In 1980 Pink Floyd's The Wall topped the charts and stayed there for 4 months!

The Wall was released in 1979, as a rock opera about Pink, a jaded rock star who constructs a 'wall' of social isolation. The album received mixed reviews from critics, but became one of the greatest albums of all time.

Roger Waters, conceived The Wall during Pink Floyd's In the Flesh tour, modelling Pink after himself and Syd Barrett, recording the album from December 1978 to November 1979. Producer Bob Ezrin refined the album's concept and quelled tensions by the band members struggling with issues at the time. The Wall was the last album to feature all members of Pink Floyd as Richard Wright, was fired by Waters.

The album spawned "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2," which became Pink Floyd's only number-one single, "Run Like Hell", and the all-time classic "Comfortably Numb". Floyd performed the full album on tour and The Wall was adapted into a feature film, as Waters wrote the screenplay, with animation sequences by Gerald Scarfe. The Boomtown Rats' Bob Geldof made his film debut as rock star Pink, who, is driven to neurosis by the pressures of stardom and traumatic events. Pink, constructs emotional and mental walls to protect himself, but the coping mechanism backfires, and Pink demands to be set free. The film premiered at the Empire, Leicester Square in London, on July 14 1982, and was attended by Waters, David Gilmour and Nick Mason, but not Richard Wright, who was out of the band by then.

The Wall is the best-known concept album of all time, with over 30 million copies sold, and the second best-selling album for the band behind Dark Side of the Moon.

Doc Reno