A few nights ago, I noticed this on my Facebook page from the Roger Waters site:
Tonight, the Stade de France in Paris sees the final show on the Roger Waters The Wall Live tour, which started just over three years ago, in Toronto, September 2010. Did you manage to see the concert at any point since then?
I was amazed! Really, almost everything about this tour just simply stunned me. Perhaps most of all, that it took pace to begin with.
When I was younger, I was absolutely obsessed with "The Wall". This was particularly true after my brother had gotten me as either a Christmas or birthday gift the newly released VHS video of Roger Waters "The Wall" concert, live from Berlin, earlier that year.
You have to remember, that was a time of great, sweeping changes. The only thing since that has come close to the events that transpired in Eastern Europe in the fall of 1989 would be the Arab Spring, and that was not probably on the same scale, frankly. It seemed that everything was changing, and fast. Gorbachev had opened up more to the West, and with "Glastnost" and "Perestroika", there had been a warming of relations between the West and Europe. But nobody could have foreseen the lightning fast changes that were about to take place, and nowhere did these events transpire as suddenly, or as stunningly, as in Berlin, Germany. It seemed that, almost overnight, the Berlin Wall fell. Less than a year later, Germany would be reunited.
Before the official reunification, Roger Waters held a massive, star-studded concert of "The Wall". He had been asked on a radio program if he would ever think about doing "The Wall" again, and he said that he would do it if the Berlin Wall fell. Well, it fell, so the time was ripe.
It was a huge concert, and I kept watching it, wishing that I had been there. At that point, I had not yet seen the movie of Pink Floyd's "The Wall". For maybe two years, I was obsessed with that album, and couldn't even begin to guess how many times I listened to the songs from that album, or watched the video.
"The Wall" remained one of my favorite albums, and that concert one of my favorite videos, and I was hungry for anything from this landmark album. Pink Floyd released one of their old live concerts of "The Wall" from all of those years ago, and I got it on the day that it came out, and played it as often as the Roger Waters one for a while. I got a t-shirt of "The Wall". One time, when I saw Roger Waters live, he started the show with the first six or so songs from "The Wall", and everyone was starting to get really excited, although it did not go any further than that. Still, I had been one of those who had gotten really excited there for a minute.
Yet, I harbored no realistic expectations of seeing "The Wall" in concert. After all, the album had been released almost three decades ago, so how could I?
Somehow, though, Roger Waters finally relented. Perhaps it could have been expected, after he had done the entire "Dark Side of the Moon" on each of the shows of one tour ( I don't remember the name) that I was privileged enough to have attended a show of.
Still, "The Wall" seemed another matter altogether.
And then, quite unexpectedly, Waters announced that he would go on tour for "The Wall", in 2010.
I was suddenly very excited. Got tickets for two shows. The first I would take my brother with as a birthday gift, out at Nassau Coliseum. The second, I would take my father to, I think as an early Christmas gift.
These shows were like a dream come true. So long had I waited to see "The Wall", that to see it two times, I felt incredibly privileged! It made me feel like I had really seen something, almost a bit of music history right before me.
One thing I remember was rather on a sad note. In the second show, the one I took my father to, one man had taken a bad spill and fell, headfirst, down some of the stairs, to the hard plastic chairs. I did not see him move again, and he was taken out in a stretcher, well before the show. I hoped, and still hope, that things turned out okay for him.
But the shows themselves were amazing. It was every song, and Roger Waters was incredible. To be sure, it was different than the live show from Berlin in 1990, but that was fine. Different interpretations, and also, things should change over time. It was an unbelievable show, and I was elated to finally see it!
When his tour came around again last year, I entertained going again. Ultimately, I did not, although I cannot remember exactly why. I was tempted, though, knowing the chances of seeing it again with Waters are virtually nil. Somehow, though, I have a feeling it will reach Broadway someday, at least for a limited run.
I am glad to have seen those two shows. Having been to a lot of concerts in my day, those two stand out as among the most memorable!
And as "The Wall" tour finally winds down, likely for the last time ever by a member of Pink Floyd, I thought it would be appropriate to honor an album, a show, and a tour that made me very happy for a very long time. When I think of having attended those shows, it still makes me happy, even though it has not been almost three years since those shows! I applaud and congratulate Roger Waters on a job very well done these last three years!
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