Studio Albums | Live Albums | Compilations | Boxsets | DVDs & Bluray | Roger Waters | David Gilmour | Richard Wright | Syd Barrett | Nick Mason
The Wall – Live in Berlin was a live concert performance by Roger Waters and numerous guest artists, of the Pink Floyd studio album The Wall, itself largely written by Waters during his time with the band.
The show was held in Berlin on 21 July 1990, to commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall eight months earlier.
A live album of the concert was released 21 August 1990. A video of the concert was also commercially released.
Guest artists including Snowy White, Rick Danko, Levon Helm and Garth Hudson of The Band, The Hooters, Van Morrison, Sinéad O’Connor, Cyndi Lauper, Marianne Faithfull, Scorpions, Joni Mitchell, Paul Carrack, Thomas Dolby and Bryan Adams, along with actors Albert Finney, Jerry Hall, Tim Curry and Ute Lemper. Leonard Cheshire opened the concert by blowing a World War I whistle.
This performance had several differences from Pink Floyd’s original production of The Wall show. Both “Mother” and “Another Brick in the Wall, Part II” (like in the 1980/81 concerts) were extended with solos by various instruments and the latter had a cold ending.
“In The Flesh” (also like the 1980/81 concerts) has an extended intro, and “Comfortably Numb” featured dueling solos by the two guitarists as well as an additional chorus at the end of the song.
“The Show Must Go On” is omitted completely, while both “The Last Few Bricks” and “What Shall We Do Now?” are included (“The Last Few Bricks” was shortened).
Also, the performance of the song “The Trial” had live actors playing the parts, with Thomas Dolby playing the part of the teacher hanging from the wall, Tim Curry as the prosecutor, and Albert Finney as the Judge.
The repeated proclamation of “Tear down the wall!” and subsequent destruction of the on-stage wall was for this show accompanied by a projection of a section of the actual Berlin Wall on the cardboard bricks used on stage.
The show officially ended with “The Tide Is Turning”, a song from Waters’ then-recent solo album Radio K.A.O.S. The Wall’s original closing number, “Outside the Wall,” was affixed to the end of “The Tide is Turning.”
The Wall – Live in Berlin was released as a live recording of the concert, and the Laserdisc video in NTSC can still be found through second sourcing. A DVD was released in 2003 in the U.S. by Island/Mercury Records and internationally by Universal Music (Region-free).