This is what the whole album really comes across to me as. For granted, I'm probably wrong about 90% of it, but this is what I always interpret it to be. And yes, it is about Pink and not Waters/Barrett.
IN THE FLESH?: This is a prologue to Pink's story, in one of his shows, and he's addressing what he truly is and why he's that because people interpret him as just a mindless drug obsessed rocker.
THE THIN ICE: The very beginning of the story, starting with Pink's birth, and concluding with the story of Pink being overprotected by his mother (which is what I always see 'the thin ice' as being).
ABITW PART 1: This is quite simply, Pink's father's death and Pink wondering what he left for him.
THE HAPPIEST DAYS OF OUR LIVES/ABITW PART 2: This is obviously Pink's school days, which were incredibly troubled, and Pink's general opinions on it, expressed in ABITW part 2.
MOTHER/GOODBYE BLUE SKY: These refer to Pink's overprotective mother in different ways. Mother is just all the things that she wants to protect Pink from, but Goodbye Blue Sky is all the dangers that are coming about around the area because of the war. Simple as that.
EMPTY SPACES/YOUNG LUST/DON'T LEAVE ME NOW: These three songs are about Pink's wife, with Empty Spaces representing their empty marriage, Young Lust being both of them and their separate mindsets, and Don't Leave Me Now representing Pink's further depression over it.
ABITW PART 3/GOODBYE CRUEL WORLD: ABITW part 3 represents the very beginning of Pink's insanity, as well as him leaving behind the depression he faced with his wife, and Goodbye Cruel World is just a continuation of that. In conclusion, disc 1 is Pink's growth and depression which manifests into the essence of disc 2.
HEY YOU: Really just Pink's beginning of his insanity and realizing that he's becoming different, what with the insanity that's enveloping him, and he's expressing a message that he has become different, and if anyone can see what he used to be.
IS THERE ANYBODY OUT THERE?/NOBODY HOME: More into Pink's insanity and how the wall has separated Pink from the world.
VERA/BRING THE BOYS BACK HOME: And of course, Pink obviously needed drugs to continue with his shows as a rocker. So as these two go along, he's doing the drugs and collapses to what ends up as:
COMFORTABLY NUMB: And this is Pink in the doctor, expressing what he saw as a child, his depression from his early years, and the doctor helping him to get to his next show. So it is kind of a symbiosis of his mental depression, insanity, and drug use to me.
THE SHOW MUST GO ON/IN THE FLESH: And this is the show itself, with In The Flesh being Pink's insanity really being released. I occasionally see In The Flesh being from where the prologue left off, but that's just my weird interpretation.
RUN LIKE HELL/WAITING FOR THE WORMS: The aftermath of the show itself, and Pink getting closer to the point in which he cannot go on at home. Run Like Hell is him escaping from everything, and Waiting For The Worms is him simply waiting for the climax.
STOP/THE TRIAL: Stop is the climax itself, and it results in what The Trial is. Really all it is to me is Pink completely losing his mind, and with the flashbacks of the schoolmaster, his wife, and his mother, he eventually loses his mind and decides he doesn't care anymore, and what he has always dreading for all his life finally happens: he is 'exposed before his peers', and the wall is torn down.
OUTSIDE THE WALL: And after the chaos that ensues from The Trial, Pink finally goes through the horror mentioned above, and finally meets his death. Nothing more, nothing less.
Many of the songs can be interpreted in several different ways, though... particularly The Thin Ice, Goodbye Blue Sky, Young Lust, Comfortably Numb, and Run Like Hell.
It is not about BARRETT but it IS about WATERS. Well, it's not ABOUT WATERS, IT IS WATERS!
The Wall is an autobiography. A brilliant autobiography.
It is not about BARRETT but it IS about WATERS. Well, it's not ABOUT WATERS, IT IS WATERS!
The Wall is an autobiography. A brilliant autobiography.
The movie is clear: Pink (WATERS) builds a Wall (a mental and social wall) to protect himself from society and its troubles (human relationship, love story and break-up, order, conformity, success, fame, stupid fans, fear of death, fear of war, loss of a father... everything that fills up life). At the end, he becomes aware of his own alienation (STOP) and decides to judge himself in order to free himself from his own wall....
The movie is clear: Pink (WATERS) builds a Wall (a mental and social wall) to protect himself from society and its troubles (human relationship, love story and break-up, order, conformity, success, fame, stupid fans, fear of death, fear of war, loss of a father... everything that fills up life). At the end, he becomes aware of his own alienation (STOP) and decides to judge himself in order to free himself from his own wall. It deals with stability of mind. Everybody builds his/her own wall to have protection against violence in life. All we experience forms our identity - how we walk, talk, eat, think, sleep, move, laugh, kiss, love, get angry, listen, look... Everybody has a unique perception of things and a unique way to do things and that is because of our experiences. Our mind creates defensive mecanisms that WATERS summerized as The Wall. But some people go too far and lock themselves in their own brain (paranoia, schizophrenia and other mental illness). Pink (WATERS) is not insane because he succeeds in breaking down the wall.
This is why The Wall is a fucking great album! It is UNIVERSAL and deals with self-identity and the relations with the others. Great philosophical theme. There is a lot more to say about this but it's not in the album nor in the movie which basically tells the psychic story of Pink/WATERS.
Second thing: WATERS is incredibly billiant because he matches this first theme with fascism, doing a mix between 1984 and WWII propaganda and he adapts it to a rock band playing in front of a big crowd. Doing this, he deals with power (psychological and social power) and with the control of the minds. The band in the movie is a brick in the wall for all the fans. Fans love a band or an actor or a singer because it brings a reference, an ideal, a protection. Furthermore, he shows that one can easily manipulate a crowd and that a crowd has no intelligence and no will (it's the first idea of the album. The story about Waters spitting to a fan and being irritated because people who attended their shows were there to see famous people). A crowd is dumb. Here we can refer to "Psychology of crowds", a book written by Gustave Le Bon (a french sociologist) in 1895 which is prophetic about what happened with totalitarism.
So, The Wall album + movie is a masterpiece. I don't think there is another possible "interpretation" about that. One can dig deeper but it's still on the same themes.
Of course, the album alone and the songs can be interpreted in very different ways... one is free to think whatever he wants!
Sorry for my english, I'm not a native english speaker. Sorry if it's too long...
Last thing: for those who thinks it's not about WATERS: HENRY DAVID THOREAU says in WALDEN smthg like "oneself can only talk about himself" (I don't know the exact quote as I read it in french as "On ne parle jamais que de soi"). I believe it's widely true. Writers write about themselves even when they create fictive characters because it's their words, theirs visions of the world, of society, of people.
Pink is a fictive character who contains all the WATERS' neurosis!
![Cover art for [The Wall Concept] lyrics by Pink Floyd](https://images.songmeanings.com/8e6b4a4d-4b7a-4ee7-8c09-7340f6273a95.webp)
This is what the whole album really comes across to me as. For granted, I'm probably wrong about 90% of it, but this is what I always interpret it to be. And yes, it is about Pink and not Waters/Barrett.
IN THE FLESH?: This is a prologue to Pink's story, in one of his shows, and he's addressing what he truly is and why he's that because people interpret him as just a mindless drug obsessed rocker.
THE THIN ICE: The very beginning of the story, starting with Pink's birth, and concluding with the story of Pink being overprotected by his mother (which is what I always see 'the thin ice' as being).
ABITW PART 1: This is quite simply, Pink's father's death and Pink wondering what he left for him.
THE HAPPIEST DAYS OF OUR LIVES/ABITW PART 2: This is obviously Pink's school days, which were incredibly troubled, and Pink's general opinions on it, expressed in ABITW part 2.
MOTHER/GOODBYE BLUE SKY: These refer to Pink's overprotective mother in different ways. Mother is just all the things that she wants to protect Pink from, but Goodbye Blue Sky is all the dangers that are coming about around the area because of the war. Simple as that.
EMPTY SPACES/YOUNG LUST/DON'T LEAVE ME NOW: These three songs are about Pink's wife, with Empty Spaces representing their empty marriage, Young Lust being both of them and their separate mindsets, and Don't Leave Me Now representing Pink's further depression over it.
ABITW PART 3/GOODBYE CRUEL WORLD: ABITW part 3 represents the very beginning of Pink's insanity, as well as him leaving behind the depression he faced with his wife, and Goodbye Cruel World is just a continuation of that. In conclusion, disc 1 is Pink's growth and depression which manifests into the essence of disc 2.
HEY YOU: Really just Pink's beginning of his insanity and realizing that he's becoming different, what with the insanity that's enveloping him, and he's expressing a message that he has become different, and if anyone can see what he used to be.
IS THERE ANYBODY OUT THERE?/NOBODY HOME: More into Pink's insanity and how the wall has separated Pink from the world.
VERA/BRING THE BOYS BACK HOME: And of course, Pink obviously needed drugs to continue with his shows as a rocker. So as these two go along, he's doing the drugs and collapses to what ends up as:
COMFORTABLY NUMB: And this is Pink in the doctor, expressing what he saw as a child, his depression from his early years, and the doctor helping him to get to his next show. So it is kind of a symbiosis of his mental depression, insanity, and drug use to me.
THE SHOW MUST GO ON/IN THE FLESH: And this is the show itself, with In The Flesh being Pink's insanity really being released. I occasionally see In The Flesh being from where the prologue left off, but that's just my weird interpretation.
RUN LIKE HELL/WAITING FOR THE WORMS: The aftermath of the show itself, and Pink getting closer to the point in which he cannot go on at home. Run Like Hell is him escaping from everything, and Waiting For The Worms is him simply waiting for the climax.
STOP/THE TRIAL: Stop is the climax itself, and it results in what The Trial is. Really all it is to me is Pink completely losing his mind, and with the flashbacks of the schoolmaster, his wife, and his mother, he eventually loses his mind and decides he doesn't care anymore, and what he has always dreading for all his life finally happens: he is 'exposed before his peers', and the wall is torn down.
OUTSIDE THE WALL: And after the chaos that ensues from The Trial, Pink finally goes through the horror mentioned above, and finally meets his death. Nothing more, nothing less.
Many of the songs can be interpreted in several different ways, though... particularly The Thin Ice, Goodbye Blue Sky, Young Lust, Comfortably Numb, and Run Like Hell.
It is not about BARRETT but it IS about WATERS. Well, it's not ABOUT WATERS, IT IS WATERS! The Wall is an autobiography. A brilliant autobiography.
It is not about BARRETT but it IS about WATERS. Well, it's not ABOUT WATERS, IT IS WATERS! The Wall is an autobiography. A brilliant autobiography.
The movie is clear: Pink (WATERS) builds a Wall (a mental and social wall) to protect himself from society and its troubles (human relationship, love story and break-up, order, conformity, success, fame, stupid fans, fear of death, fear of war, loss of a father... everything that fills up life). At the end, he becomes aware of his own alienation (STOP) and decides to judge himself in order to free himself from his own wall....
The movie is clear: Pink (WATERS) builds a Wall (a mental and social wall) to protect himself from society and its troubles (human relationship, love story and break-up, order, conformity, success, fame, stupid fans, fear of death, fear of war, loss of a father... everything that fills up life). At the end, he becomes aware of his own alienation (STOP) and decides to judge himself in order to free himself from his own wall. It deals with stability of mind. Everybody builds his/her own wall to have protection against violence in life. All we experience forms our identity - how we walk, talk, eat, think, sleep, move, laugh, kiss, love, get angry, listen, look... Everybody has a unique perception of things and a unique way to do things and that is because of our experiences. Our mind creates defensive mecanisms that WATERS summerized as The Wall. But some people go too far and lock themselves in their own brain (paranoia, schizophrenia and other mental illness). Pink (WATERS) is not insane because he succeeds in breaking down the wall. This is why The Wall is a fucking great album! It is UNIVERSAL and deals with self-identity and the relations with the others. Great philosophical theme. There is a lot more to say about this but it's not in the album nor in the movie which basically tells the psychic story of Pink/WATERS.
Second thing: WATERS is incredibly billiant because he matches this first theme with fascism, doing a mix between 1984 and WWII propaganda and he adapts it to a rock band playing in front of a big crowd. Doing this, he deals with power (psychological and social power) and with the control of the minds. The band in the movie is a brick in the wall for all the fans. Fans love a band or an actor or a singer because it brings a reference, an ideal, a protection. Furthermore, he shows that one can easily manipulate a crowd and that a crowd has no intelligence and no will (it's the first idea of the album. The story about Waters spitting to a fan and being irritated because people who attended their shows were there to see famous people). A crowd is dumb. Here we can refer to "Psychology of crowds", a book written by Gustave Le Bon (a french sociologist) in 1895 which is prophetic about what happened with totalitarism.
So, The Wall album + movie is a masterpiece. I don't think there is another possible "interpretation" about that. One can dig deeper but it's still on the same themes.
Of course, the album alone and the songs can be interpreted in very different ways... one is free to think whatever he wants!
Sorry for my english, I'm not a native english speaker. Sorry if it's too long...
Last thing: for those who thinks it's not about WATERS: HENRY DAVID THOREAU says in WALDEN smthg like "oneself can only talk about himself" (I don't know the exact quote as I read it in french as "On ne parle jamais que de soi"). I believe it's widely true. Writers write about themselves even when they create fictive characters because it's their words, theirs visions of the world, of society, of people. Pink is a fictive character who contains all the WATERS' neurosis!
You forgot One of My Turns...
You forgot One of My Turns...
You forgot One of My Turns...
You forgot One of My Turns...