Roger Waters The Wall

[CoolerKing]

My wife got me this for Christmas and I'm just now getting around to watching it, and it's pretty good.

Does anyone remember the name of the little ditty at the very beginning of the first song, played on a trumpet in the graveyard? I know it's on the album as well, very faintly in the background.

Thanks!

Matthew

[Neil K Walk]

The original album is a "rock opera" with a story that of the main character having an emotional breakdown where he shuts himself into a catatonic state with the help of drug use while he relives traumas ranging from being bullied by his teacher, being coddled by his widowed mother and being betrayed by his wife. The first song is entitled "In The Flesh" and serves as an introduction into the major character's diseases psyche. Ironically, when Rogers was writing it in the late 1970s, a lot of it was autobiographical.

[Neil K Walk]

It's actually the melody for the very last song on the album, entitled "Outside the Wall" and serves as a foreshadowing device.

[Brucebubs]

To me the album highlights were not the Roger Waters tracks but 'Goodbye Blue Sky' and 'Comfortably Numb' both written by David Gilmour.
But I can understand people with different tastes may have an alternative view.

[jalbert]

Didn't Gilmour write the chorus for Comfortably Numb, while Waters wrote the verses? There certainly is quite a contrast in that song!

[rokdog49]

Saw an interview where Gilmour said Comfortably Numb was not originally a part of "The Wall" album. He said they decided to throw it in because it seemed to fit.

[Frogstar]

Originally Posted by Neil K Walk

It's actually the melody for the very last song on the album, entitled "Outside the Wall" and serves as a foreshadowing device.

Essentially this. If you're listening to it loudly enough, you hear the beginning of "Outside the Wall" at the very end of the album, and the sentence "Isn't this where", and at the very beginning of the album "we came in?", and the rest of the song.

[steveh]

Originally Posted by rokdog49

Saw an interview where Gilmour said Comfortably Numb was not originally a part of "The Wall" album.

It was left-over from sessions etc. for his first solo album "David Gilmour", and re-worked for The Wall with Waters' lyrics.

Cheers,
Steve

[BrunoBlack]

I have that one too. Good flick, but the "razor blade" scene was tough to watch.

[blue]

While I find them both tiresome in large doses, the Marc Marin podcast with Roger Waters was very interesting and enlightening.

[blue]

Originally Posted by matthewpartrick

My wife got me this for Christmas and I'm just now getting around to watching it, and it's pretty good.

Does anyone remember the name of the little ditty at the very beginning of the first song, played on a trumpet in the graveyard? I know it's on the album as well, very faintly in the background.

Thanks!

Matthew

I saw it in the theater when it came out. Everyone was really excited to see it, and I don't recall seeing any disappointed faces.

Kind of the opposite of Monty Python and the Meaning of Life which came out the next year, where standing in line waiting to get in, every face leaving the theater looked like they had just undergone an intrusive and unpleasant medical exam