DANGER! DEMOLITION IN PROGRESS

Roger wanted Rick out.
Dave thought Nick was next.
Bob gave them the hit and got sacked too.

Now, for the first time, all the architects of ëThe Wallí speak out on
the project that destroyed Pink Floyd.

Sylvie Simmons dons her hardhat.

------------------------------

The Cast :

ROGER WATERS - Writer, vocalist, bass-player, producer.
DAVID GILMOUR - Vocalist, guitarist, producer, co-writer (of
"Comfortably Numb," "Young Lust," "Run Like Hell").
RICK WRIGHT - Keyboard player, for the first half of ëThe Wallí as a
member then as a salaryman.
NICK MASON - Drummer.
JAMES GUTHRIE - Engineer, co-producer.
GERALD SCARFE - Artist, animator.
BOB EZRIN - Producer (former clients: Alice Cooper, Kiss), co-writer
(of ëThe Trialí), aged 29 when ëThe Wallí began.

------------------------------

        On June 16 (huh??-vbc) this year Rick Wright finally did what
every therapist advises: confronted his Nemesis. "I think the only one
whoís actually seen Roger in the last 18 years. John Caron (sic), who
was playing with Roger and was on the last two tours Iíd done, said,
ëPlease come along.í I still had a lot of anger -- I havenít spoken to
him since ëThe Wallí -- but I thought, Oh shit, why not? I donít have
to *see* him. I was sitting in the audience signing autographs while
he performed on-stage. When he did Pink Floyd music it felt very odd
-- that I wasnít up there, or Dave or Nick." When the show was over
Rick Wright decided to go backstage.
        "It was a difficult one -- for both of us. There are a lot of
issues that maybe one day weíll talk about but at the time I didnít
want to go into all that. I just said, Hello, how are you, youíre
looking well."
        "He stood in front of me, grinning" says Roger Waters. "I
think heíd had a couple, there was a bit of Dutch courage going on,
but he was perfectly gracious. So was I, I think. He introduced me to
his wife, I said hello, and that was it. It wasnít uncomfortable. We
didnít have much to say to one another." Wright and Waters had known
each other, played together, since the early ë60s. Until ëThe Wall,í
when Roger threw him out of Pink Floyd.
        ëThe Wallí is the concept album of concept albums, a
multi-leveled -- lyrically, musically, visually -- architectural
structure, each brick a scar on the psyche. ëDark Side Of The Mooní
has been named as the thinking manís favorite album to have sex and
take drugs to; the practical use of ëThe Wallí for the millions who
made it a Number 1 album (five weeks in Britain, 15 in the US) can
only be speculated. Bleak, claustrophobic, but with moments of
flesh-tingling beauty, its themes of paranoia, megalomania, betrayal,
breakdown and collapse appeared to permeate the people who made it.
        Itís ëThe Wallíís 20th birthday this month -- November 30,
happy birthday! -- and as part of the celebrations thereís a double
live album, produced by James Guthrie (also mixing the DVD of ëThe
Wallí film, which Waters found "terrible" but at least gave work to
the future Saint Bob) who right now has 110 reels of 2-inch tape from
three nights of concerts in 1980 and four in í81 baking in an oven
?seriously; eight hours, gas mark 2. Apparently, the glue they used to
bind oxide to tape makes the reels go soft as they get older.
Something from which its musicians do not appear to suffer.
        Since this first upsurge of as-near-as-dammit communal
Waters-Gilmour-Mason-Wright activity in the best part of two decades,
the web has been buzzing with speculation of a thawing of tensions, a
reunion; a millennium show; the Pyramids. "Ugh," Roger Waters
shudders. "The idea of having to stay in this big bowl of porridge
swimming around -- no, Iím going to get out, hose myself down, ah,
thatís better. Now I can get on with my life. The idea of getting
involved with any of them again -- and you can imagine, theyíre
constantly trying to get me to leap back into the porridge -- even
doing this live album, the sleevenotes, itís brought back to me how
crazy it all is. I donít want anything to do with it or them." His
distaste is palpable.
        In a studio filled with racing car posters in Kingís Crown,
London, 3,000 miles from Watersí Long Island home, his old friend Nick
Masonís manner is far less severe, though his own detached,
good-natured way just as dismissive. "Would *you* want to put 200 road
crew together to work on New Yearís Eve? Everyoneís seen ëSpinal Tapí
and that wonderful reunion moment at the end. I suppose if I had a
sort of fantasy about it it would have happened for something like
Live Aid. Thereís obviously an enormous sense of mistrust or betrayal
or anger or whatever. I think one gets over it, but it would be quite
difficult to revisit the areas that made it so much fun in the
beginning."
        David Gilmour, urbane, *very* English, camouflaging his true
feelings in language -- passives, convoluted double negatives -- talks
about Waters blithely, almost warmly at times, like an old sparring
partner. "Obviously one sits and thinks about these things on occasion
and I have thought, What would it be like if we all stood together in
a studio and said ëShall we do something?í I donít see how that could
possibly work -- We invited him if he wanted to come and play on ëDark
Side Of The Mooní at Earlís Court with us, but he politely said, No
thank you. I actually invited him to my 50th birthday party, to which
he also said, Thank you, no. I havenít made the hugest of efforts to
draw him back into our fold, but I have been unstintingly polite."
        And in the house in Atlanta, Georgia, where he lives with his
American wife, Rick Wright still seems like a man in shock. Oddly
enough the most conciliatory of the four, his talk of injustice,
betrayal and ongoing therapy is accompanied by the sound of thumping
hammers. There are builders working away behind us. Theyíre building,
as it happens, a wall.

------------------------------

THE FOUNDATIONS

July 6, 1977. On the last night of the "ëAnimalsí In The Flesh" tour
at Montrealís Olympic Stadium, Roger Waters spits at a fan.

DAVID GILMOUR -- I can remember not enjoying it much as a show. Theyíd
just finished building this big stadium and the crane was still in
there, they forgot to dismantle it and couldnít get it out. I was so
unenamoured that I went out and sat on the mixing desk for the encore
-- that might have not contributed to Rogerís mood. I think Roger was
disgusted with himself really that he had let himself go sufficiently
to spit at a fan.

ROGER WATERS -- Iím not sure I hit him.

NICK MASON -- Well, Roger is not exactly a man known for peace and
love -- But we were sympathetic, even if we didnít feel as
passionately as he did -- those stadium shows *are* very strange. When
weíre playing, weíre watching the audience, the same way the audience
is watching us, and all you can really see is those front rows and --
Iím not saying theyíre all nutters, but what you tend to get,
particularly if itís whatís euphemistically called ëfestival-seatingí
-- ie no seats -- is the people who are mad enough to be able to push
their way to the front, the air-guitar players, the people who know
all the words and rather sad ones who have been waiting all day and
collapse just as the band comes on-stage.

GILMOUR -- Roger never liked touring anyway very much, he was always
rather tense and irritable. He was disgusted with the business in many
ways, as we all were. The big change came with the huge success of
ëDark Side Of The Mooní -- the audiences liked to "interact," shout a
lot. Previous to then, even though we played large places,
10,00-seaters, you could hear a pin drop at appropriate moments. So it
had been a shock -- but four years on I was getting used to the idea
that thatís the way it had to be.

WATERS -- It just became more and more oppressive. Those places
werenít built for music, they were built for sporting events, and itís
not unnatural to experience a ritualisation of war, because thatís all
sport is. What was going through my mind -- my whole body -- was an
enormous sense of frustration, a feeling of what are we all doing
here, whatís the point? And the answer that kept clanging back
monotonously was: cash and ego. Thatís all itís about.

EZRIN -- I met Roger through his then wife Carolyne, who once worked
for me. On the ëAnimalsí tour, they stopped in Toronto where I was
living, and on the limousine ride out to the gig Roger told me about
his feeling of alienation from the audience and his desire sometimes
to put a wall between him and them. I recall saying flippantly, "Well
why donít you?." A year, 18 months later I got a call asking me to
come to his home to talk to him about the possibility of working
together on this project called ëThe Wall.í

------------------------------

THE MASTER BUILDER

The ëAnimalsí solo tour over, the band goes their separate ways --
Gilmour and Wright to make solo albums, Roger to his house in the
country to start writing.

WATERS -- Sometimes during the day Iíll get this very blank feeling --
not an empty feeling, itís very full -- and Iíll realise suddenly that
Iím really long-sighted, everything becomes very out-of-focus, and I
think, "Oh, Iím going to write a song." Then one has to take it by the
scruff of the neck and use whatever craft Iíve developed over the
years to finish it off, but the initial creation is a passive act. My
view is it may be an expression of what Jung describes as the
collective unconscious -- human beings seem to have this need to
illuminate and express their relationship with everything else. Iím
trying to think whether Iíd had any psychotherapy at that point and I
think the answer is no, that didnít come until later -- 1981, I think.

        Initially, I had two images -- of building a wall across the
stage, and of the sado-masochistic relationship between audience and
band, the idea of an audience being bombed and the ones being blown to
pieces applauding the loudest because theyíre the centre of the
action, even as victims. There is something macabre and a bit worrying
about that relationship -- that we will provide a PA system so loud
that it can damage you and that you will fight to sit right in front
of it so you can be damaged as much as possible -- which is where the
idea of Pink metamorphosed into a Nazi demagogue began to generate
from.
        [The theme of insanity] has something to do with Syd, but with
my own experiences as well. "When I was a child I had a fever, my
hands felt just like two balloons" is about the indescribable feeling
in my body during a high-fever delirium where everything felt too big.
On the couple of occasions in my life where I have felt myself
approaching metal breakdown it has felt like delirium, so my
connection with how Syd or other schizophrenics must feel is taken
from both that childhood memory and the odd moments on my life of
great personal stress when I have experienced the edges of that same
feeling...

EZRIN -- Roger invited me down for the weekend -- he had a lovely
house in the country with an appropriately dark studio area. It was
one of those wonderfully moody, grey fall weekends in England. He sat
me in a room and proceeded to play me a tape of music all strung
together, almost like one song 90 minutes long, called ëThe Wall,í
then some bits and bobs of other ideas that he hoped to incorporate in
some way, which never made it to the album but resurfaced later on
some of his solo work. The English countryside under the weight of
humidity and cloud was the perfect setting for this music and I was
transported. It wasnít complete, it wasnít in anything like the final
form of the work, but it captured the atmosphere and I just knew after
listening to it that it was going to be an important work -- and that
it was going to take a lot of work to pull it into something cohesive.
 

WATERS -- I could see it was going to be a long and complex process
and I needed a collaborator who I could talk to about it. Because
thereís nobody in the band that you can talk to about any of this
stuff -- Daveís just not interested, Rick was pretty closed down at
that point, and Nick would be happy to listen because we were pretty
close at the time but heís still more interested in his racing cars. I
needed somebody like Ezrin who was musically and intellectually in a
more similar place to where I was.

GILMOUR -- We never made plans immediately after finishing a project
to get together and start the next thing, we always took a little bit
of time off. Iíd been persuaded by a couple of old friends that Iíd
been in a band with pre-Pink Floyd that we should just go in and make
an album off the cuff, and have a bit of fun. Rick was doing an album.
When we did meet up again in a studio in London, Roger had the idea
that he wanted to make one of two projects that he had been working on
at his home studio during that time. He came in with two fairly
well-formed, largely demoed ideas: one was ëThe Wallí and one was what
eventually became his first solo album, which had one very nice tune
but in my memory it was too much the same. Between us we decided ëThe
Wallí would be the one we would start working on when we reconvened in
September.

RICK WRIGHT -- At that time we were, in theory, bankrupt. Our
accountants had lost our money, we owed huge amounts of tax, and we
were told me must go away for a year, make an album to try and repay
the tax we owed, so it was a pretty scary time for us all.

MASON -- The tapes were very poor quality -- Roger always made
dreadful demos even though they were made on very sophisticated
equipment -- but it was immediately clear that it was an interesting
idea that could be developed musically.

WRIGHT -- But there were some things about it where I thought, "Oh no,
here we go again -- itís all about the war, about his mother, about
his father being lost." Iíd hoped he could get through all of this and
eventually he could deal with other stuff, but he had a fixation...
Every song was written in the same tempo, same key, same everything.
Possibly if we were not in this financial situation we might have
said, "Well, we donít like these songs," and things might have been
different. But Roger had this material, Dave and I didnít have any, so
weíll do it.

GILMOUR -- It is true that we had some financial crisis, but I donít
think that happened until after weíd started putting together the
first bit of ëThe Wallí at Brittania Row studios between September and
Christmas. I thought it was a very good concept at the time -- I donít
like it quite as much now, with the benefit of hindsight I found it a
bit whingeing -- and well worth exploring. I was willing -- have been
before and since -- to let Roger have full rein of his vision
 

BRICK BY BRICK : THE BUILDING PROCESS

In an all-night session, Bob Ezrin ploughed through Roger Watersí
tapes.

EZRIN -- What I did that night was write a script for an imaginary
ëWallí movie -- as distinct from the *film*; I had nothing to do with
that and was actually opposed to the idea of codifying it in any fixed
imagery. I just had this sense of a narrative sound-scape -- *saw* it,
more than heard it -- and organised all the pieces of music we had and
some we didnít, plus sound effects and cross-fades, into a cohesive
tale. I felt who the central character was and I came to the
conclusion that we needed to take it out of the literal first-person
and put it in the figurative -- resurrecting old Pink to whom they had
referred in the past. I came in the next day with a script -- which,
by the way, is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame -- handed it out to
everybody and we did a table-read of ëThe Wall.í It was a whole other
way of doing things when youíre making music, but it really helped to
crystallise the work. From that point on we were no longer fishing, we
were building to a plan.

WATERS -- The basic shape of it didnít change. Some songs changed a
lot, others -- "Donít Leave Me Now," "Is There Anybody Out There?,"
"Mother" -- are almost exactly as they were originally.

EZRIN -- Once we got out of Rogerís house and into the studio, it was
very much a collaborative effort, everybody had their opinions and
contributions. It got very exciting sometimes. Often weíd have these
bash-em-upís where weíd get into furious arguments about an approach
to a song that would go on for weeks -- as theyíre English and Iím
Canadian we were very gentlemanly about it, but no-one would budge.
But the conclusion when there was that kind of conflict -- the
synthesis of two opposing ideas -- was very much stronger than the
original idea itself.

WATERS -- I seem to remember the four of us in the beginning before
the recording going through the demo and throwing stuff out.

GILMOUR -- Just sitting around and bickering, frankly. Someone would
say, "I donít like that one very much," someone else might agree, and
then Roger would look all sulky and the next day heíd come back in
with something brilliant. He was pretty good about that during ëThe
Wall -- he became less good during ëThe Final Cut.í Some of the songs
-- I remember "Nobody Home" -- came along when we well into the thing
and heíd gone off in a sulk the night before and come in the next day
with something fantastic. Itís often good to be geed up into a little
state of rage.

WATERS -- They would like to believe, for whatever reasons, that the
making of ëThe Wallí was a group collaboration -- well, OK, they
collaborated in it, but they were not *collaborators.* This was not a
co-operative. It was in no sense a democratic process. If somebody had
a good idea I would accept it and maybe use it, in the same sense that
if someone writes and directs a movie he will often listen to what the
actors have to say. It sounds to me a bit like ëAnimal Farm,í the pig
fight about who was more equal than others. Since the break-up theyíve
been at great pains to point out how it wasnít really my work at all
and we all did it together. Well thatís bollocks. Itís just not true,
as anybody whoís listened to what theyíve done since can see -- the
fact that they donít actually do it, they get other people to do it.
Itís so *clear.* ëThe Wallí I think is a terrific piece of work and
Iím really proud of it. No, Iíll go no further down there.

MASON -- It really did feel like a band working on a record -- maybe
in a slightly dysfunctional way, but I think most bands are
dysfunctional.

WATERS -- Rick didnít have any input at all, apart from playing the
odd keyboard part, and Nick played the drums, with a little help from
his friends. And Dave, yeah, Dave played the guitar and wrote the
music for a couple of songs, but he didnít have any input into
anything else really. We co-produced it, I think, Ezrin and myself --
the collaboration with Ezrin was a pretty fertile one, his input was
big -- and Dave got a production credit -- Iím sure he had something
to do with the record production; he had very different ideas about
that sort of thing. But there was really only one chief, and that was
me.

GILMOUR -- Roger was obviously one of the main producers because it
was his idea and he was very, very good about many things to do with
production, like dynamics. Iíve always been one of the producers on
Pink Floyd records, and while I might not argue with Roger much over
lyrics I think I know as much as anyone in or around the band about
music and would certainly give my opinions quite forcibly. Bob Ezrin
was in there partly as a man in the middle to help smooth the flow
between Roger and I, whose arguments were numerous and heated.

MASON -- We were looking at the way we worked to see if we could
improve it, and everybody thought it would be enormously helpful to
have an outside influence. Roger had met Bob Ezrin, and it seemed a
good idea to have this hot young engineer, James Guthrie, to
complement him.

JAMES GUTHRIE -- At the time I got the phone call from the manager,
Steve Oí Rourke, summoning me to his office, I saw myself as a hot
young *producer!* He told me the band were looking for some new blood
and theyíd heard my work -- specifically 'The Movies' and 'Runner' --
and sent me to meet Roger to see how the chemistry was between us.
Basically, I wasnít told about Bob [Ezrin] and Bob wasnít told about
me. When we arrived I think we felt weíd been booked to do the same
job.

EZRIN -- There was an awful lot of confusion as to who was actually
making this record when I first started. Titles notwithstanding, we
were all very high-powered people, very specific in our approach to
things, very opinionated and at the height of our careers creatively,
so it was heady times -- I think at that point Roger wanted the
project to be his. But when one member in a band declares prominence
over the others, it can make it difficult to work together and I think
he was sensitive to that -- or as sensitive as Roger can be -- so he
brought me in, I think, as an ally to help him manage this process
through. As it turns out, my perception of my job was to be the
advocate of the work itself and that very often meant disagreeing with
Roger *and* other people and being a catalyst for them to get past
whatever arguments might exist.

WRIGHT -- I really enjoyed the days of ëDark Side...í or ëWish...í
when we might have been fighting but we were doing it together. I was
concerned that an outside producer might lose what the four of us
would do together. But on the other hand I thought "God, we do need a
referee."

WATERS -- We *were* working shoulder-to-shoulder up to and including
ëDark Side...í From that point on we werenít. Weíd achieved what we
set out to achieve together and the only reason we stayed together
after that was through fear and avarice.

GILMOUR -- Thereís three sections of ëThe Wallí-making: first in
Brittania Row in London, going through the stuff, having ideas,
demoing it all up, then France, where we made the bulk of the album,
and Los Angeles where we went to finish it up and mix it. In France,
particularly, we worked very well, very hard. Itís amazing how much we
actually got done in a comparatively short time.

MASON -- The pace was fast and furious, very focused. We were actually
running two studios in France at once.

GILMOUR -- Superbear, the studio we were mostly at, was quite high in
the mountains and itís rather notorious for being difficult to sing
there, and Roger had a lot of difficulty singing in tune. He always
did -- ha ha. So we found another studio, Miraval, and Roger would go
there with Bob to do vocals.

EZRIN -- We were working to a deadline which was a declared vacation
-- we had a lot of vacations! I once added it up and I think the whole
process probably came out to four or five months of real studio time,
but spread out over a year because we did short hours and took a lot
of vacations. They were all family guys and wanted to work 10-6 -- no,
*Roger* decided we were working 10-6. We worked gentlemenís hours,
wore gentlemenís clothes, ate gentlemenís food, even had tea and
biccies brought in every day at the appropriate time. It was all very
civilised. And considering we were doing at the same time some fairly
countercultural stuff, it created almost a schizophrenic feeling of
surreality about the project -- in France, even more so. Some of us
were living in Nice, some had rented entire towns, some were living at
the studio, it was all quite fragmented, but we would come together at
the studio and be creating these amazing things made out of some of
the most banal elements -- drum sound effects were nothing more than
roasting pans being thrown at the floor.
        I came in with a lot of ideas that were slightly foreign to
the English team. We pioneered the multiple machine approach to
recording that is now accepted as standard operating procedure. We cut
our basic tracks on a 16-track, copied them to a mixed-down version on
a 24-track, took all the drums and bounced them down to just a few
tracks, put them on the 24, then added all of our overdubs,
instruments, sound effects, vocals. The plan at the end was to sync up
the 16- and the 24-track so they would run together, and the
instruments on the 16- would come back sounding absolutely glorious,
because the tapes had been stored and not played and worn-out over all
the months weíd been working, then all the overdubs would slot on top
of them and we would have this wonderful-sounding album. It sounded a
bit like witchcraft to everybody when I proposed it. To their credit,
they embraced the concept, but as we got closer to the moment of truth
they got more and more nervous. Guthrie in particular. I remember as
we were finishing up one song it was necessary to erase the copy-drums
from the 24-track, which meant that if the two tapes didnít sync up
there would be no drums at all. James blanched when I made him press
the erase button; it was like asking him to shoot a child. When it
worked, youíve never seen such a look of relief on the faces of so
many people. That process has a tremendous amount to do with why that
album has got that incredible presence and such a density of sound.

------------------------------

TWO SONGS:
COMFORTABLY NUMB

GUTHRIE -- Everyone -- including Roger -- was encouraging Dave to come
up with some ideas, and the day he turned up with "Comfortably Numb,"
sang a la-la melody over the top of these chords, was fantastic.

GILMOUR -- Roger and I had a good working relationship. We argued a
lot, sometimes heatedly -- artistic disagreements, not an ego thing. I
donít think we argued over who would take lead vocals, Roger was not
over-bothered who sang -- but overall we were still achieving things
that were valid. Things like "Comfortably Numb" are really the last
embers of Roger and my ability to work collaboratively together -- my
music, his words. I had the basic part of the music done. I gave Roger
the bits of music, he wrote some words, he came in and said, "I want
to sing this line here, can we extend this by so many bars so I can do
that," so I said, "OK, Iíll put something in there."

WATERS -- Karl Dallas wrote a book some years ago that infuriated me
because he said it was Dave who wrote one of the compelling songs on
the thing, "Comfortably Numb." Thatís just not true... What happened
is Dave gave me a chord sequence, so if you wanted to fight about it
-- and I donít want to fight about it -- I could say that I wrote the
melody, and all the lyrics, obviously. I think in the choruses he
actually hummed a bit of the melody, but in the verses he certainly
didnít. Thatís never been a problem for me, I think itís a great chord
sequence. Why are we talking about this? Arguing about who did what at
this point is kind of futile.

EZRIN -- "Comfortably Numb" started off as a demo of Daveís -- a piece
in D with a lovely, soaring chorus and a very moody verse. At first
Roger had not planned to include any of Daveís material but we had
things that needed filling in. I fought for this song and insisted
that Roger work on it. My recollection is that he did so grudgingly,
but he did it. He came back with this spoken-word verse and a lyric in
the chorus that to me still stands out as one of the greatest ever
written. The marriage of that lyric and Daveís melodies and
emotionally spectacular guitar solo -- every time I hear that song I
get goosebumps.

GILMOUR -- We went to LA with two versions of it -- we recorded one
backing track, just the drums basically, which Roger and Bob liked a
lot but I felt was a bit loose in places so we did another take which
I liked better -- and we had quite a large row about which of these
two versions we should use. In the end, we used bits of both, and Iím
not at all sure if you played me one of those backing tracks and then
the other one Iíd know the difference now, but it seemed incredibly
important at the time. You can divide "Comfortably Numb" into dark and
light -- the bits I sing, "when I was a child..." are the light, the
"hello is there anybody in there" that Roger sings are the dark -- and
on the dark stiff I wanted to have a bit more of the grungey guitar
element, while Roger and Bob wanted it just drums and bass and
orchestra. We argued vociferously about that and I lost on that
occasion, and I still feel I was right. On-stage I would always add
the grungier tone.

------------------------------

ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL PART II

WATERS -- On the demo I made it was just me singing to an acoustic
guitar.

GILMOUR -- It wasnít my idea to do disco music, it was Bobís. He said
to me, "Go to a couple of clubs and listen to whatís happening with
disco music," so I forced myself out and listened to loud,
four-to-the-bar bass drums and stuff and thought, "Gawd awful!" Then
we went back and tried to turn one of the "Another Brick In The Wall"
parts into one of those so it would be catchy. We did the same
exercise on "Run Like Hell."

EZRIN -- Iíd just done a session in New York and Nile Rodgers and
Bernard Edwards were in the next studio. I heard this drum beat and
went "Wow, would that ever work great with rock ëní roll!" When I got
to England a few months later and I started listening to "Another
Brick...," that beat kept playing through my head.

MASON -- I donít remember anyone complaining. There is a standard
speed for a disco track and we followed that to the letter. It was
recorded in a very disco way -- drums and bass put down on their own
and everything added gradually on top.

EZRIN -- The most important thing I did for the song was insist it be
more than just one verse and one chorus long, which it was when Roger
wrote it. When we played with the disco beat I said, "Man, this is a
hit! But itís one minute 20, itís not going to play. We need two
verses and two choruses." And they said, "Well youíre not bloody
getting them. We donít do singles, so fuck you." So I said, "OK fine,"
and they left. And because of our two machine set-up, while they
werenít around we were able to copy the first verse and chorus, take
one of the drum fills, put them inbetween and extend the chorus.
        Then the question is, what do you do with the second verse,
which is the same? And, having been the guy who made 'Schoolís Out,'
Iíve got this thing about kids on a record and it *is* about kids
after all. So while we were in America, we sent Nick Griffiths to a
school near to the Floyd studios [in Islington]. I said, I want
Cockney, I want posh, fill ëem up" -- and I put them on the song. I
called Roger into the room, and when the kids came in on the second
verse there was a total softening of his face  and you just knew that
he knew it was going to be an important record.

WATERS -- It was great -- exactly the thing I expected from a
collaborator.

GILMOUR -- And it doesnít in the end not sound like Pink Floyd

THE FALL-OUT

The atmosphere in the various studios ranged from "tension" to
"all-out war." It reached its nadir with the firing of Wright.

EZRIN -- There was tension between the band members, even tension
between the wives of the band members. There was a period in France
where it was very hostile, that passive-aggressive English-style
conflict.

MASON -- Bob probably sees it as war because he was under attack. He
was going through what can only be described as an unreliable phase of
his life -- he was staying down in Nice, we were all up in the hills,
and heíd drive down there when he finished work and I suspect have a
wild time and then be astonished when we were pissed off when heíd
arrive back the next morning late.

EZRIN -- Roger and I were having a particularly difficult time. During
the period I went a little mad and really dreaded going in to face the
tension, so I would find any excuse to come in late the next morning.
I preferred not to be there while Roger was there.

WATERS -- There was certainly tension involved, but my feeling as I
got up in the morning and climbed in the car in France to go off to
work was a good, positive feeling, eager to get to the studio.
Obviously, we were having problems with Rick -- he was sort of there
but not there.

GILMOUR -- Most of the arguments came from artistic disagreements. It
wasn't total war, though there were bad vibes -- certainly towards
Rick, because he didn't seem to be pulling his weight.

WRIGHT -- I wanted to work, but Roger was making it very difficult for
that to happen. I think he was already thinking of trying to get rid
of me.

EZRIN -- I saw it happening and it really made me quite ill. I felt
that so much pressure was being put on Rick that it was virtually
impossible for him to live up to expectations. It was almost as though
he was being set up to fail. Under the circumstances I don't see how
anybody could have survived.

WATERS -- Why did I fire Rick? Because he was not prepared to
cooperate in making the record. (Wearily) What actually happened was
ëThe Wallí was the first album where we didn't divide the production
credit between everybody in the band. At the beginning of the process,
when I said I was going to bring Bob Ezrin in and he was going to get
paid, I said, "I'm going to produce the record as well, so is Dave, so
we're going to get paid as well, but Nick, you don't actually do any
record production, and Rick, neither do you. So you're not going to
get paid." Nick said fair enough, but Rick said, "No, I produce the
records just as much as you do." So we agreed we would start making
the record and we would see. But who would be the arbiter? We all
agreed on Ezrin.
        So Rick sat in the studio -he would arrive exactly on time,
which was very unusual, and stay to the bitter end every night. One
day Ezrin said to me -- he was slightly irked by this brooding
presence very occasionally going "I don't like that" -- "Why's Rick
here again?" I said, "Don't you get it? He's putting in the time to
prove he's a record producer. You talk to him about it." So he did.
After that Rick never came to another session, unless he was directly
asked to do keyboard tracks. And he became almost incapable of playing
any keyboards anyway. It was a nightmare. I think that was the
beginning of the end.
        But in the end of the end, since you ask, we had agreed to
deliver the album at the beginning of October and we took a break in
August to go on holiday. I sat down with a bunch of sheet music and
paper and wrote out all the songs and what was needed and made up a
schedule, and it became clear to me that we couldn't get it finished
in the time available. So I called Ezrin, "Would you be prepared to
start a week earlier on the keyboard parts with Rick in Los Angeles?"
Eventually he went, "All right. Thanks, pal," --because of the idea of
doing keyboard tracks with Rick. I said, "Look, you can get another
keyboard player in as well in case it's stuff he can't handle, but if
you get all that keyboard overdubbing done before the rest of us
arrive we can just about make the end of the schedule."
        A couple of days later I got a call from O'Rourke. I said,
"Did you speak to Rick?" "Yeah. He said, 'Tell Roger to fuck off.'"
Right, that's it. Here I was doing all this work and Rick had been
doing nothing for months and I got "Fuck off." I spoke to Dave and
Nick and said, "I can't work with this guy, he's impossible," and they
both went, "Yeah, he is."
        Anyway, it was agreed by everybody. In order not to get a long
drawn-out thing I made the suggestion that O'Rourke gave to Rick:
either you can have a long battle or you can agree to this, and the
'this' was you finish making the album, keep your full share of the
album, but at the end of it you leave quietly. Rick agreed. So the
idea of the big bad Roger suddenly getting rid of Rick for no reason
at all on his own is nonsense.

GILMOUR -- (Sigh) I did not go along with it. I went out to dinner
with Rick after Roger had said this to him and said if he wanted to
stay in the band I would support him in that. I did point out to Rick
that he hadn't contributed anything of any value whatsoever to the
album and that I was not over-happy with him myself -- he did very
very little; an awful lot of the keyboard parts are done by me, Roger,
Bob Ezrin, Michael Kamen, Freddie Mandell -- but his position in the
band to me was sacrosanct. My view, then and now is, if people didn't
like the way it was going it was their option to leave. I didn't
consider that it was their option to throw people out.

WATERS -- I had a meeting with Dave in my garden in the South of
France at which Dave said, "Let's get rid of Nick too." I bet he
doesn't remember that. How inconvenient would that be? I went "Ooh,
Dave, Nick's my friend. Steady!"

MASON -- I think in real terms it would be highly likely that I would
have been next. And then after that I think it would have been Dave.
That's what's curious when we talk about it now. I think it's just
that Roger was feeling more and more that this was his idea and he
wanted total control. Roger and I have been friends since we were
students, before the band even existed, so I suppose in that way my
position was stronger.
        But what I think had been the case is there had always been a
sort of philosophical division within the band: Roger and I were seen
as the ones who liked the special effects, the show, the technology,
the non-music in a way, whereas Dave and Rick took a more musically
pure position. That's a very broad generalisation, but since this was
conceived from the beginning as a big theatrical production, I think
that's where the conflict started -- because Rick is absolutely not
someone you would have a fight with, he's extremely mild. He was his
own worse enemy in that he could have perhaps given a little bit more
and maybe defused the situation, but I think Roger manoeuvred
brilliantly (laughs). Made Stalin look like an old muddle-head. We all
felt fairly hopeless at the time to change it or do anything. Roger
made it fairly clear that if Rick stayed, he and the album would not,
and I think the threat of what was hanging over us in terms of
financial -- not just losses but actual bankruptcy -- was pretty
alarming. We were under a lot of pressure. I felt guilty. Still do
really. In retrospect one likes to think that one would have behaved
better and done things differently. But probably we would have done
completely the same thing.

WRIGHT -- It would have been quite easy to say, "Oh he left because he
had a cocaine problem or a drink problem." I can honestly say that it
really was not a drug problem. It was taken without a doubt by him,
me, Dave, Nick, Bob Ezrin, but purely socially, it wasn't lying around
in the studio.

WATERS -- There *were* people who were doing a lot -- some of us had
big, big problems. I certainly wasn't doing drugs at that point.

WRIGHT -- When I think about, right from the beginning Roger and I
were never the best of friends, but we weren't enemies either until he
went into his ego trip. Once he decided he wanted to control
everything, his first step was, "I'll get rid of Rick, I've never like
him anyway." It was part of his big game plan to become the leader,
the writer, the producer and have people play for him. I think the
next step of his plan, though they were buddies, was to get rid of
Nick, thatís what Iíve heard, and then Dave become the guitarist and
use session musicians. You may think thatís all rubbish, but I suspect
thatís how he was thinking.
        I think he would tell you that I'd lost interest in the band
-there are times around ëAnimalsí where I would sit down with our
manager and say, "I've got to leave this band, I can't stand the way
Roger's being," but I wasn't really serious about leaving, though
sometimes I wasn't happy. At the time I was going through a divorce, I
wasn't that keen on ëThe Wallí anyway, and I didn't have any material.
He might have seen my situation as not having contributed everything
but he wouldn't *allow* me to contribute anything.
        We had a break after we finished recording in France and I
went to Greece to see my family. I get a call from Steve saying, "Come
to LA immediately, Roger wants you to start recording keyboard
tracks." I said, "I haven't seen my young kids for months and months,
I'll come on the agreed date. " He said, "Fair enough, I understand."
Come the agreed day, Steve met me and said, "Roger wants you out of
the band."

MASON -- He just took it and left. I think there must have been an
element of him that just thought, "Well I've had enough anyway if it's
going to be like this."

WRIGHT -- I fought my corner. Dave and Nick would say, "This is not
right, we think it's unfair. "When we had the meeting Roger said,
"Look, either you leave or I'm not going to let you record my material
for ëThe Wall.'" It was maybe a game of bluff but that's what he said
to me. Remember we were in a terrible financial situation and he said
to me, "You can get your full royalties for the album but you can
basically leave now and we'll get a keyboard player to finish it." And
I spent many days and sleepless nights thinking about his whole thing.

        I could have called his bluff and said, "OK, go and do a solo
album," and I think Roger would have then said, "OK, I'm scrapping all
this material" -- it was his, so he had the right to do that. I
thought about it and thought about it and I decided I can't work with
this guy any more whatever happens, I was terrified of the financial
situation and I felt the whole band was falling apart anyway. I didn't
know, and I think I'll never know 'til the day I die, what would have
happened if I'd said, "No, I'm not going to go." So, I made the
decision, rightly or wrongly, to leave. But I also made the decision
I'm going to finish recording this album and I want to be in the live
shows and then we'll say goodbye.
        The interesting thing about all that is why, if Roger thought
I couldn't perform, why he then said, "OK, that's fine, you can finish
recording and do the live shows." It's very weird and bizarre, and it
was a time in my personal life -- I would say I was confused.

GUTHRIE -- Rick did some great playing on that album, whether or not
people remember it -- some fantastic Hammond parts.

WRIGHT -- My therapist is convinced I'm still extremely angry about
the whole thing and in a sense I am. I think it was nasty. This is my
band as much as it's his. But the fact that Dave and Nick and Roger
fell out immediately afterwards -- they did ëThe Final Cut,í but that
was ridiculous as I understand it, they virtually had physical fights
in the studio, Dave refused to have his name on the credits -- kind of
helped me deal with the fact that I'd left the band. But I don't like
the way it was done -- after 18 years I still feel it was wrong.
Hopefully one day I'll sit down with Roger and he might then say,
"yes, it was unfair."

WATERS -- No. It was absolutely the right thing to do
 

THE WALL

The album was completed in Los Angeles, its cover designed by Gerald
Scarfe and Roger Waters. The sleevenotes to the original vinyl release
credited three producers, one co-producer, four engineers, three
writers, two orchestra arrangers, six backing vocalists, a sound
equipment man and Islington Green School. The names Rick Wright and
Nick Mason are nowhere to be seen.

WRIGHT -- Iíd forgotten about that -- Nick was left off as well? I
wonder why ? but at the time Iíd left the band and sort of given up.

MASON -- I wasnít too happy. It was rectified on later pressings, I
think.

GERALD SCARFE -- I think Roger had a strong idea what ëThe Wallí cover
should look like -- completely white with the bricks on it. I did a
little rough drawing one evening while we were staying together in
France that had all the little characters inside that Iíd designed for
"The Trial" poking out of the wall.

GILMOUR -- Storm [Thorgerson] had already been pushed out a little bit
by then. Roger was very displeased with him -- these are very old
stories and I canít claim to remember every detail but I think it
culminated in Hipgnosis putting ëAnimalsí into a book of album covers
and saying it was theirs and didnít put in that it was from an idea by
Roger. Rogerís keen quest for credit on everything at the time made
him rather upset.

MASON -- There were a number of playbacks. One of the executives from
CBS was absolutely appalled -- went back and said, "This is terrible,
rubbish, what are we going to do?" Of course, it all turned out fine.

GUTHRIE -- Unlike most bands who have to answer to the record company,
with the Pink Floyd, itís more, "Weíre going to make an album now,
youíll hear it when itís finished." The official playback was at CBS
Records in Century City. I went in a couple of hours early with a
quarter-inch tape to set up the sound system in their conference room.
By the time we got to the bit where the stukas swooped down, it was so
loud it blew the right speaker, so we hunted the entire building for
an office that was big enough and had a sound system that was even
halfway decent. We eventually found one and took all the furniture
out, threw in a load of cushions, turned the lights off and just
played the album.

WRIGHT -- The playback was a very difficult, strange time. I think I
was emotionally numb.

GILMOUR -- It was a magical moment: "Yep, weíve pretty well nailed
it."

WATERS -- A great, classic piece of work.

ON WITH THE SHOW

Pink Floydís biggest spectacular yet: 45 tons of equipment, 106
decibels of quadrophonic sound, a bomber plane, inflatables, Gerald
Scarfeís monstrous puppets, a fake Pink Floyd band in masks and 340
bricks erected by concealed hydraulic lifts into a 160x35ft wall.

EZRIN -- We had rough-mixed everything in France, pulled it together
in sequence, had a table with a model of the stage and teeny rubber
men and mock-inflatables, and we played the record while playing the
show on the table top, so the first time the band heard ëThe Wallí was
a complete audio-visual experience. We were not just making an album,
we were also building the stage show from the script. Roger and I
would start our day at 8.30 in the morning at Gerald Scarfeís house
looking at animation and then we would talk to Mark Fisher, architect
designer extraordinaire, about the stage design. We spent a lot of
time weighing bricks and making sure that if they fell forwards nobody
would get killed. At that point we were even thinking of designing our
own venue to take on the road ? this surreal tent in the shape of a
worm.

WATERS -- The other guys in the band had nothing to do with the show
-- they like to think they did but they didnít. If you read the
programme of the show its says on the inside page, "íThe Wall,í
written and performed by Roger Waters, performed by Pink Floyd," and
thatís what it was. I was no longer interested in working in committee
with anybody.
        I started working with Gerald to see what kind of ideas he
came up with. Probably out of his ideas for the animation came the
idea, hey, perhaps this could be a movie at some point. The original
scripts I started to write were about a story happening around a rock
ëní roll show with us performing and bombing the audience -- a
strange, surreal thing -- and it wasnít until [director] Alan Parker
eventually became involved that, much at his instigation, we dropped
the idea of using any live footage of the band performing the piece
and adopted the idea that it should become a straight-forward
narrative.

SCARFE -- I had previously done some things with ëWish You Were Hereí
and I became very friendly with them all. When Roger had written ëThe
Wall,í he came to me and played the raw tapes and said he wanted to
make an album, a show and a film. He was completely honest about where
the whole thing had come from. A couple of beers and he would ramble
on, as we all do, about things that happened to him that had upset
him.
        We seemed to get on well. I like Rogerís sense of humour -- he
has this rather acerbic sense of humour which I do too, a cynical view
of life, and heís extremely witty. We used to play a tremendous amount
of snooker together, it became almost fanatical -- competitive, but it
wasnít played for enormous amounts of money. Roger won, mainly. Roger
is one of those wonderful people as far as I was concerned who seems
to understand that when you hire an artist you hire what the artist
does, you donít tell them what to do. Obviously, you have discussions,
but it was up to me as to how I illustrated it. The idea of using
inflatables was something they had devised earlier, but the designs
were all mine.
        First of all I had to decide what Pink would look like -- I
saw him as this embryonic little prawn-like figure who was completely
vulnerable, because a lot of it is about how we hide behind a wall
because we donít want other people to hurt us. The wife I made like a
serpent that would strike and sting -- I have no idea what his ex-wife
looks like so it was definitely not based on her. The teacher was
based vaguely on a teacher Iíd known myself. That mother was an
old-fashioned ë50ís comforting type with these very strong arms that
turned into walls. The hammers came from me looking for a very cruel,
unthinking image, something intractable that couldnít be stopped, and
then the idea of them goosestepping came from that.
        It had humour to it, I hope, in parts, but it was generally
pretty bleak. I suppose the overall story is. "Goodbye Blue Skies"
(sic) is one on my favorite pieces of animation. For me that was very
much a hymn to the Second World War and the sadness of it all. I was a
small child during the war so I understood the feeling of bombers and
gasmasks -- they used to make them for children in the shape of Mickey
Mouse because they were frightening, claustrophobic things to wear. I
designed some creatures called the Frightened Ones who had heads like
gasmasks and were running into air-raid shelters. Animation doesnít
have to be little Disney bunnies running around, itís unlimited,
surreal. I tried very hard with the open brief that all the guys in
Pink Floyd gave me -- yes, I dealt mainly with Roger, but all the guys
were completely on my side -- to give them my very best. Directing
animation is a very time-consuming thing, so it took over a year. An
awful lot of snooker.

WRIGHT -- As I saw it, Rogerís original concept for the show was
literally to build a wall, go home and leave the audience pissed off.
But once that wall was built and the visual stuff put on it and the
holes so that people could appear it became a very good theatrical
device.

GILMOUR -- I suppose with things like ëSpinal Tapí coming out later
with their wonderful "Stonehenge" -- but it all seemed to have a
meaning and a point, and if mockery was going to stop us it would have
stopped us many years before that. The shows were terrific. I enjoyed
them thoroughly. As they went along, through the 30-odd shows that we
did, I became more aware of the restriction imposed by something that
was so choreographed -- there was not really much room for letting the
music go away into its own thing. But you just have to look on it as a
different thing -- itís as much a theatrical piece as it is a musical
piece.
        I was in charge of all the mechanics of making it work. I had
a six-foot-long cue-sheet draped over my amplifier for the first few
shows which I had memorised after that, so Iíd know exactly where a
cue would come from, because it could come from a floor monitor or
from film, and I had one control unit to adjust the digital delay
lines on my equipment and Rogerís, Rickís and Snowy [White]ís, so I
didnít really notice what was going on around me terribly much.

MASON -- The drums were in an armored cage, so when the wall collapsed
it wouldnít destroy them. It was a curious, rather nice environment --
almost like being in a studio, except youíre interacting, and odd,
because itís half-live. Not much spontaneity, but weíre not well-known
for our duck-walking and general gyrating about on-stage.

WRIGHT -- Why did I agree to play? Maybe I couldn't actually handle
the idea of just standing up in the room and saying, "Right, that's
it, bye-bye." I thought, if I'm going to leave at least I know I've
got another month or so to carry on working - even possibly with the
hope in the back of my mind that things might change. On the live
performances Roger was being reasonably friendly. It was difficult but
I tried to forget all my grudges, and I enjoyed playing ëThe Wall.í I
put everything I could into the performances, and I think Roger
approved of that. We would talk civilly to each other. It wasn't too
bad at all.

MASON -- Of course it was. But the British are bloody good at that -
just get on with it in spite of the fact that they're absolutely
seething.

WATERS -- It was a 'fait accompli,' Rick was being paid a wage, he
seemed happy with that, we were happy with that, and that was the end
of it -- or maybe he wasn't happy with it but it's not something we
discussed. Backstage it was all pretty separatist -- separate
trailers, none facing each other -- ha-ha -- with all our little
camps. The atmosphere was awful, but the job, the show, was so
important that certainly on-stage I don't think that affected me at
all.

WRIGHT -- It just seemed to me another example of why I'm not sad to
leave, because the band had lost any feeling of communication and
camaraderie by this time. But bands can go on-stage and perform music
even if they hate each other. It was a band that I felt was falling to
pieces -- which of  course it did.

EZRIN -- I was asked to be involved with the show and I couldn't -- I
was going through a divorce and fighting for custody of my children.
That and another incident, where in my naivety I took a phone call
from a friend who happened to be a journalist and broke my
non-disclosure with the band when he teased information out of me, so
upset Roger, who was already feeling very nervous and was dealing with
the Rick situation. That was it. I was banned from backstage. I went
anyway, New York was sort of my territory, all the security at the
venue knew me from Kiss and Alice Cooper. When the Pink Floyd security
said, "He can't come in," they said, "Like hell he can't!" I had to
buy my ticket, but saw the show. It was flawless and utterly
overwhelming. In "Comfortably Numb," when Dave played his solo from
the top of the wall, I broke into tears. It was the embodiment of the
entire experience. In the final analysis it produced what is arguably
the best work of that decade, maybe one of the most important rock
albums ever.

------------------------------

THE FINAL CUT

In 1980-81 ëThe Wallí played in Los Angeles, New York, Dortmund and
London, returning to Earlís Court to film footage ultimately not used
in the movie. Then the band started work on ëThe Final Cut.í

WATERS -- I had complete control of 'The Final Cut.'

GILMOUR -- That discussion came up on occasions. It wouldn't have been
to the band's benefit for Roger to have total control, he wasn't up to
it. He hasn't had huge success with anything over which he's had total
control.

WATERS -- The concept [of ëThe Wallí's theme influencing its author's
behaviour] is a convenient view for people. It's a short step from
leader to dictator. We're all volunteers. Nobody had to stay. Even
during ëThe Final Cut,í where everything finally exploded, I was
always completely willing to make the record on my own. We'd been
arguing since 1974, for God's sake. Too long. At a certain point you
have to say, this is not working, the point has come to break up.

GILMOUR -- Roger said it was over. I said I would probably make
another record. He made it clear he wouldn't make another record with
us; I made it clear that it was my intention so to do.

WATERS -- I want people around me who are creative, lively, interested
and interesting. Dave is none of those things. He doesn't have any
ideas and he's not interested really in people who do, except insofar
as they can write records that he can put his name on, which is what's
been happening since I left.

MASON -- I would never have imagined that we *could* have carried on
without him until Dave said, "We can. Let's have a go." The feeling
was, It's not your band to kill.

WATERS -- I didn't decide that the band would have to die. I expressed
my view that that would been (sic) the best thing. I would be
distressed if Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr made records and went on
the road calling themselves The Beatles. If John Lennon's not in it,
it's sacrilegious. I don't want to put words into Dave's mouth but
from what I've read I have a suspicion his view would be that a lot of
people would hold the view that it wasn't OK to go on calling the band
Pink Floyd when Syd ceased to function. The body of work that the four
of us produced together post-Syd has some of that connection to the
same things that The Beatles' work has a connection to, and that for
me makes Pink Floyd important. And to continue with Gilmour and Mason,
getting in a whole bunch of other people to write the material, seems
to me an insult to the work that came before. And that's why I wanted
the name to retire.
 

END