I Fixed Your Album: Turning 'The Wall' into a coherent single record is surprisingly difficult

Nobody besides Roger Waters actually cares what *happens* on "The Wall," right?

I would never argue on principle that every double album would be better as a single album, but in practice I tend to think so. 

That preference has been conditioned, of course, by a lifetime of listening to music in album-sized servings. And the reasons many of us regard the album as the default quantity of music consumption — and therefore a double album as perhaps too much music — are the product of market forces that have imposed arbitrary norms on distribution and ingestion. The “album era” of popular music has so firmly entrenched, normalized and mythologized the two-sided 33.3-rpm vinyl disc as an ideal unto itself that even subsequent formats (CDs, mp3s, streaming) still orient themselves around the idea of albums, as does the industry that tallies sales, “sales equivalents” and hands out best-whatever-album awards, despite there being no practical need for doing so. 

Accordingly, a half-century of commercial musical output has configured itself within parameters that only exist because, in the late 1940s, Columbia Records introduced 12-inch vinyl LPs as a replacement for 78-rpm shellac discs that had been in circulation since the early years of the 20th century. The vinyl discs could hold about 25 minutes of music on each side, and as a result, a collection of songs adding up to between 40 and 50 minutes gradually became standardized as the way to sell music to the public, gradually overtaking the single until by the mid-1960s they were rock music’s primary expression of artistry as well as commerce. (Long story short, obviously.)

Bob Dylan’s “Blonde on Blonde,” in 1966, became the first double-LP rock album, which means, probably, that debates about whether double albums would have been better as single albums have raged for as long as the album has flowered as an art form unto itself, because the single album is always the standard by which we judge the double album. 

Would an all-killer/no-filler “Blonde on Blonde” have been better at half its length? Maybe I’ll get to that one eventually, but I do tend to prefer the lean and mean hypothetical, alternate-history single version of almost any double album I’ve encountered, because I think a shorter, compact, efficient listening experience is better than a longer one — again, a taste shaped by factors having nothing to do with the music itself. Surely there are going to be exceptions if I manage not to get sick of this idea and keep going. But to make better albums out of existing albums necessarily involves cutting fat, removing some songs but not always replacing them. There may be an installment of “I Fixed Your Album” where I look at all the material recorded or written within an album’s timespan of plausibility, then expand it from a single record to two (although I doubt it).

But the difference between a single album of 11 songs and a double album of 20-some is not the same for every artist. Some write songs faster than others do and have a deeper well of material for each album. Is it better to leave more of it off for the sake of brevity even if it means some amazing songs never get released? Bruce Springsteen would record dozens upon dozens of songs for every album and as a result has a whole alternate-universe discography. The Beatles had two productive songwriters and, in George Harrison, an emerging third. So if they’re releasing albums roughly as often as, say Creedence Clearwater Revival, shouldn’t they be at least twice as long?

Incidentally, the Beatles’ White Album is a good case study for both sides of the single vs. double argument. It is correct that you could cut half the material from the (technically self-titled) 1968 album and still have an incredible collection of songs — tighter and with less filler separating the many classics — that would probably be a better listening experience. It is also correct that the sheer indulgent heft of the White Album, the outpouring of creativity in all its messiness and mania, is part of why it’s such a singular achievement. It’s called “The Beatles” because this was THE BEATLES, and a work presenting all of their complexity would necessarily include material of varying quality. It both deifies and humanizes them.

Pink Floyd’s 1979 opus “The Wall,” easily the best-selling double album of all time, belongs to a very specific category of double album — not only a concept record but a ROCK OPERA, a sprawling collection of songs that are thematically and narratively connected. Rock operas are a tempting target for an album-god reconstruction, but they present a unique challenge, mainly because you can make one wrong move and the whole thing falls apart.

“The Wall” contains several obviously classic songs, which everybody knows and which will circulate on classic-rock airwaves until the heat death of the universe. Much of the interstitial material connecting those classics seems so obviously expendable that it’s easy to imagine nobody would miss it if it were gone. Or would they? My assumption when trying to rebuild “The Wall” into a filler-free single album is that this would be one of the easiest possible versions of this exercise, since the gulf in quality between the song-songs and the fragments is so clear and wide. But it’s proved remarkably difficult. 

So about that concept…

It’s hard to measure how the story of “The Wall” has aged. In one sense, an entire concept album about a rock star who hates being a rock star seems like a gesture of oblivious, privileged decadence, especially given how aggressively economic inequality has compounded since the album appeared. Oh, you feel alienated and exploited? Well, so do the rest of us, just without the millions to help dry the tears.

And yet, the structural conceit — using the format of arena rock to critique the idea of arena rock — is truly galaxy-brained; this was completely meta decades before “meta” was even a widely circulated cultural idea. “The Wall” over-succeeded commercially and artistically; any larger concept Roger Waters was trying to convey was doomed to be overshadowed by the fact that it contains four or five of the best songs in the classic-rock canon, all of which still sound great decontextualized from his story. The album’s bonkers sales figures actually prove its own concept. And plenty about that concept has borne out — the corruption of institutions, the amorality of capitalism, the mental minefield (or “thin ice”) of contemporary life — no matter the protagonist’s position on the social ladder. 

Anyway, there’s a rock star named Pink Floyd who’s on the verge of a mental breakdown. He replays traumatic events from his childhood — losing his father in World War II, being abused at school, being overbearingly mothered, being over-sexed — in order to build a (figurative, I think?) wall between him and his audience, or him and the world, or both. When he’s roused to perform, he emerges as a fascist demagogue figure. Whether or not that connection is convincing, this imagery is at least potent, and timely, considering Waters is currently being investigated by German police for “suspected incitement” following shows in Berlin, where he appeared in costume as that character from “The Wall” — a loaded image in Germany even if it’s obviously a work of satire.

Anyhow, Pink loses his mind, then something something something, the wall comes down. I forget what happens or, possibly, never really understood to begin with. The actual plot is far less legible than the concept, and there’s a lot of narrative abstraction in the album and, even more so, the 1982 film version. At some point it becomes unclear what is supposed to be literal and what is meant figuratively.

The extent to which this matters of course depends on the listener, although I feel as if Roger Waters is the only person on the planet who really cares about the story-story. I could definitely be wrong about that, but I’m going to proceed under the assumption that most fans, like myself, could take or leave the narrative because we’re here for some goddamn “Comfortably Numb” and some ripping-ass David Gilmour solos.

Either way, it is impossible to rebuild “The Wall” as a single album without seriously messing up the continuity of the plot and in some cases the flow of the music. But I believe the scalpel of brevity gives us a one-LP version of “The Wall” that keeps the great songs and enough of the connective material to preserve at least some of Waters’ thematic agenda — although it would probably still piss him off to see his masterwork violated with such flagrant indiscretion. In the not-bloody-likely chance he ever reads this, I’d hope he would at least consider spitting in my face.

So here’s my blasphemous new tracklist:

Side A (23:08)
1. In the Flesh?
2. The Thin Ice
3. Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 1
4. The Happiest Days of Our Lives
5. Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2
6. Mother
7. Goodbye Blue Sky

Side B (24:58)

8. Empty Spaces
9. Young Lust
10. Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 3
11. Comfortably Numb
12. Run Like Hell
13. Hey You
14. Is There Anybody Out There?

Total runtime: 48:06

Notice anything about the majority of the album?

1. In the Flesh? > 2. The Thin Ice > 3. Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 1 > 4. The Happiest Days of Our Lives > 5. Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2 > 6. Mother > 7. Goodbye Blue Sky > 8. Empty Spaces > 9. Young Lust

That’s correct, we don’t touch the first nine tracks. The way “The Wall” starts is about all you can ask for in a Major Statement album. The kickass opening rock song that is actually a commentary on opening rock songs. The scene-setting second song that gives us a little bit of exposition, establishes the conceptual framework (“If you should go skating / On the thin ice of modern life...”), and gives us a climatic guitar riff that seems to subvert the melody of the preceding song. The masterful centerpiece sequence that builds to the huge single (“Brick 2”). The Oedipal cool-down with the underrated guitar solo (“Mother”) followed by the grimly atmospheric war fantasia (“Goodbye Blue Sky”). The sex-crazed anthem that outdoes even the Rolling Stones in their disco phase (“Young Lust”). Great stuff.

If I was less forgiving with my editing cleaver, I’d chop “Empty Spaces,” but it segues so perfectly into “Young Lust,” which starts so abruptly it needs that preceding track for musical continuity. And since we’re going to end up losing some story, any piece of music that refers to “the wall” our man Pink is building in his mind (or whatever) ends up being valuable.

10. Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 3

“Young Lust” fades out into audio of a phone call in which, apparently, Pink learns his wife is cheating on him. The plot point nicely sets up our first bit of timeline leapfrog, we jump over “One of My Turns” and “Don’t Leave Me Now,” which constitute about eight navel-gazey minutes in which not a whole hell of a lot happens. In our shortened narrative, this feels like a good place for a call-back to one of the dominant musical motifs, and Pink’s anger flows naturally out of our previous track.

Something interesting happens in the musical transition between “Brick 3” and our next track, “Comfortably Numb.” The final “Brick 3” chord is a D major, but the vocal melody ends on a G note, which resolves into the F# that constitutes the perfect fifth note in the opening chord (B-suspended) to “Comfortably Numb.” (I think I have the music-theory nomenclature correct here.) And the increasing alienation neatly sets up the scene for “Comfortably Numb,” wherein a catatonic protagonist needs to be shot full of chemicals in order to perform. (What are we talking about here, amphetamines?) But how did he go from the infidelity-induced rage to a sedate stupor? Maybe he fell and hit his head or something.

11. Comfortably Numb > 12. Run Like Hell > 13. Hey You

How’s this for a run? Just three of the best songs in the Floyd catalog — in anyone’s catalog — back-to-back-to-back. Can the world even handle it? “Comfortably Numb” needs no introduction. It may or may not be the band’s finest song, or second-finest, but it seems to have been the ideal iteration of the Waters-Gilmour writing partnership, fraught and dysfunctional though it may have been. It contains what I think are Waters’ best, most heartfelt and simultaneously most chilling lyrics: “When I was a child, I caught a fleeting glimpse / Out of the corner of my eye / I turned to look but it was gone / I cannot put my finger on it now / The child is grown, the dream is gone.” I mean, jeez. It also contains two of Gilmour’s best guitar solos, the latter of which is maybe the pantheon late-‘70s arena-rock moment. Beyond that, it demonstrates their symbiosis, which is obvious due to what is missing in their subsequent decades of separate work. Waters’ solo albums are verbose and provocative but musically inert; Gilmour’s solo albums and post-Waters Floyd material all sound pretty nice but don’t even pretend to attempt literary depth.

With “Run Like Hell” (another Waters-Gilmour two-hander, songwriting-wise), the idea is, I guess, that Pink, shot full of the drugs that are supposed to get him on stage, instead escapes. Musically, it echoes back to the “Brick” motif, as it’s built on that same palm-muted, delay-drenched open D-string. This adjustment to the story, I think, works well enough — instead of a fascist meltdown and that whole interminable surrogate-band trial/wall-breaking sequence, he just peaces out, only to have his demons catch right up with him.

That is precisely what is going on in “Hey You,” which delivers a fitting climax, musically and narratively. It doesn’t upstage “Comfortably Numb” as the side-two centerpiece, nor is it the buzzkill that the end of the actual album ends up being. Gilmour’s solo is purposeful, and it’s undergirded by our final appearance of the “Brick” melody, which goes really hard in the song’s middle section. The vocal tag-team is a nice nod to the duality of Pink’s fractured psyche...or whatever. Gilmour gives voice to the angel on Pink’s shoulder, trying to coax him from behind the (in our version, completely figurative) wall: “Open your heart / I’m coming home” [bitchin’ solo].

Waters takes over in the second half and delivers a rebuttal: “It was only a fantasy / The wall was too high, as you can see / No matter how he tried, he could not break free / And the worms ate into his brain.” The song, and story, could have ended with that. It would have been a different denouement to “The Wall,” but seems consistent with Waters’ worldview. But like a consciousness snapping awake, the voice returns a final time: “Hey you, don’t tell me there’s no hope at all / Together we stand, divided we fall." And he trails off: “We fall, we fall, we fall, we fall...” Feels like a suitably ambiguous ending.

And then, we actually wrap it with “Is There Anybody Out There?,” the fragment that does actually follow “Hey You” on the original album. The spooky chanted repetition of the title adds to the uncertainty and implies, hopefully, that Pink is searching for connection, no matter where he’s ended up. Also, the second half of that piece is one of my favorite moments anywhere in the band’s catalog, where a melancholy finger-plucked guitar pattern dances out of the murky ether and gives us a downbeat resolution (and a lick that any intermediately talented rube can play anytime there’s an acoustic guitar nearby).

So there we are. The album follows a similar *kind* of arc even without capturing the story beat for beat. Does Pink ever truly escape? (Escape what again, being a rock star?) Did the wall ever actually exist? Does anybody except for Roger Waters care? With a version of “The Wall” this sturdy, compact and impactful, I’d argue not.

A giant disclaimer is that “The Wall,” the 1982 movie, is its own standalone piece of art that has a special place in the hearts of nearly a half-century of collegiate male former (/current) stoners. In the alternate universe I’m proposing, “The Wall” — the shortened album presented here — is released and still followed by the film, except the film’s soundtrack is fleshed out and expanded for the adaptation, so “The Wall,” the movie, ends up existing in its actual form.

Sound good? That’s an entirely rhetorical question; whatever you do, please refrain from sharing your thoughts in the comments.