A few years later, the charity was wound up, and the audio and video sales rights from the concert performance returned to Waters. However, audio and video sales came in significantly under projections, and the trading arm of the charity (Operation Dinghy) incurred heavy losses. While he subsequently earned the money back from the sale of the CD and video releases of the album, the original plan was to donate all profits past his initial investment to the Memorial Fund for Disaster Relief, a UK charity founded by Leonard Cheshire. The event was produced and cast by British impresario and producer Tony Hollingsworth. And I was very impressed, and said I would do what I could, although I thought it was very unlikely that it would come off… Then, in November, when the wall started coming down, we started negotiating." And, as it's partially an attack on the inherently greedy nature of stadium rock shows, it would be wrong to do it in stadiums… I said, 'Well, I might do it outdoors if they ever take the wall down in Berlin.'… The Memorial Fund was in a council meeting, and felt they needed some kind of an event to focus attention on it… So I agreed to have a meeting with Leonard Cheshire. "He said, 'Would you ever perform The Wall again on stage?' And I said, 'No'… Indoors, it made no sense financially it's too expensive. "I did an interview a couple of years ago for a guy called Redbeard…" Waters recalled. The concert was staged on vacant terrain between Potsdamer Platz and the Brandenburg Gate, a location that was part of the former " no man's land" of the Berlin Wall. Available in print and all digital formats.The concert at a strip of land between the Brandenburg Gate and Leipziger Platz. We have a book! Pink Floyd – I Was There which contains over 400 eyewitness accounts from fans who saw Pink Floyd live in concert. The others are “See Emily Play” and “Money.”ĭon’t you just love it when a song like this travels the world and affects peoples lives, makes people think about change, makes people realize they can do better, or try and improve their life for good? This had to be a good thing. “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2” is one of three Pink Floyd songs included in The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s list of 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll, curated by Jim Henke. The solo is given extra weight and tension by the contrasting and changing chords of the keyboards underneath the guitar.ĭavid Gilmour’s guitar solo, without any of his trademark tremolo or distortion, is a masterpiece of rhythmic precision, a fluid exposition of surefooted interlinked riffing, virtually a masterclass in how to play a solo – and it was the first take. At any rate, Griffiths was allowed to record a much larger group of schoolkids, which he did, in the 40 minutes he was allotted by the school.ĭavid Gilmour plays the solo on a vintage 1955 Gibson Les Paul Gold Top guitar, originally played directly through the mixing desk, and the recording subsequently played back through an amplifier in the studio, to be re-recorded with more ambience. The song was “Sons Of 1984,” which dovetails rather neatly into the Wall album’s themes. According to Nick Mason, Griffiths was asked originally just to provide two or three kids singing in “a rather pathetic voice.” Griffiths was a fan of Todd Rundgren, who had, on his double album Todd, recorded a live audience singing one of his song’s choruses in New York, and then taken the tape and overdubbed another whole audience singing the harmony in San Francisco. Griffiths accordingly contacted Alun Renshaw, Head of Music at Islington Green School, who provided the schoolkids. In a 2009 interview with Guitar World, Ezrin explained that, having produced “School’s Out” with Alice Cooper, he “had a thing about kids on record.” It also hit number 1 in South Africa, after which it was banned, on May 6, 1980, when black school children used it to condemn educational apartheid in Soweto.Ĭo-producer Bob Ezrin had suggested “Another Brick In The Wall, Part 2” as a single with a 4/4 beat, but since the song has just one repeated verse, engineer Nick Griffiths, at Pink Floyd’s Britannia Row Studios in London, was asked to find some children to add colour to the second verse. It topped the US singles chart for four weeks from March 22, 1980, and was number 1 in Canada, Israel, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, and West Germany, reaching the Top 5 in a further eight countries. A week later, it was #1 in the UK, remaining there for five weeks, and by January 1980 had sold over a million copies. “Another Brick In The Wall, Part 2” was an instant hit in the UK, released on November 16, 1979, and selling 340,000 copies in five days. The song received a Grammy nomination for Best Performance by a Rock Duo or Group, but Floyd lost to Bob Seger’s “Against the Wind.” In 1980, Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick In The Wall, (Part 2)” started a four week run at No.1 on the US singles chart.
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