Saturday, July 21, 1990

Roger Waters performed The Wall Live in Berlin

The Wall – Live in Berlin

Roger Waters

Released: August 21, 1990

Recorded: July 21, 1990

Charted: September 22, 1990

Peak: 56 US, 27 UK, 12 CN, 10 AU, 1³ DF

Sales (in millions): --

Genre: classic rock veteran

Tracks:

Song Title (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to singles charts.

Disc 1:

In the Flesh? (with the Scorpions)
The Thin Ice (with Ute Lemper & the Rundfunk Orchestra & Choir)
Another Brick in the Wall (Part 1) (with Garth Hudson)
The Happiest Days of Our Lives
Another Brick in the Wall Part II (with Cyndi Lauper, 9/10/90, 82 UK)
Mother (with Sinéad O’Connor & The Band)
Goodbye Blue Sky (with Joni Mitchell & the Rundfunk Orchestra & Choir)
Empty Spaces/Young Lust (with Bryan Adams, 9/8/90, 7 AR)
Oh My God – What a Fabulous Room (with Jerry Hall)
One of My Turns
Don’t Leave Me Now
Another Brick in the Wall (Part 3) (with Rundfunk Orchestra & Choir)
The Last Few Bricks
Goodbye Cruel World

Disc 2:

Hey You (with Paul Carrack)
Is There Anybody Out There (Rundfunk Orchestra & Choir)
Nobody Home (with the Rundfunk Orchestra & Choir)
Vera (with the Rundfunk Orchestra & Choir)
Bring the Boys Back Home (with the Rundfunk Orchestra & Choir, Band, and the Combined Soviet Forces in Germany and Red Army Chorus)
Comfortably Numb (with Van Morrison and the Rundfunk Orchestra & Choir)
In the Flesh (with the Scorpions and the Rundfunk Orchestra & Choir)
Run Like Hell (with the Scorpions)
Wiating for the Worms (with the Scorpions and the Rundfunk Orchestra & Choir)
Stop
The Trial (with the Rundfunk Orchestra & Choir, Tim Curry, Thomas Dolby, Ute Lemper, and Marianne Faithfull)
The Tide Is Turning (with the Company: Joni Mitchell, Cyndi Lauper, Bryan Adams, Van Morrison, and Paul Carrack; the Rundfunk Orchestra & Choir; 11/19/90, --)

Rating:

3.302 out of 5.00 (average of 8 ratings)

Awards:

(Click on award to learn more).

About the Album:

Roger Waters commemorated the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 by assembling a slew of guest artists to stage a live production of Pink Floyd’s The Wall in Berlin. The show was held in the vacant space of what was known as the “no man’s land” area of the Berlin Wall in between Potsdamer Platz and the Brandenburg Gate.

Waters had said he’d never perform The Wall on stage as it was too expensive and the message was about “the inherently greedy nature of stadium rock shows.” ^WK He would later gross $450 million from his tour of The Wall from 2010-13, the highest amount made at that time for a solo artist. ^W2 He did also qualify his initial answer that he would consider doing an outdoor show if they tour down the Berlin Wall. ^WK

The “star-studded megaconcert” ^AMG doesn’t always hold up as “it invites constant comparison to the studio album” ^AMG but there are moments, such as Bryan Adams’ “cock rock swagger” during Young Lust which work. ^AMG The trial scene also “is handled well, with Albert Finney, Tim Curry, Marianne Faithfull, Thomas Dolby, and Ute Lemper taking on the characters.” ^AMG

The show featured “larger bricks, bigger inflatable puppets, and a larger audience than any of the original Pink Floyd shows.” ^AMG The staging included a 550-foot-long and 82-foot-high wall. Most was built before the show and then it was added to during the show. At the end of the show, the wall was knocked down while images of the actual Berlin Wall being tore down were projected. The show ended with “The Tide Is Turning,” initially a song from Roger Waters’ Radio K.A.O.S. album and not The Wall.

The one-time performance set a record for a paid show with 450,000 attendees. Waters covered some of the expenses of the show, but made his money back from CD and video sales of the show. He initially planned to donate all profits past his investment to the Memorial Fund for Disaster Relief, but sales came in much lower than projections. ^WK