From the time the album was released and the shows announced, everything involving The Wall had that aura of rock history in the making. And at the concerts, it felt that way from the start of the shows. These shows were among the few actual live performances of The Wall by Pink Floyd in early 1980 shortly after the album was released. Due to the complexity of the stage props (which included giant puppets and mechanical arms adding bricks to the Wall as the concert progressed), the American shows involved only two venues, with a run of shows in LA and then in NY. (The first London performance took place later that year.) This was the first NY performance, on a Saturday night.
I was lucky to have excellent floor seats for N1. A friend managed to get a home movie camera in on some nights, and took some good footage of the performances, including the infamous flower sequence.
A fan video of this entire show, with both video and audio recordings from the audience, recently surfaced and although it is of somewhat dubious quality in spots, it is very amazing to see and hear so much of the actual show, in sequence. There’s also a fairly high quality version of the London (Earl’s Court) shows that came later, which are very cool to see.
There were a number of theatrical aspects of the show, starting with the voice of an MC who came on before the show, which played into the themes of the album and the delusional state of the main character. During the performance, a "surrogate band" appeared during certain parts of the show (following the storyline of the album), sometimes playing alongside with the members of Pink Floyd. The Wall was constructed, brick by brick on an ongoing basis, from the song "Another Brick in the Wall" onward, during the first set.
During the intermission and when the performance continued with side 3 of the album, the Wall stood in its entirety, in between the stage and the audience. During "Hey You" we could see the stage lights flashing above and behind the wall, but that's all. The sequence of songs from side 3 of the original album culminated in Comfortably Numb with Gilmour playing a classic guitar solo while standing on a platform high above the wall, with Waters playing Doctor while he sang in a white coat way below.
These live performances contained a song that was omitted from the album, but which can be heard on the bootlegs and in the movie version, as discussed in this wikipedia page. The animated "flower sequence" discussed in the aforementioned article appeared on the round screen used for years for Floyd’s video sequences. During the performance of "Young Lust," Waters joined Gilmour at his mic to sing vocals together, rock and roll style a la Mick and Keith.
During "Nobody Home," Waters sat in a chair with a television on, in what looked like a college dorm room, carved out of one area of the wall. He flipped channels and, as far as it appeared, he was actually viewing live television.
At the conclusion, after the wall came down, the band members came out and played the final tune with acoustic instruments, Rick Wright playing the accordian.
The fact that the shows were only done this way by Pink Floyd several times, as limited-run, big multi-media performances, made it a real tragedy that the films of the shows were destroyed. I could barely watch The Wall movie when it came out, remembering the shows I saw and knowing all the while that the concerts themselves were supposed to serve as the raw material for the movie.
With the previous album, Animals (see my posts about the two 1977 shows at which Pink Floyd played that album in its entirety), this album pushed further into existentialism, and also the psychology of war, and totalitarianism. In the fan video of this show you can see Waters refer to the giant Piggy, which made a renewed appearance at the Wall shows, and he makes a similar introduction as he did in 1977, noting that there’s sometimes more to a Piggy than meets the eye. True, no?
