Did Roger Waters Write The Wall’s Story or Songs First?

Waters didn’t start with a fully formed screenplay. The Wall grew out of frustration during the 1977 Animals tour—specifically an incident in Montreal where he spat on a rowdy fan. That disgust with the wall between performer and audience became the seed. He began writing songs exploring isolation, and only later realized they could hang together as one continuous narrative about a character named Pink.

The songs came first, but the story was never an afterthought. Tracks like “The Thin Ice,” “Another Brick in the Wall,” and “Comfortably Numb” were written with loose thematic threads, then Waters shuffled them into a linear arc. He’d already experimented with rock-opera structures on The Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here, but this time he took notes in a notebook, plotting Pink’s childhood, marriage, collapse, and trial like a movie synopsis. The actual screenplay for the 1982 film came years later—after the album and live show had already cemented the story.