Guest
The Wall concert was only performed 31 times in four cities: Los Angeles (7 shows), Uniondale (5), Dortmund (8) and London (11). The primary ’tour’ consisted of 18 shows in L.A., Uniondale and London in 1980, but the band performed a further eight shows in Dortmund (13–20 February 1981) and five more shows at Earl’s Court (13–17 June) for filming, with the intention of integrating the shows into the upcoming movie. The London shows are documented on the album Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live 1980-81. David Gilmour and Mason attempted to convince Waters to expand the show for a more lucrative, large-scale stadium tour, but because of the nature of the material (one of the primary themes is the distance between an artist and his audience) Waters balked at this. The idea to include live concert footage of any significant length for The Wall film was dropped shortly before the final shows took place. There are conflicting statements regarding the professionally filmed footage. It had been widely believed that ’the wrong type of film’ had been used and the results were dark and murky. Mark Fisher, partly responsible for designing the show said the footage was: ’very dark and horrible and boring and should be burned’. Alan Parker himself said: ’[the filming of the shows were] five blown opportunities’. These rumours were partially scotched when the Channel 4 documentary ’Behind the Wall’ (2000) used perfectly clear footage from the 1981 concerts. 27 February and 9 August 1980 concerts were shot on videotape. David Gilmour has stated in an interview that only three tracks were captured on film:
