The Wall Changed My Life
Gerald Scarfe, who did the animation for the film, complained in an interview that so many people had said this to him and was frustrated because he didn't know why - he appears to have thought that he was doing something so outrageous e.g. depicting school so graphically as a mincing machine to homogenise everyone, that his sets would never be created and he was surprised when they were.
I can tell him why - it legitimised the notion that the mainstream education system was just BS indoctrination to get you to want to be cannon fodder for the state and the corporations.
I've been on both sides of that coin and went from the worst comprehensive school in my borough to an elite boarding school that was, for my time there, more expensive than Eton or the other one.
It was there, The Wall was given to me and I never looked back. It gave me the discrimination to do my own research and to be able to go up against so called "experts" in their fields with facts, numbers and real world solutions - and win. I'd always had a problem with "authority" and, with The Wall, authority had now completely evaporated, unless it stood on its merits.
I built a 20 year career (give or take) in the City of London with that notion.
As for the music, The Wall is bluesey rock to me and Floyd went from catering to an acid loving audience (e.g. the excellent Set the Controls to the Heart of the Sun) to, say, the incredibly powerful Comfortably Numb, which is a dope smoker's track. I think that Echos is a very clever in-betweeny track, that heralds the transition.
Then, after the complete despair in The Final Cut - documenting the whole Thatcher, Falklands event, with the pessimistic ending of nuclear annihilation whilst slavishly working to make a profit for your employer (Not Now John), Waters made a few false starts when he was broken out of Floyd. Radio Kaos springs to mind. Ugh.
Then he created the Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking - a much undervalued album in my opinion. David Sandborn on saxophone and Eric Clapton on lead guitar. It's the only album that I've ever come across to depict what we would now call a "road movie". The insight, perception and musical talent that you're exposed to with this one is, for me, the pinnacle of Waters' art when looked at from the perspective of a whole album - as opposed to a bunch of songs slung together.
And that's the nub of it for me. This is art. I lived with someone who went through a ceramics degree at Camberwell (the top place to do this in the world at the time) and, as a business analyst, she asked me to define "Art" to her. I shadowed her studies and came up with this:
Art is something where the viewer perceives things in the work that the originator has never even thought of.
In my view, Scarfe had a blind spot - he never saw how original and game changing his stuff was.
I know nothing about this latest work but given Waters' track record, I would imagine that it's now very, very well done, extremely polished and well worth a look.
The question, for me is: "Why would he bother?"
Perhaps because he feels it's message is still relevant and needs to be shoved in our faces.
Given his later stuff e.g. Perfect Sense, he's arguably right.
I think Roger deserves a beer just for getting to the age that he is and for giving so many people so much pleasure and a vehicle for some heavy duty reflection on what's going on in their lives and their world.
Personally, I take my hat off to the man.