On The Road With Roger Waters' The Wall Live

Whereas the original Pink Floyd shows of 1980 preceded moving lights, line arrays, hi-def video and sophisticated automation, this new live production of Roger Waters’ magnum opus, The Wall, harnesses all of today’s advanced technologies to deliver an uncompromised assault on the senses.

One might even be forgiven for thinking this was the show that all of this weaponry was waiting for. And having witnessed three performances at the Mediolanum Forum in Assago, Milan at the beginning of April, I am convinced that this is not only the greatest live show I’ve ever seen, it’s one that I sincerely doubt will be surpassed any time soon.

As explained by Waters in last month’s prelude feature, the feelings of loss and alienation that were at the core of his original narrative are still there, only the meaning has now been expanded as a wider statement on the effects of war, religion, politics and commerce on 21st century life. Filtered through the writer’s concern for the human condition, the result is as much an emotional experience as it is cerebral.

Of course, it helps if you’re familiar with the 1979 Pink Floyd album or perhaps the Alan Parker-directed movie, but even the uninitiated cannot fail to be moved by the sheer dynamic energy and unprecedented creative content in this new presentation.

Introduced by a soundtrack clip from Spartacus, signifying the judgement of a man who stood up to the Establishment, The Wall Live is separated into two Acts, each approximately 55 minutes long, with images of victims of conflict projected on to the bricks during the 20 minute intermission.

Musically, The Wall is recreated with pinpoint accuracy by Waters (bass, acoustic guitar & trumpet) and his highly skilled and drilled 11-piece ‘Giant Big Man Band’, comprising drummer Graham Broad, guitarists Dave Kilminster, Snowy White and G.E. Smith, keyboard players Jon Carin and Harry Waters (who has toured with his father since 2002 and whose voice appeared on the Wall album), vocalist Robbie Wyckoff (handling David Gilmour’s vocal parts), and backing singers, a.k.a. the Pumpkin Launchers, Jon Joyce and the Lennons (Kipp, Mark and Pat).

The design project was headed by Mark Fisher, working alongside Stufish colleague Jeremy Lloyd, creative director Sean Evans, and Tyler Kisera of Tait Towers whose youthful energy and vision proved to be an inspiration for all. Sensible Events’ Andrew Zweck leads as tour director and Chris Kansy (Van Morrison, Janet Jackson, Mary J. Blige) is in the production management hot seat.

“There are plenty of artists touring with 25 trucks of equipment and doing their ‘froth and bubble’ shows, but nobody’s doing a production with such intensity, depth and integrity,” said Zweck, whose son Michael is tour accountant.

“No other artist who has the brains to pull this off, but you need the budget, and that came as the result of a 10-year climb. Roger revitalised his solo career in 1999 and has toured regularly since then, delivering a fantastic show every time.

“Punters now realise he is the creative heart and soul of Pink Floyd, but it’s taken until now to re-build the brand name and  be pretty confident of selling out every venue, and therefore mount a production of this scale.”

Fisher valued the production investment at around $10 million. “Much more,” argued Zweck who, like Fisher, has worked with Waters since the mid-’70s. “I was the Floyd’s Pig flyer on the Animals tour,” he reminded us. The package of the fabled inflatable puppets cost $2 million alone — twice the budget of the 1980 Wall.

REHEARSING
The European leg opened in Lisbon on March 21 and followed one of the most successful North American tours in recent history. Before its début show on September 15 in Toronto, the crew undertook many long weeks of rehearsal, firstly in the Mohegan Sun Arena in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania (strategically close to Tait Towers and Clair) and then at the Izod Center in East Rutherford, New Jersey where final production rehearsals were conducted, ending with a private performance to friends and family.

Tait’s contributions to the show design cannot possibly be overstated. Along with the ingenious projection content, the company played the most crucial role of all.

Mark Fisher explained: “Winky [CEO James Fairorth] says it’s the most complicated show that Tait has ever built. And so it’s amusing to think we did the same show 30 years ago without all of this complex automation. But these days, nobody would countenance a show at this level being manually operated. We’ve all moved on.

“Everything is completely new... except the artist! Whilst the concept and machinery are replicated, the control is the big difference. Tait went back to Genie Industries and bought the same telescoping masts to build the man lifts and wall stabilisers that we bought in 1980.”
   
BUILDING THE WALL
In its largest configuration, the wall is 35’ high and 240’ wide as governed by the full width of the projection. Depending on the slope of the arena being played, it can range from 210’ wide to 240’.

The wall itself was the biggest focus and required the longest amount of rehearsal. It was a long process with Mark Fisher and I going to Tait Towers every few weeks to see how they were progressing with the structure building and how they were knocking the wall down. That was pretty comical at the start!

“Later on, Roger, who was routining the music with the band in a makeshift studio on Long Island, near his house, would occasionally jump in a chopper to see how we were doing. He’d stay a hour or two and then fly back to rehearsals. As you do!

“But just like any tour, all the way through there was an opening night written large on our calendar and everybody was aiming for it.”

As Kansy attests, a 35’ high cardboard wall cannot stabilise itself. “From out front, it’s really deceiving how technical this show is,” he said, “and it’s only when you go behind the wall that you appreciate what’s going on.

The 10 telescoping stabliisers that keep the wall intact, the man lifts that enable the building of the wall, and hoist Robbie Wyckoff and Dave Kilminster above it in ‘Comfortably Numb’, and the process of tipping the wall at the show’s climax all comes under the control of the Navigator automation system from Fisher Technical Services (FTSI), which shares resources with Tait and sent technicians out from its Las Vegas base to assist with the operation.

Capable of elevating crew 25’ high, the man lifts are formed of five separate hydraulic elevators that make one 100’ wide moving platform.

Mark Fisher, no relation of the above firm, recalled the key difference between old and new methods of wall destruction: “When we tore down the wall in 1980, I’d sit behind the stage with a bank of switches, running the electric motors to make the stabilisers go up and down. I’d control the speed at which the bricks fell and I was the only person who practiced that operation.

“It’s the same result this time, only it’s Alex Blais sitting in front of the Navigator computer that automates the flicking of switches.” These switches activate a dual-acting pneumatic knocker system that is integrated into the top stage.

With head carpenter Denny Rich ensuring that the side ramparts are the first elements to go up, the sequence of the live build is the same as it was in 1980 but getting it right was even more important this time because as each brick is laid, video is projected upon it and the overall projected image is masked in sequence.

Jeremy Lloyd established the brick-build pattern and that took a lot of repetition to perfect over the course of a month in Wilkes-Barre with assistant stage manager Josh Gelfond guiding the order via radio.

“Setting up the wall, knocking it down. I lost track of how many times we did it,” commented Kansy. “It also took a lot of cardboard bricks. They’re semi-resilient — some of them last three shows, some only one. Each measures 5’ wide x 2.5’ high; they come flat-packed and it takes nearly 400 to do each show, so we slowly replace the ones that are looking worn. They’re sprayed with a flame-resistant substance. They’ll smoulder but they won’t burst into flames. Some of those bricks are flats that are there from the start, but it’s hard to tell out front.” For Europe, the flat-packed bricks are made in the UK by Smurfit Kappa of Peterborough.

REVEALING MAGIC
There are two sets of backline: one set is for the main, 8’ high, 3,350ft2 stage; the other emerges on the fore stage via subterranean elevators after ‘Comfortably Numb’ in Act Two, and then disappears after ‘Waiting For The Worms’.

“A lot of thinking went into this,” said Kansy. “Tyler Kicera, Tait’s genius lead designer on this, came up with an idea rather like that of a slatted, rolltop desk which he adopted for the backline lifts, and the amps and drums seem to appear as if by magic. When the elevators are down, slip stages cover the voids.

“Tyler’s vision is quite amazing in the way he can articulate his ideas and it seems that he never fails to deliver an elegant solution to any problem. He is the guy who worked most closely with Mark Fisher and I on bringing the physical wall back to life.”

Another Tait Towers creation, the drawbridge of the forced perspective hotel room opens for ‘Nobody Home’, with a TV, chair, bed and lamp hard-mounted, and a skyline view in the background.

Just as drawbridge becomes level, Waters takes his place in the chair under cover of darkness to prepare for one of The Wall’s highlights. But to paraphrase the lyric, you’d have thought that by 2011 there would be more than just “13 channels of shit” on his TV to choose from.

AUTOMATED PUPPETRY
The Teacher, Wife and Mother puppets, along with the mechanics and automation to operate them, have been supplied by Brilliant Stages while their garish inflatable skins were manufactured by Rob Harries at Air Artists.

Brilliant Stages devised a system of cradles and winches to facilitate the extensive animation required for the Teacher and Wife, which stand 9m high. The puppets are suspended by fine steel wire ropes attached to individual electric winches mounted into a compact cradle.

The winches move the limbs independently whilst the cradle carrying the winches also slews to enable the puppets to turn 180°. Customised control systems from Andy Cave of Kinesys were used for the cradles and winches.

Although the larger, 10m high Mother is perched above the wall, she moves her head from side to side — a motion created by an electric motor driving a toothed-belt pinion on to a slew ring within the neck.

Working alongside Lee Threlfall, Brilliant Stages also incorporated LED light sources to illuminate the eyes of each puppet. RGB LED light engines with custom heat sinks and enclosures were built into a customised hanging frame suspended inside the head of each puppet and containing power supplies and control modules.

In addition, the Teacher has two 600mm diameter custom light boxes incorporating RGB LED strips that represent the whites of the eyes. Power for the eyes is derived from the automation cradle using cable reelers, with data control supplied by wireless DMX.

Each of the three puppets travels in its own dolly designed for ease of transport and rapid installation.

On tour, these three puppets are looked after by Ian Macdonald and Tony Ravenhill. While Ravenhill is charged with maintaining the puppets and their motors, Macdonald operates them during the show from a Kinesys workstation at FOH.

Macdonald triggers 60 cues in total for the Teacher, over 5:50 minutes of continuous movement, while the Wife has five cues over 73 seconds — he firstly releasing them from their wrapped-up position in a Kabuki sling. Mother requires a moderate eight cues during 3:30 minutes.

The trademark black Pig, released from backstage at the start of ‘Run Like Hell’, is the product of Canadian specialist Mobile Air Ships’ Blimp division which has been responsible for several of Waters’ porkers over the last 12 years.

Flown around the audience for a good 10 minutes by carpenter Sean Jacobs (“a college kid who we turned into a fully-fledged road dog,” said Chris Kansy), the helium-filled Pig is covered in appliquéd political graffiti and propelled by electric fans.

CREATIVE VIDEO
Opportunities to create video content as part of a concert production have, let’s face it, been abused at times with some artists’ arena shows. It’s become the default quick fix when the pop star talent is somewhat lacking.

At the other extreme are Roger Waters and his creative director Sean Evans, a former album sleeve designer for Sony Records who first worked with the Floyd co-founder on his Ça Ira opera in 2005.

Adding the technical wisdom of video systems guru Richard Turner to the partnership was a shrewd move, resulting in what is arguably the most mesmerising video production in rock history.

“Roger and I see eye to eye creatively and he appreciates that I’ll always go out of my way to get the best solution to any idea,” said Evans. “I feel that he’s now at a stage in his career where everything has to be iconic and look like a million dollars, and that obviously sets the bar pretty high.

“Conceptually, Roger didn’t want this new version to be about the internal struggle of a rock star; he wanted to expand the narrative to reference the social, political and religious divisions that occur in today’s world,” commented Evans.

“Of course, there are some aspects of the original show’s more famous images that you can’t mess with, and we debated long and hard about how to make ‘The Trial’ work in this environment. The slot machine look was a naff idea and re-animating it in 3D would have taken us a year and been financially impractical.

“So the answer was to take Gerald Scarfe’s original animation, which Roger has in his vault, make very high resolution 4K scans of it and hand paint every scene out to 8K. It was a painful, laborious, two month process but it had to be done right.

“The same people who did that applied the same skills to the ‘Waiting For The Worms’ animation from the 1982 movie.”
The hammers were re-drawn in 3D. “Even before we had our style guide locked in place, we’d started on the hammers but it all looked very 2010, very lens flarey, and inappropriate when placed in the context of the other imagery. It bent Gerry out of shape when he saw it so we went back to the drawing board.”

Other original footage required subtle ‘upgrades’. For example, the dramatic ‘F**king Flowers’ sequence from ‘Empty Spaces’, where the flower stems were extended to fill the sides of the wall.

In two parts of the show, the content features a ‘demented Pink’ on a section of the wall which spins 180° to reveal a 3D ‘Reg Troll’ character, based on a caricature of Waters drawn by Scarfe in 1974. It’s a harrowing sight and one of many creative and technical victories for Evans’ team.

Evans explained: “I did a lot of the 3D content using Cinema 4D and the Reg Troll piece was done using Maya software with Meats Meier, a video designer who works with Tool.

“In fact, I learned a lot about the capabilities of Maxon’s Cinema 4D throughout this project; it’s been a hell of a learning curve!

“At various points it looks as if there are two or more layers of imagery, but it’s all one piece. It was all about f**king with space and people’s minds, bringing really trippy aspects to the content with big sweeps, the spinning of the wall, and especially when Roger is seen to push the wall and make it ‘explode’.

“But every nuance has to have meaning with Roger, so there’s not a single piece of gratuitous content in the show. Each of the quotes that we project are carefully chosen by Roger and timed for effect, and we’ve added a few from Kafka and ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ for Europe.

“We had the wall modelled in 3D so that we could project a brick on a brick. That was a fundamental point when we brought Richard Turner in. The aim was to enable accurate projection on any given part of the wall, and once that structure was in place we could really start to mess around creatively.

Footage was gathered from all areas of the Internet as well as agencies where appropriate. One of the more moving items comes in ‘Vera’, when a young female student’s face breaks out in tears of joyful disbelief at the sight of her father returning from war... in this case, Iraq.

“It’s a beautiful scene, isn’t it?” Evans remarked. “It had to be real people, real scenes, and when you find things like this it’s unparalleled. We wanted it to feel global and not identified with one particular country. It happens to be an American soldier returning from Iraq, but then the U.S. does tend to go to war frequently!”

Other notable sequences include ‘The Thin Ice’ which begins with the famous baby cry and the image of Waters’ father, Eric, who died at Anzio in ’44. The theme of lost loved ones in conflict continues with photos sent in by victims’ families, and also includes an image of Jean Charles de Menezes, who was shot dead by police at Stockwell tube station in 2005, after wrongly suspecting he was a terrorist. A speeding tube train and the sound of gunfire follow.

A close look at the ‘Nobody Home’ sequence reveals that the clip from the movie The Battle Of Britain that is projected across the wall is replicated in sync on Waters’ hotel room TV, thanks to an Apple Mac mini. It’s one of many subtleties that are simply mind-blowing.

Evans’ biggest challenge is perhaps the fact that, because Waters is constantly looking to underline key messages or fine-tune elements of the show on an almost daily basis, he (and the compositors using Adobe After Effects) needs to respond quickly with the visuals.

“After each show, Roger watches a DVD to review the performance and he will inevitably find fault. He does understand the limitations posed by the lengthy video rendering process, so he won’t expect me to perform technical miracles overnight.

“But yes, it has required serious efforts from time to time and anything longer than 30 seconds usually takes a week. That’s why if you need resources and he appreciates why, he’ll tell you to get whatever it is. Apple must love us.”

Chris Kansy recalled one day during the Izod Center rehearsals when a “huge number” of brand new Mac Pro towers were unpacked.

 “Right now, at Breathe, the New York editing suite co-owned by Andy Jennison who worked on all of this with Roger and I for months before the tour started,” continued Evans, “there are 0 machines that are set up on a render farm, working on some pieces I’ve recently created.     

“They just sit there rendering frames. I can’t do it from the venue because the Internet connection is often so weak but I can log in at my hotel where it’s much faster and check on progress.” I wish I could have said the same about my hotel in Milan.

I spoke with Evans on a no-show day in Milan, but that wasn’t to say his department wasn’t busy. They were using this ‘dark’ day to conduct camera tests for a proposed DVD shoot, hence the presence of additional crew including lighting chief Rich Gorrod who will be working on the DVD for real.

“Just like the original, this is a very difficult show to shoot so it requires a lot of preparation in advance. So here in Milan, where we have access to key crew, we can go to different parts of the show, look at light levels, all that kind of stuff, and make a well-informed game plan,” said Evans.

The DVD shoot may happen at London’s O2 next month. It may not. Ask Mr. Waters.

To read the article in full, please see page 28 of TPi's April issue in the digital archive here.