Bricks in the Wall

In July 1978, amid a financial crisis caused by negligent investments, Waters presented two ideas for Pink Floyd’s next album. The first was a 90-minute demo with the working title Bricks in the Wall; the other later became Waters’s first solo album, The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking . Although both Mason and Gilmour were initially cautious, they chose the former. Bob Ezrin co-produced and wrote a forty-page script for the new album. Ezrin based the story on the central figure of Pink—a gestalt character inspired by Waters’s childhood experiences, the most notable of which was the death of his father in World War II . This first metaphorical brick led to more problems; Pink would become drug-addled and depressed by the music industry, eventually transforming into a megalomaniac, a development inspired partly by the decline of Syd Barrett. At the end of the album, the increasingly fascist audience would watch as Pink tore down the wall, once again becoming a regular and caring person.