Pink Floyd, The #54 Artist of the Rock Era, Part Three

 (Continued from Part Two)

In 1978, the band was short of money due to bad investments, and they needed a big money-maker.  Waters recorded a 90-minute demo for the band, which Roger called Bricks in the Wall.  Co-producer Bob Ezrin wrote a script for the album about a figure called Pink, a character based on Waters' experiences as a child.  In his lyrics, Waters referred to metaphorical bricks, such as the death of his father in World War II.  In the story, Pink increasingly used drugs and was depressed by the music industry, a direct inference to Barrett.  In the end, Pink tore down the wall, once again becoming a normal person. 

During the recording, Wright contributed little, and by the end, the other members asked him to leave.  In 1979, Pink Floyd released the album The Wall, and they released their first single in six years, "Another Brick In The Wall (Part II)".  "Another Brick In The Wall" reached #1 in every major country except Australia, where it peaked at #2, and the Netherlands, where it climbed to #4.

 

When KFXD in Boise, Idaho played it, enterprising DJ Bob Anthony spliced together all three parts of "Another Brick In The Wall".  We don't have that version, but here are Parts I, II and III together.

 

The album is loaded with Top Tracks*, such as "Is There Anybody Out There?", another distress call from Pink.  At this point in the story, the bitter Pink is trying to reach anyone outside of his self-built wall.  The conclusion is that when he repeatedly asks that question, no one answers.

 "Young Lust" is a parody of rock stars who use their fame for bodily desires.

"Run Like Hell" is another major reason the album has sold so well.  Pink Floyd tells the story of the anti-hero Pink who, during an hallucination, believes he is a fascist dictator turning his concert audience into a hate mob.  He sends the crowd out to raid neighborhoods full of minorities.  Kind-of, no, exactly like Donald Trump.  Years ahead of its time.

Pink Floyd were nominated for Album of the Year and Best Pop/Rock Performance by a Duo or Group at the Grammy Awards for their work on the album. 

 

"Hey You" was one of the tracks which received the most airplay.  Through its verses, the protagonist calls out to various people who appear unreachable.  In the context of the album, they have put up their personal "wall" to keep others out.

The Wall spent 15 weeks at #1 in the United States, but claims of 23 million albums sold in the United States are incorrect.  Since The Wall is a double album, the RIAA counts every sale of the album twice.    In reality, The Wall has sold 11.5 million copies in the United States.  Worldwide, sales are over 17 million.  

 

For live shows, Gerald Scarfe designed animations and had large inflatable puppets constructed that represented different characters from the story, including "Mother" and "The Schoolmaster".  Wright returned to play on the tour, but the members increasingly had difficulties with each other and kept to themselves.  The tour lost $600,000.  "Comfortably Numb" is a wonderful song about loneliness and the need for belonging.  The main thrust of the song is the difference between our mind as it was meant to be and reality because of artificial stimulus.

A movie of the concept was released in 1982.  For their next album, Waters used material that was originally considered for music from the soundtrack album.  Roger and Gilmour had songwriting spats and worked on the album apart from each other.  Waters dropped Gilmour from songwriting credits for the album, feeling he "wasn't contributing".

 

Pink Floyd released the album The Final Cut in 1983, an LP that has sold over two million copies.  The title song was one cut from The Wall album that made it onto record three years later.  This is the summation of what happened to Pink when he was "behind the wall", about his inability to socialize with others when he had his personal wall built up.  

 

"The Gunner's Dream" is another song worth featuring.

After release, Gilmour, Waters and Mason each released solo albums.  Waters said publicly that Pink Floyd was through.  He talked about settling future royalty payments with O'Rourke, who felt obliged to inform the other members.  This caused Waters to terminate his arrangement with O'Rourke and hire Peter Rudge as his personal manager.

Waters went to court to break up the band and prevent the other members from continuing to use the name Pink Floyd, but lost.  

For the second time in their career, the group was without a major songwriter.  But once again, they soldiered on, inviting Wright back as a session musician.  Mason hired others to record the drum parts and concentrated on sound effects for Pink Floyd's new album.  Gilmour was now free to become the chief creative force for the group.

 

In 1987, the band released A Momentary Lapse of Reason.  The album has reached Quadruple Platinum status in the U.S. and has gone over six million in sales worldwide.  The group released "Learning To Fly" as a single, #1 on the Mainstream Rock chart in the U.S. and #10 in New Zealand.  The song is metaphorically about breaking free while also being about the actual mechanics of learning to fly a plane, which Gilmour was learning to do when he wrote it.

 

Pink Floyd won an MTV Video Music Award for Best Concept Video for "Learning To Fly".  "On The Turning Away", which Gilmour said to Only Music in 1987 is about the political situations in the world.  "We have these right-wing conservative governments that don't seem to care about many things other than looking after themselves", he said.  "On The Turning Away" also landed at #1 on the Mainstream Rock chart.

On the subsequent tour, Waters once again used legal means to thwart his former group.  Finally by the end of the year, the parties agreed that Mason and Gilmour owned the name Pink Floyd and that Waters had stated exclusive rights, including use of The Wall.

 

The band released the album The Division Bell in 1994.  "Keep Talking" rose to #1 on the Mainstream Rock chart.  It features professor Stephen Hawking (who wrote the best-seller A Brief History Of Time) through a voice synthesizer.  Hawking can be heard in the spoken lines at the beginning of the song, after the guitar solo, and again towards the end. 

 "Coming Back To Life" is an emotional song for Gilmour; a spiritual renewal for the narrator.  The person is talking to a specific person in their past and criticizes that person for "hanging yourself on someone else's words".  It also stresses the importance of letting that person go to live their own life.  The song is so personal that Gilmour has been seen crying while singing at concerts.

 

"High Hopes" was the first song written for the album but the last one recorded.

 

"Take It Back", about Mother Earth and how after years of abuse, she will finally take back the planet from humans, is another Top Track*.

Pink Floyd were nominated for an American Music Award for Favorite Pop/Rock Band, Duo or Group.  The band toured in support of the album.

In 1995, Pink Floyd won a Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance for "Marooned".  Pink Floyd were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996. 

In 2005, Waters, Gilmour, Mason and Wright performed for the first time together in 24 years at Live 8 in London.

In 2008, King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden presented Pink Floyd with the Polar Music Prize for contributions to modern music.

Although Waters and Gilmour have performed for charity events in the years since, Pink Floyd has not reunited.

After the deaths of Barrett and Wright, Gilmour and Mason used songs recorded but not used on The Division Bell album.  They added session musicians and released the album The Endless River in 2014, which has been certified Gold.

Pink Floyd has amassed five career hits, with one Top 10 and one #1 song.  Like a few other artists in this exclusive ranking, however, hits don't tell the complete picture.  The band has 16 hits since the Mainstream Rock chart began in 1983, with eight of those reaching the Top 10 and three #1's.  Undoubtedly, the latter set of numbers would be tripled or quadrupled had the chart been around for all of Pink Floyd's existence.
  

They have sold over 75 million albums in the United States and over 250 million worldwide.

Pink Floyd won one Grammy Award out of five nominations and an MTV Video Music Award and were nominated for one World Music Award and one American Music Award.