This Day In Music
February 7th
The fall of two different walls a decade apart, two different moments for Elvis, and a big-selling mini-ballerina, all on this day in music.
Events
1980: The first performance of The Wall Tour was held by Pink Floyd at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena. Due to the complicated presentation, the band played only 31 dates at just two different venues in the United States, and two more in Europe, comprised of two runs in London at Earl’s Court Exhibition Centre, and a run in Dortmund, Germany in between, at Westfalenhallen.
February 7, 1980 would be the first of seven shows on consecutive nights in Los Angeles, a pattern followed at each venue, ranging from five to seven nights, since the only practical way of managing the sets was to leave them built for a week at a time.
The total attendance figure for Los Angeles was just under 75,000. While that’s certainly impressive, it was small by Pink Floyd standards. For instance, at their infamous Animals Tour stop in Montréal in 1977, which germinated the idea for “The Wall,” the band performed to over 78,000 spectators in a single concert. The design of The Wall tour’s set pieces, most prominently the building of the wall, were not suitable for stadiums, resulting in financial failure.
That expense, along with discord in the band, made the tour somewhat unpleasant for Pink Floyd’s members. It would be the last tour with Roger Waters, who left the band in 1985, and did not perform with the others again until the Live 8 show on July 2, 2005.
During the first half of the show, a wall made from styrofoam bricks measuring 10 meters high and 50 meters long was progressively built across the stage, completely blocking out the band. The wall was to be completed by the end of the song “Goodbye Cruel World,” which closes out Side B on the album and is the mid-way point in the story. On some occasions, construction was behind schedule, and the band would extend the two-note bass line at the beginning of the song to allow the formation of the wall to catch up.
Following a 20-minute intermission and the second half of the show, the wall would be demolished as the narrative of the music and lyrics played out, with the final burst occurring during the penultimate song, “The Trial.”
Five additional musicians were brought in to be a second band as a logistical measure, along with three additional back-up vocalists. Each venue also included a local MC, with famous radio DJ Jim Ladd doing the honours in his home town of Los Angeles. Ladd would go on to be the DJ of the fictional radio station in Rogers Waters’s 1987 concept album, “Radio K.A.O.S.”
Frustrated with the difficulties of the arena tour, and also due in part to the album’s core themes, Rogers declared that he would never perform “The Wall” again. When pressed on the issue by Dallas DJ Doug Redbeard Hill, Rogers quipped, “Well, I might do it outdoors if they ever take the wall down in Berlin.”
Just short of ten years later, on November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall did come down, and Waters made good on his promise, presenting “The Wall” as a solo artist on July 21, 1990 outdoors in the “no man’s land” between Postdamer Platz and Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, and broadcast live around the world.
Supporting Waters were numerous guest musicians, including the Scorpions entire band, Rick Danko, Levon Helm, and Garth Hudson from The Band, Cyndi Lauper, Sinéad O’Connor, the entire American band The Hooters, Joni Mitchell performing “Goodbye Blue Sky,” model and wife of Mick Jagger, Jerry Hall, as Pink’s groupie, Bryan Adams, and Van Morrison. In addition, Thomas Dolby played The Schoolmaster, Tim Curry was The Prosecutor, Marianne Faithful was The Mother, and the great Albert Finney performed the role of The Judge, a character that was originally animated, and voiced by Roger Waters in the 1982 movie, Pink Floyd - The Wall.
Included in the 1989 concert was one non-The Wall song, “The Tide is Turning.” It was modified with a parenthetical “After Live Aid,” and taken from the aforementioned “Radio K.A.O.S.” Performed by all members of the cast and band, it was the second-to-last song, leading into “Outside the Wall,” the album and tour’s original conclusion.
Back to The Wall Tour, though it was not commercially successful, it was a hit with fans, and received glowing reviews, with The New York Times stating, “Never again will one be able to accept the technical clumsiness, distorted sound and meagre visuals of most arena rock concerts as inevitable. The Wall show will be the touchstone against which all future rock spectacles must be measured.”
1961: Songwriters Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman adapt an old Neapolitan ballad entitled “Torna a Surriento” into the modern-day song, "Surrender," which is recorded and released on this day by Elvis. Reaching Platinum certification, it would become one of Presley's highest-selling singles, and was of course a No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100.
Releases
1972: Legendary British singer-songwriter and piano player Elton John releases the song, "Tiny Dancer," the second single from his album, "Madman Across the Water."
Songwriting partner Bernie Taupin's lyrics were inspired by his first visit to California in 1970, and by his wife, Maxine Feibelman, who was into ballet and used to sew patches onto Elton's clothes as “seamstress for the band.”
The single peaked at No. 41 on the Billboard Hot 100, and is certified 5x Platinum as of December 6, 2024 in the US, 3x Platinum in the UK as of August 16, 2024, and 7x Platinum in Australia. It has endured as an Elton John classic and continues to sell to this day.
The Daily Elvis
1988: A TV mini-series titled "Elvis and Me," and based upon Priscilla Presley's book of the same name, premiers on ABC-TV in the United States. Essentially an extended-length TV movie, it was broadcast in two parts on successive nights and became ABC's second-highest rated mini-series ever.
Picture 1: Pink Floyd’s completed wall, occurring just after “Goodbye Cruel World” and left standing throughout the intermission. The Wall Tour 1980.
Picture 2: The wall was fully demolished at the end of “The Trial” in-sync with the lyrics, “Tear down the wall!,” spoken by The Judge. The Wall Tour 1980.
