whys wherefores, walls

as a new-ish convert, I still need to write a long essay about the gestation of the wall. books are hard to come by for me right now, and I need a few thoughts from whoever on how the wall got started, who showed up with what where and when way backl then. thanks in advance.

Here's the Coles Notes version.

Roger Waters, co-founder of Pink Floyd, was just a baby when his father died at the battle of Anzio in 1944 defending Britain against fascists. He became increasingly concerned in the 1970s that, as a rock star playing in front of vast stadium crowds purely for greed's sake, he was losing his emotional connection with the audience and becoming more like a dictator at a rally.

This culminated at the final concert of Pink Floyd's "In the Flesh" tour in 1977 at the Olympic Stadium in Montreal. At one point in the show, Roger lost his temper with the inattentive, wild and uncontrolled crowd members — one of whom climbed up the netting erected as a safety measure in between the stage and the field. In response, Roger spat in his face, which shocked him into confronting the inhumanity of the whole scenario.

For the next year, he made home demo recordings of songs written from the perspective of a character named Pink, loosely based on reminisences of his own biography and of others entrapped by the excessive, decadent lifestyle of rock stardom. These songs were to be performed as part of a theatrical piece, in which a wall was built brick by brick in between Pink and his audience — a metaphor for gradual emotional alienation undertaken as a shield against the painful realities of life.

Roger presented these songs to the band in 1978. Over the next year, they would be fleshed out and honed as a collaborative effort between Waters and the album's co-producers, David Gilmour, Bob Ezrin and James Guthrie. Pink Floyd did perform in the show as Roger Waters had conceived it in strictly limited multiple-night engagements in a handful of cities (owing to the enormous cost of the production) over the years 1980-1981 and in 1982 the project was made into a feature film starring Bob Geldof as Pink.

That should be enough to get you started.