The Wall: Immersion Box Set ($120), out today, presents Floyd fans with a six-CD, one-DVD journey into the making of bassist Roger Waters' powerful, disturbing rumination on childhood, fame and death.
For 24 hours (starting 12:01 a.m. EST Tuesday), USA TODAY readers have the exclusive opportunity to listen for free to three remastered hits and one never-released demo.
The set, also available in a three-CD Experience package ($28), follows last year's Immersion and Experience editions of the band's other masterpieces, Dark Side of the Moon (1973) and Wish You Were Here (1975).
Beyond a remastered version of 1979's The Wall and a live disc, the box offers myriad demos of classic songs in early bloom. For The Wall's builder, reviewing the building blocks offered a mixed experience.
"Those demos are a fascinating document insomuch as seeing what songs were finished when I approached the band, like Mother and Another Brick in the Wall, and those that weren't, like Run Like Hell," says Waters, 68, calling from an Australian stop on his The Wall Live tour, which hits Houston May 1 for an extended U.S. run. "It's also a bit like looking at a painter's sketches."
Unlike the collaborative effort on Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd's other members —David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Rick Wright— were presented with a completed solo effort when Waters played them demos of his concept album. But among the Immersion gems are Gilmour's critical touches.
"That riff in (the demo of) Run Like Hell is pure David, and his guitar part is big in Young Lust, which he co-wrote," Waters says. He adds that the set also reveals the "lovely chord sequence David provided for the chorus of Comfortably Numb."
The new release further opens the vaults of the seminal British band, which for decades "was very protective of its outtakes," says Brian Hiatt, senior writer for Rolling Stone. "What you get is the sense that this was a band that needed each other. And while The Wall is very much Roger's work, that still applied."
Waters says he had no inkling The Wall would endure when he wrote it, but he knows why fans continue to come hear him perform it.
"It was all about (fictional rock star) Pink and his problems, but I've changed, as have my preoccupations," he says. "I've solved my personal issues. So where it once was about the loss of my father, (it) has become a statement about war and losses of others. The story has broadened, and people respond to that."
Source: newyork
