Pink Floyd: Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live

PINK FLOYD: IS THERE ANYBODY OUT THERE? THE WALL LIVE (1980-1981; 2000)

1) Master Of Ceremonies; 2) In The Flesh?; 3) The Thin Ice; 4) Another Brick In The Wall, Pt. 1; 5) The Happiest Days Of Our Lives; 6) Another Brick In The Wall, Pt. 2; 7) Mother; 8) Goodbye Blue Sky; 9) Empty Spaces; 10) What Shall We Do Now?; 11) Young Lust; 12) One Of My Turns; 13) Donʼt Leave Me Now; 14) Another Brick In The Wall, Pt. 3; 15) The Last Few Bricks; 16) Goodbye Cruel World; 17) Hey You; 18) Is There Anybody Out There?; 19) Nobody Home; 20) Vera; 21) Bring The Boys Back Home; 22) Comfortably Numb; 23) The Show Must Go On; 24) Master Of Ceremonies; 25) In The Flesh; 26) Run Like Hell; 27) Waiting For The Worms; 28) Stop!; 29) The Trial; 30) Outside The Wall.

General verdict: Needs video.

The most awful thing about Floydʼs legendary live Wall shows from 1980–81 is that, apparently, no high quality footage was ever captured — whatever remains, as you can easily see from YT videos, is barely watchable. Of course, Rogerʼs several solo-based stagings of the album, one of which has already been reviewed, are a partial remedy for this travesty, but only partial, because it is one thing to watch The Wall as a bona fide musical, replete with a motley assortment of musical guests of widely varying quality, and it would be quite another thing to watch it as the freshest chapter in the personal history of Pink Floyd while it still existed as a band (despite Rick Wright being already denominated to the status of «supporting musician»).

The audio tapes from the show did survive; but it does make sense that they were not released upon the completion of the project, and I do not even think there were any such plans — as we know all too well, the classic Floyd line up did not think much of the idea of live albums, given how important the visual aspect was for their live activities. So it was not until the year 2000 that these tapes were dug out, brushed off, sorted out, and transformed into a record that promised to bring you all (well, half) of the value of the classic live Floyd experience — a reasonable time gap, given that loyal fans had probably worn off twenty copies of the studio Wall in twenty years and were fully prepared for something slightly different.

As it happens, my warning is fully predictable — Is There Anybody Out There? is a record that will only appeal to the seasoned fan. First, its very nature is that of a self-contradictory compromise: on one hand, it claims to be a genuine live experience, but on the other hand, its tracks are put together from more separate parts than a John Entwistle bass guitar — almost every song is dated to at least two or three different shows, either because producer James Guthrie embarked on a typically Floydian perfectionist cruise, looking for musically ideal bits, or because some parts of the tapes had degraded in quality. Quality control does take care of that issue — without the accompanying notes, youʼd never know it wasnʼt all just one show — but the other issue is that it all sounds largely and inevitably inferior to the studio version, and that issue cannot be taken care of by any means, be it editing, mixing, or magic.

On a purely formal level, The Wall Live is a more complete Wall experience than the studio version, because lack of the 2-LP time limit had allowed the band to reinstate certain bits that were cut off from the final release. Unfortunately, Roger and David were pretty good at cutting off, and the reinstated bits feel superfluous. The short ʽWhat Shall We Do Now?ʼ, bridging the formerly startling and disturbing sonic gap between ʽEmpty Spacesʼ and ʽYoung Lustʼ, is two minutes of mediocre arena-rock (ʽYoung Lustʼ is arena-rock, too, but at least it is parodic / ironic arena-rock, whereas this thing is just a technical interlude). ʽThe Show Must Go Onʼ restores an earlier cut verse — oh, what a joy. ʽOutside The Wallʼ is the worst of them all, having become a hillbilly campfire song with overdubbed pretentious narration, instead of its enigmatic quietness and looping tricks on the original album. And there are also ʽThe Last Few Bricksʼ, a medley of several musical themes from the albumʼs first part, played onstage by the musicians as the wall was being completed, brick by brick — something that, quite clearly, only works together with the hypnotic spectacle of the band being gradually hidden from your eyes by all the white stuff. In the end, none of these tracks make the experience better, and some of them make it worse.

Of all the performances here, arguably the only one that made me sit up and take notice was ʽRun Like Hellʼ — "this is for all the WEAK people in the audience!". Somehow, the level of mean aggression required for this tune was seriously upped, perhaps due to Gilmourʼs guitar sounding harsher and crisper than in the studio — and the song gets an incredibly weird instrumental section here, with elements of almost free-form jazz chaos as guitars and pianos clash with each other in dissonant madness. ʽComfortably Numbʼ, on the other hand, did not yet have the proper time to transform itself into an end-of-the-world anthem that could function separately from the album itself, and Gilmour, standing on top of the wall, plays it relatively safe and close to the book (though I am sure many fans will prefer this early, fuzz-drenched reading of the closing solo to the more straightforward guitar-god-show-off it would become in the post-Waters years).

Many of the studio nuances are unknowingly or inevitably lost in transition — for instance, my favorite song on the album, ʽDonʼt Leave Me Nowʼ, is nowhere near as efficient live, because they cannot reproduce that hypnotic, climactic sustained guitar-vocal unison in the coda. The solo in ʽAnother Brick In The Wall, Pt. 2ʼ is extended by having a second guitarist take after David (Snowy White, I presume), which does not make for a particularly great contrast. All in all, there are plenty of small differences, but these are mostly for enthusiasts to spot, and even if some of them turn out to be more true to the vision of Roger Waters than, say, Bob Ezrin, it still only goes to show how much of the magic of Pink Floyd was generated inside the studio and how hard it was to bottle that magic and carry it intact to the stage.

That said, The Wall is The Wall, and at the very least you do get to hear it live without all the guest stars — when you can have Gilmour himself for ʽYoung Lustʼ, whoʼd want Bryan Adams? If you are a major fan of the album, this live companion is still a must-own. But ultimately, it will just serve as an indirect memento of one of rock theaterʼs most important and inventive events, in the absence of a high quality direct memento of such.