I have bought much of my audio equipment second hand, to save money. On one of these acquisitions, I found myself in the home of someone that had an impressive stereo, but no music collection. He was just listening to the same 20 albums all the time. Most of those were Pink Floyd. It led to my theory: most audio enthusiast don’t know anything about music. It also led me to totally ignore Pink Floyd, out of a weird sense of revenge.
So I got this from a friend, and I had to deal with it. I admit to being slightly interested in it since it was featured in the 1990 concert at the Berlin Wall, eight months after it fell. However, the story the album tells has nothing to do with that. The wall is a psychological wall that is built by the main character of this rock opera. Pink is a rock star who is confronted with one maltreatment after the other. It all leads to bricks in the wall. In the end he has to tear it down to be able to function at all.
The idea of the story came to bass player Roger Waters when during the previous tour (the Animals tour) he found himself so frustrated with the audience that he spat on one of them. It became a social event rather than a more controlled and ordinary relationship between musicians and an audience, he later said in the magazine Radio Times. They were not listening. The only way to deal with this is to build a wall between him and the audience.