"All in all it was just a brick in a wall." "Daddy's flown across the ocean, leaving just a memory."Īt the concert, this memory was visualized in the form of styrofoam bricks that, along with bricks representing other memories and traumas, constructed an ever-larger wall. Protagonist Pink sings of his father who went off to war and never returned. The idea at the heart of the concert can be seen best in Waters' "Another Brick In The Wall, Part 1," the little sister to Part 2, arguably Pink Floyd's most famous song: Waters put together a band to replace the former members of Pink Floyd, and 30 years ago played the legendary concert that was about much more than just music. The British foundation "Memorial Fund for Disaster Relief" - established a year before to collect donations for disaster aid - was planning a benefit concert and wanted him to take part.ģ50,000 fans attended the the legendary concert at Berlin's Potsdamer Platz Memory and history as main themes When asked about his departure in an interview, and whether he would ever perform the rock-opera again, his answer was crystal clear: "No." He said he might think about it if the Berlin Wall fell.įive years later, the unimaginable moment came and Waters immediately received a request. This led to disputes between the band members and Waters leaving the band in 1985. Roger Waters wrote most of the songs on the album, and the singer and bassist demanded full creative control. Today, The Wall holds the record for best-selling double-album and has maintained a place on the list of the 30 most successful albums ever sold.īut Pink Floyd's success was also a reason for the band's demise. It had even spurred a 1982 musical film based on the album starring Bob Geldof. Prior to the concert in Berlin, the album had sold 19 million copies globally and been performed a total of 31 times in the US, London, and Dortmund. Released in 1979, the album The Wall was a significant stylistic change for Pink Floyd, but one that only added to their success. In 1990, the album was already 11 years old. It wasn't a given that the concert would be a success. Pink Floyd fans wore pink masks at the history-making concert Record-breaking album Taking part were an estimated 350,000 fans in the audience and hundreds of millions of spectators watching on their TV sets at home. Thirty years later, the answer is clear: with a rock spectacle that presented a shared realm of experience for a country that, within a few months, would be newly reunified. After so many years of separation and systemic confrontation between East and West, how would they ever communicate? The lyric could practically be a reference to the challenges that reunited Germany faced in 1990. In the song "Empty Spaces," the protagonist of the album, Pink, says: "What shall we use to fill the empty spaces where we used to talk?" There were helicopters, the brass band of the Russian Red Army, and musical contributions from legends including Bryan Adams, Cyndi Lauper and the iconic rock group Scorpions. Organizers brought in cranes that would be used to maneuver gigantic marionette figures. The 550-foot-high and 135-foot-deep mega-stage on Potsdamer Platz took four weeks and some 600 people to build. Instead, it would be a benefit concert of massive proportions. "This is not a Nazi rally, nor a reunification convention for East and West Germany," wrote German magazine Der Spiegel in 1990 ahead of the performance of the Rock-Opera album.
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