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}} ''The Wall'' is the eleventh studio album by the English progressive rock band Pink Floyd. It is the last studio album released with the classic lineup of guitarist David Gilmour, bassist/lyricist Roger Waters, keyboardist Richard Wright and drummer Nick Mason before Wright left the band. Released as a double album on 30 November 1979, it was supported by a tour with elaborate theatrical effects, and adapted into a 1982 feature film, ''Pink Floyd – The Wall''. The album features the band's only number one single "Another Brick in the Wall Part 2". As with Pink Floyd's previous three albums, ''The Wall'' is a concept album and explores themes of abandonment and personal isolation. The album is a rock opera that follows Pink, a character whom Waters modelled after himself and the band's original leader, Syd Barrett. Pink's life begins with the loss of his father during the Second World War and continues with abuse from his schoolteachers, an overprotective mother, and the breakdown of his marriage; all contribute to his eventual self-imposed isolation from society, represented by a metaphorical wall. Waters conceived the album during Pink Floyd's 1977 In the Flesh Tour, when his frustration with the audience became so acute that he imagined a wall between the audience and the stage. ''The Wall'' features a harsher and more theatrical style than Pink Floyd's previous albums. Wright left the band during its production but remained as a salaried musician, performing with Pink Floyd during the ''Wall ''tour. The album was one of the best selling of 1980, and by 1999 it had sold over 23 million RIAA-certified units (11.5 million albums), making it the third highest certified album in the United States.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 publisher = RIAA )〕 ''Rolling Stone'' placed ''The Wall'' at number 87 on its list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time". ==Background== Pink Floyd's In the Flesh Tour was their first playing in large stadiums, and in July 1977 – on the final date at the Montreal Olympic Stadium – a small group of noisy and excited fans near the stage irritated Waters to such an extent that he spat at one of them. He was not the only band member who felt disaffected at the show, as guitarist David Gilmour refused to perform the band's usual encores ("Money" and "Us and Them"),〔Schaffner, p 329〕 leaving the rest of the band, with backup guitarist Snowy White, to improvise a slow, sad twelve-bar blues, which Waters described as "some music to go home to".〔Schaffner, pp 219-220〕 Later that night, while returning from hospital to treat an injury sustained to his foot while play-fighting backstage with manager Steve O'Rourke, Waters spoke with music producer Bob Ezrin, and a friend of Ezrin's, a psychiatrist sharing their car, about the feelings of alienation he was experiencing on the tour. He articulated his desire to isolate himself by constructing a wall across the stage between the performers and the audience. He later said, "I loathed playing in stadiums ... I kept saying to people on that tour, 'I'm not really enjoying this ... there is something very wrong with this.'" While Gilmour and Wright were in France recording solo albums, and Nick Mason was busy producing Steve Hillage's ''Green'', Waters began to write new material. The spitting incident became the starting point for a new concept, which explored the protagonist's self-imposed isolation after years of traumatic interactions with authority figures and the loss of his father as a young child. To execute ''The Wall'' concept was to attempt to analyse the performer's psychological separation from the audience, using a physical structure as a metaphorical and theatrical device.〔 In July 1978 the band reconvened at Britannia Row Studios, where Waters presented two new ideas for concept albums. The first was a 90-minute demo with the working title ''Bricks in the Wall''. The second, a project about a man's dreams across one night that dealt with marriage, sex, and the pros and cons of monogamy and family life versus promiscuity. The first option was chosen by the group for the new Pink Floyd project and the second idea eventually became Waters's first solo effort, a concept album titled ''The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking''.〔 By September, the band were experiencing financial difficulties. Financial planners Norton Warburg Group (NWG) had invested £1.3–3.3 million (up to £ in contemporary value) of the group's money in high-risk venture capital to reduce their tax liabilities. The strategy failed as many of the businesses NWG invested in lost money, leaving the band facing tax rates potentially as high as 83 per cent. Pink Floyd terminated their relationship with NWG, demanding the return of uninvested funds. The band thus urgently needed to produce an album to make money. Because the project's 26 tracks presented a challenge greater than the band's previous albums, "Waters decided to bring in an outside producer and collaborator."〔 He later said, "I needed a collaborator who was musically and intellectually in a similar place to where I was." Producer Bob Ezrin had worked with Alice Cooper, Lou Reed and Kiss, as well as producing Peter Gabriel's debut solo album. At the suggestion of Waters's then-girlfriend, Lady Carolyne Christie, who had worked as Ezrin's secretary, the band hired him to co-produce the album.〔 From the start, Waters made it very clear who was in charge: "You can write anything you want. Just don't expect any credit". Ezrin, Waters, and Gilmour read Waters's concept, keeping what they liked, and discarding what they thought was not good enough. Waters and Ezrin worked mostly on the story, improving the concept. A 40-page script was presented to the rest of the band, with positive results: "The next day at the studio, we had a table read, like you would with a play, but with the whole of the band, and their eyes all twinkled, because then they could see the album."〔 Ezrin broadened the storyline, distancing it from the autobiographical work Waters had written, and instead basing it on a composite, or ''gestalt'' character named Pink. Engineer Nick Griffiths later said of the Canadian producer: "Ezrin was very good in ''The Wall'', because he did manage to pull the whole thing together. He's a very forceful guy. There was a lot of argument about how it should sound between Roger and Dave, and he bridged the gap between them."〔 Waters wrote most of the album's material, with Gilmour sharing credit on "Comfortably Numb", "Run Like Hell" and "Young Lust", and Ezrin co-writing "The Trial".〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Wall」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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