A rather special phenomenon has developed in recent years, the quasi canonisation of light music. It is now being decided which of the musical works of the last few decades will become lasting and which pass into sweet oblivion, at least as far as live concerts are concerned. The representatives of the new genres that appeared in the second half of the 20^th century are all on the road to old age and although their fans may regard them as being immortal, sooner or later they will all be playing their music on a heavenly stage. And since these branches of music production have thus far been inseparable from their original performers, it will only now transpire which works can credibly be performed by others, as can be done in the case of classical music.

In this regard the growing popularity of tribute bands is a noteworthy trend. "The best Abba since Abba" splashed across placards last year advertised a tribute concert to the Swedish group in Budapest, while a band that specialises in Pink Floyd has already performed in Hungary. The advertisement read: "This is the only Pink Floyd tribute band in which the original members of the band would feel at home". However, as far as feeling at home is concerned, the members of the British band that split up over ten years ago did not even feel comfortable in the original line-up and the two main personalities of the band, Roger Waters and David Gilmour, could barely stand being on the same stage.  

Suing rivals

This is why for the fans it is a major event when the two rivals, who since the band split up have been pursuing solo careers, put aside their old differences and sometimes get together to perform. This happened in July this year when the two rock Methuselahs, probably weary of their material, artistic and personal squabbles, gave a concert at an event in London organised by the Hoping Foundation, which espouses the cause of Palestinian refugee children. (The first time the two great rivals played together after their split in 1985 was in 2005 at the Live 8 musical event organised by Bob Geldoff).

The event went off so well that, according to Waters, afterwards Gilmour made an historical promise, i.e. that at one of the concerts of the group's currently running tour of The Wall he would sing Comfortably Numb, one of their most popular jointly written songs. The series of concerts which started in America this year and will continue in Europe next year, coming to Budapest on 22 June, is a mega undertaking by Waters and at the same time would fill a long-gaping hole. Although the album was released in 1979, followed by an American tour based on it in 1980-81, the songs from it were only performed in Europe on a few occasions in London and in Dortmund.  However, in 1990 hundreds of thousands saw The Wall live and 100 million TV viewers watched it performed in Berlin at the celebration of the demolition of the wall separating the German city in joint performances by musicians such as Sinéad O'Connor, Cyndi Lauper, Marianne Faithful, Bryan Adams and the Scorpions.

The new tour of The Wall will therefore probably be the first and last one in Europe with a performance by the work's main artist, Roger Waters, heard live. The reason for the long delay is two-fold. On the one hand the transportation of the monumental stage production, with massive light and sound effects requiring monstrous technical apparatus, ran into problems. On the other hand the relationship between the band members, who formed their group in 1967, has deteriorated since they made The Wall. Initial quarrels soon turned into a chasm and Waters not only left the band but also tried to prevent the remaining members from continuing their careers as Pink Floyd. The legal wrangles were finally resolved by a court's ruling in 1987 that allowed the band to continue using the original name with Gilmour at its head while Waters was granted the performance rights of The Wall.

Roger Waters' complexes

The thematic double album is Pink Floyd's 11^th studio recording and to some degree is a manifestation of Roger Waters' creative complexes since the work is based on several personal events, the main one of these being the Vietnam War, the recent memory of which at the time led the musician to take a keen interest in his father's death in World War II. However, there was also a more banal source of inspiration. The band was on tour in Canada in 1977 and one loud-mouthed member of a group of fans in front of the stage worked Waters up so much that he spat at one of them during the performance. After the incident the musician started to wonder that if things went on like this, perhaps it would be necessary to separate rock stars and their audiences with a wall. This inspired him with the brainwave to create Pink, the record's leading character.

"I don't know if the conflict in Montreal changed the life of the fan that was spat on or not but one thing is for sure, he didn't hire a lawyer, nor did he file a claim for copyright for providing Waters with creative inspiration," recalls the band's drummer, Nick Mason, in his outstanding book Inside Out. Alan Parker's visionary anti-war film adaptation of The Wall with Bob Geldof in the leading role was made in 1982 but it still attracts an educated audience of fans primarily because of its epoch-making music rather than the plot, which is rather less than edifying: the father of Pink, a musician, dies in World War II and because of this and the effect of other experiences he becomes depressed and then turns into a drug addict; the modern world and the music industry alienate him from everybody until he begins to imagine himself as a dictator; after all this he comes back down to earth and breaks down the wall built around him.

Many people think that the band's next work, The Final Cut, is a weak "afterthought" of The Wall and indeed some ill-meaning observers claim to know that it is simply Waters' compilation of songs that had not been good enough for the previous album. What is certain is that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's war with Argentina for the Falkland Islands served as the inspiration for The Final Cut's character Maggie and the music is not bad at all.

Pacifist gobbledegook

Pink Floyd always strove to make music that created a new genre but their inimitable individual music was also coupled with a social message, according to themselves. In this regard the performance of The Wall in Berlin in 1990 and David Gilmour's splendid 2006 concert in the Gdańsk shipyards, the cradle of the Polish Solidarity movement, deserve a mention. Waters has added a new interpretation to his work in the present Wall tour, and not just in America, where the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have leant the piece a special topicality. Beyond part of the stage design being a tribute to the soldiers who have fallen in the conflicts, the musician declares war on all forms of "walls", whether they are built between the developed and the third world, between rich and poor and even the barricades set up by the media between reality and its virtual counterpart.

Of course this obligatory message of peace for many people is no more than an idealistic pipedream or mere pacifist gobbledegook. However, what Waters has been doing for years in regard to Israel is having serious global political implications. For example, in 2006 the musician, who is known as an advocate of an independent Palestinian state, was planning a concert in Tel-Aviv. However, in response to the criticism he received from his British fans, he moved the venue to a village called Neve Shalom Wahat al-Salam (Oasis of Peace), which as a settlement inhabited by both Arabs and Jews is a living statement to opposing parties in the country that peaceful co-existence is possible. During his visit to a Palestinian refugee camp last year Waters criticised U2's singer for fraternising with politicians indiscriminately, adding: "I'm not of the Bono school touring all over the world and being nice to everybody".  He seized this opportunity to lash out at the Jewish state that literally walls in the Palestinians and vowed that if this wall was ever brought down, he would celebrate by holding a concert there similar to the one in Berlin in 1990.

However, given the hopeless situation in the Middle East, it is not likely that this concert will be held in the near or even more distant future, and certainly not by Waters, but perhaps instead by a Pink Floyd tribute band somewhere down the line.