Search - Roger Waters :: Wall: Live in Berlin

A miss version of The Wall without Pink Floyd

Terrence J. Reardon | Lake Worth (a west Palm Beach suburb), FL | 11/12/2007

(2 out of 5 stars)

"Roger Waters' The Wall in Berlin was released in September of 1990.

This performance of The Wall was first recorded on July 21, 1990 and I heard the original radio broadcast.

Although this is a live album, portions of it were taken from a re-do of the show after the original performance and the previous night's dress rehearsal. The original radio broadcast had the microphones all messing up and the power going out during The Thin Ice and Mother.

Initially, in a July, 1989 radio interview, Roger initially thought of having ex-bandmates David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Rick Wright play with him. Even David went through lawyers to get the OK to do it when asked at the Knebworth 1990 show backstage but then Roger shot down his ex-bandmates' offer in early July of 1990 (hypocritical of Roger at the time). Then, Roger tried to get artists like Bruce Springsteen, Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart and Peter Gabriel (this would have been superb IMHO) for the performance. Unfortunately, those artists were either unavailable or wanted money so in the end he got some good artists (The Scorpions (whom were excellent on In the Flesh), Joni Mitchell (pretty good on Goodbye Blue Sky), Bryan Adams (his Young Lust was not bad), Paul Carrack (he did Hey You very well)) and some very bad artists (Van Morrison and The Band (sans Robbie Robertson which is sacrilege) (they destroyed David Gilmour's parts on Comfortably Numb), Cyndi Lauper (her duetting with Roger on Another Brick in the Wall (pt. 2) was atrocious), Ute Lemper (tolerable on The Thin Ice but Mariah Carey-esquely annoying on The Trial), Sinead O' Connor (awful here on Mother but ironically was good on Rick Wright's Broken China) and Jerry Hall (her as the groupie was unnecessary)) for the performance.

Whilst original Wall show stalwarts Snowy White and Peter Wood plus Andy Fairweather-Low and Graham Broad were good, Rick DiFonso desecrated David Gilmour's solos thinking he was Eddie Van Halen (enough of the divebomb things with guitar Rick Van Halen DiFonso).

Fortunately, Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live 1980-81 (released in 2000) does great live justice to The Wall as it is the classic Floyd lineup performing The Wall (and there are videos filmed from those shows). If I were you, I'd spend my money on Is There Anybody Out There?.

Grab The Wall in Berlin ONLY if you are a collector."