, Pink Floyd had learned from punk, because the tracks are shorter, much more direct and angrier than previously - this makes it more accessible, but also a much less relaxing album. Whilst it contains the afore mentioned best all time guitar solo, and is undoubtedly at the apex of production values, it isn't really an instrumental or production album at all, and probably has more words - or talking - on it than all the earlier Pink Floyd albums put together. The grand concept - I think - is about how fame and the capitalist system can alienate you - making you build a metaphorical wall around yourself and become fascist, so to speak. It came out just at the start of Mrs Thatcher's prime-ministership, but in a way is very prophetic of everything that was to come. Roger Waters takes a socialist view of it all, but whilst there is much to be said for his observations, it doesn't quite hit the mark for me after Rush had pretty much defined the territory in a libertarian sort of way on the "2112" album.
 

As for the concert itself, well, it would be churlish to criticise it - but I WILL!! Overriding every other conceivable criticism by a long way is that it was too short - it was "The Wall" and nothing else. Now on the one hand it is a double album, so plenty to go at - but on the other hand, and not an unimportant consideration in these cash strapped times of austerity - the ticket prices really were stratospherically expensive, and for what I paid, I would have reasonably hoped for more than eighty minutes. The logistics of the finale - ie the wall having collapsed - meant that there couldn't be an encore, but I don't understand why there couldn't have been a short introductory set of a few other Pink Floyd numbers. My only other criticism - and a minor one - is that the music was reproduced virtually too perfectly - I feel these days that if the music is played exactly as it is on the records, then you may as well stay at home, save some money and listen to your CDs. It has to be admitted that listening to the music here was like listening on the world's biggest, best and loudest hi-fi system - but nonetheless, there was a slightly cold, ultra professional hard nosed attitude about it all.
 

The good points far outweigh the bad though. As above, the sound quality was fabulous, perhaps the best I have yet experienced at a concert. The quality of the music was of course second to none - as above, prog rock at the apex of performance. Above and beyond that, it was a theatrical experience par excellence, because of course, The Wall is a grand concept, a story, has been made into a film, and to push the point, it might even be called a rock opera. The staging and special effects were fantastic beyond words - the highlight being the aircraft that buzzed over the audience at the start and crash landed into the stage. "Breathtaking" really was the word. The only concession to spontaneity and "doing things differently" was the Pink Floyd inflatable pig hovering over the audience - from the "Animals" album of course - which just happens to be a convenient way for Roger to spout his favourite socialist slogans of the day. The Nazi scenes were chilling, and the way that the wall was built up brick by brick until it covered the entire stage was a sight to strike awe into you. This culminated in the classic solo from Comfortably Numb being played by a guitarist stood on top of the wall - Dave Gilmour had performed this at the show in London, and whilst we were all disappointed that he didn't reprise it in Manchester, the performance given was so fantastic that it's hard to think that he could have done better. Of course it all ended with the wall being torn down, and I would have been a bit concerned had I been sat near the front, as the bricks looked huge and frightening - even if
they were probably only made of some kind of foam.
 

If only he could have played a few more tracks, this would have been one of the very best concerts of all time. A fantastic theatrical and audio experience and all the memories of one of the best - and most influential to me - albums of all time. It might seem a bit petty to want more, but when you are paying a kings ransom, I think you are entitled.