The Wall Goes Broadway
Pink Floyd‘s performances behind their 1979 landmark The Wall were plenty theatrical and the album inspired the bizarre Alan Parker film of the same name, so it’s no big surprise that the next step is Broadway. As the record celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary, plans are being made to adapt it into a musical.
Floyd frontman Roger Waters, who organized a large-scale concert production of the album in Berlin in 1990, has signed on to write the book for the production, and he will also arrange and orchestrate music for the musical. The Wall will be produced by Miramax Films and Tommy Mottola’s new Casablanca Records. A start date has not yet been set for the production.
“Now I can write in some laughs,” Waters said, “notable by their absence in the movie.”
Since it’s release, The Wall has continued to draw new fans and interest. One of the best-selling records of all-time, it is the subject of a new book, The Wall: In the Studio, On Stage and On Screen, by Jeff Bench and Daniel O’Brien.
Waters discussed the enduring allure of the The Wall and Floyd’s other touchstone release Dark Side of the Moon with Rolling Stone in 2002. “You can describe both records in the same way, I think: They are very well-crafted and cohesive, and they’ve got some really good tunes in them,” he said. “And both are prepared to be puerile in their attachment to some basic fundamental beliefs. The records are bought by people when they hit puberty, when it becomes important to us to attach to ideas. That’s why people are still buying Catcher in the Rye: To help us discover how we think.”