Pink Floyd's 'The Wall' exhibit

Pink Floyd's The Wall

Photo: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images

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Pink Floyd's 'The Wall': For The Record

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Find out how Roger Waters' critique of "education" journeyed from imaginative concept to the GRAMMY Hall Of Fame
Philip Merrill
GRAMMYs
Nov 23, 2017 - 8:15 am

"Teacher, leave them kids alone! All in all it's just another brick in the wall. All in all you're just another brick in the wall."

Although Pink Floyd's GRAMMY win at the 37th Annual GRAMMY Awards came without Roger Waters in the lineup, they all shared in The Wall's 2008 induction to the GRAMMY Hall Of Fame.

Nov 23, 2017 – 8:22 am

For The Record: Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'

Originally released on Nov. 30, 1979, the epic double album was nominated for Album Of The Year and Best Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal at the 23rd Annual GRAMMY Awards, and was subsequently adapted into the 1982 film Pink Floyd: The Wall. Waters went on to also be nominated individually for the 2014 documentary Roger Waters: The Wall at the 58th GRAMMY Awards.

The high-concept appeal of Waters' imagination did not impress record executives initially, but over time it's caught on in a big way. The Wall has been certified 23-times platinum by the RIAA, trailing only the Eagles' Their Greatest Hits 1971–1975 and Michael Jackson's Thriller.

The single "Another Brick In The Wall (Part II)" from The Wall became iconic in itself, partly thanks to obnoxious schoolmaster lines such as, "If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding! How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?" Many of the song's frills were added by Bob Ezrin, making itself a self-contained drama within the album's wider scope.

The main character Pink in The Wall was partially autobiographical for Waters but also partly based on former Pink Floyd bandmate Syd Barrett, who had originally named the band. The two friends struggled with similar psychological and substance-abuse issues, but Barrett's prevented him from being able to continue writing and performing. Waters was under immense pressure to step up and deliver creativity that could fill Barrett's big boots.

The result was The Wall.

The Making Of Pink Floyd's The Wall

Chrissie Hynde

Chrissie Hynde

Photo: Samir Hussein/Getty Images

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Chrissie Hynde, Annie Lennox, More Artists Come Out Against Brexit

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Artist signatories of the Music4EU petition join major UK music organizations, executives, managers, event organizers and more
Philip Merrill
GRAMMYs
Dec 12, 2018 - 3:35 pm

On Dec. 11 the UK organization Music4EU launched its petition and signature drive uniting leading British artists, executives and music community organizations to oppose Brexit, Britain's plan to exit the European Union. Billy Bragg, Paloma Faith, Chrissie Hynde, Annie Lennox, Pink Floyd's Nick Mason, and Nadine Shah are just a few among the many British artists who endorse the petition's statement, "Brexit represents a significant threat to the UK's music industry."

Exit from the EU was chosen by British referendum in 2016, but the problem with Brexit is the lack of details in the plan, and also the complexity of EU regulations that have harmonized systems such as travel and taxation, making life more convenient. Negotiations between UK Prime Minister Theresa May and the EU have not resolved the need for agreed details governing an orderly departure.

As a result, the Music4EU petition's signatories believe, "Leaving the EU’s customs union, single market, VAT [taxation] area and regulatory framework (in whole or part) could devastate our global market leadership, and damage our freedom to trade, tour and to promote our artists and our works."

Music organizations endorsing the petition's warning include the Association of Independent Music; British Academy of Songwriters, Composers & Authors; Featured Artist Coalition; Music Managers Forum; Music Producers Guild; and the Musicians Union. Rolling Stone has a useful summary, but the petition itself and its growing list of endorsements conveys its own special character.

"It is critical to find a way out of this mess," the petition concludes. "Therefore we ask you to examine alternative options to maintain our current influence and freedom to trade."

Why Trade Matters To Music Creators

Carlos Santana

Carlos Santana

Photo: Kevin Winter/WireImage

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Santana, 'Abraxas': For The Record

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Revisit the album that proved rock music's emerging ability to experiment could integrate diverse traditions and intoxicate young audiences
Philip Merrill
GRAMMYs
Sep 28, 2018 - 5:42 pm

After their success at the summer rock festival Woodstock in Aug. 1969 and the contemporary release of their debut self-titled album, guitarist Carlos Santana and his band Santana put out their follow-up, Abraxas, in Sept. 1970. His lead guitar and the album's eclectic combination of rock, Latin rhythms and experimental creativity captured the spirit of the times, filled with a sense of potential new experiences.

Sep 28, 2018 – 5:41 pm

For The Record: Santana's 'Abraxas'

By Oct. 1970, Abraxas reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200. On the Hot 100 in early 1971, its single "Black Magic Woman" peaked at No. 4, and "Oye Como Va" reached No. 13 a few months later — reinterpreting the Tito Puente cha-cha as rock and helping to prove the flourishing genre's ability to bring new relevance to compositions from other musical traditions.

A San Francisco Bay local, Carlos Santana got his break from Fillmore promoter Bill Graham. An origin myth Santana doesn't remember the same way has Graham discovering the youngster after he snuck into the venue's office. "I was a kid right out of high school and nobody else was putting on shows like Bill did then," he remembered, explaining why he was always around.

As locals, they could fill in for missing bands on the schedule in a flash. Graham wrote in his autobiography, "To this day, Santana is still the only band ever to headline the Fillmore without having made a record."

Thanks to their excellence and reflecting the cultural moment, happenstance became legend. The band's second album was added to the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry in 2016. Shortly before the close of the millennium, Abraxas was inducted into the GRAMMY Hall Of Fame, in 1999 — the year Carlos Santana's album Supernatural was released, taking him to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 for the third time, from a career-total of four times so far. At the 42nd GRAMMY Awards, he won in eight categories, including Album Of The Year and Best Rock Album.

Marvin Gaye 'Let's Get It On' | For The Record

Marvin Gaye

Marvin Gaye

Photo: Ron Galella/WireImage

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Marvin Gaye 'Let's Get It On' | For The Record

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Seductive, elegant and successful, this landmark album expanded the range of the soul-music genre and raised the singer, songwriter and composer to iconic status
Philip Merrill
GRAMMYs
Aug 30, 2018 - 4:27 pm

In 1973, the Marvin Gaye album Let's Get It On brought new dimensions to R&B/soul music, expanding the genre's boundaries musically as well as delivering a sexual-liberation message that gelled with the youth "love-in" philosophy in full force at the time.

Aug 30, 2018 – 4:26 pm

Marvin Gaye's 'Let's Get It On' | For The Record

Many elements came together to build the album's creative success. U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War had ended earlier that year. Gaye's previous socially conscious album What's Going On had been followed by his soundtrack to the movie Trouble Man, and the intimate, slow seductiveness of Let's Get It On was embraced by America as a message that felt just right. As an artist, Gaye's previous sales earned him creative control he took full advantage of, blending previously recorded tracks with new ideas, layering passionate background vocals of his own including moaning vocals, which were daring for the time. This was a turning point for the Berry Gordy music empire as well. He had started the album's Tamla label even before Motown and was expanding to the West Coast.

Let's Get It On features the influential collective of studio musicians known as the Funk Brothers, who helped create a musical platform for Gaye. The album is among their earliest credits, and they went on to win GRAMMY Awards and receive the Recording Academy's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004.

On a more personal side, Gaye's marriage to Gordy's sister Anna was heading toward divorce and some of the romantic impulses captured by the microphone were reportedly directed toward his future wife, Janis Hunter, who producer/co-writer Ed Townsend had brought to the recording studio.

The title track went to No. 1 on Billboard's Hot 100 and the LP reached No. 2 on the Billboard 200, the most successful soul album of the year. Gaye's performances on tour were electrifying and his subsequent live medley of "Trouble Man" and the LP's "Distant Lover" track helped prove Gaye's emerging iconic status. Although nominated for a GRAMMY for the album, it was later at the 25th GRAMMY Awards that Gaye enjoyed his first wins for "Sexual Healing." His own Lifetime Achievement Award came in 1996, and Let's Get It On was inducted into the GRAMMY Hall Of Fame in 2004, joining its natural complement What's Going On, which was inducted in 1998.

Looking back, critics credit the smash as opening up the future of funk, as well as the quiet-storm and slow-jam styles. It was noted at the time that the explicit sexuality of the lyrics had a metaphysical dimension as well — embodying a yearning that was physical and spiritual at the same time. In his liner notes, Gaye conveyed the message, "I hope the music that I present here makes you lucky."

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Sex Pistols

Photo: John Mead/Mirrorpix/Getty Images

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Sex Pistols 'Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols' | For The Record

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Credited with kicking off the punk phenomenon in the U.K., this GRAMMY Hall Of Fame album ignited controversy and censorship
Philip Merrill
GRAMMYs
Aug 23, 2018 - 5:09 pm

In the year 1977, the Sex Pistols' album Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols arrived world-wide, surrounded by violence, controversy and censorship in the United Kingdom. The lineup of drummer Paul Cook, guitarist Steve Jones, frontman Johnny Rotten, and replacement bass player Sid Vicious ushered in the era of British Punk with an amateurish and confrontational sound and attitude. In the end, the LP influenced nearly everything done subsequently in rock and is hailed as one of the genre's greatest albums of all time.

Aug 23, 2018 – 5:08 pm

Sex Pistols 'Never Mind …' | For The Record

"God Save The Queen" was the first single that preceded release of the album. The title provides the first four words of the song, followed by the lyric "the fascist regime." For many offended Brits, the song was all downhill from there.  As the band continued work on their album that year — recording "Holidays In The Sun" on June 18 — they adjourned that night to a pub and got beat up badly enough to make the newspapers. Like the lyrics to that lead single, the action became even more intense thereafter.

The album's producer, Chris Thomas, has since shaped many rockers' sounds, winning one of his GRAMMYs at the 48th GRAMMY Awards when U2's How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb took Album Of The Year. His detailed overdubs on Never Mind The Bollocks…, punching in and out patiently with Cook and Jones, produced a furious and exuberant finished work superficially at odds with the craft invested in its creation. Meanwhile the band's other hit singles produced punk's signature controversy. As a result the only label that would have them was Virgin Records. Richard Branson hand-picked the tracklist.

Looking back, it seems only fitting that the Sex Pistols' gusto got them in trouble. "Banned In Britain" is one of rock history's quaint phrases in the U.S., but every major retailer in England was prevented from selling the album. Since it debuted at No. 1 in the U.K., this was a boon for independent outlets. A Virgin Records outlet was raided and its manager arrested for displaying the album's text-only graphic-art cover in his window. While "Never mind the bollocks" is a phrase that makes the word mean "nonsense," the potentially obscene implications of the word brought the band before the British bar, while news headlines made the most of the sensational controversy.

At Nottingham Magistrates' Court, the use of the word "bollocks" was considered objectionable but not illegally "obscene." For example, major newspapers had included the LP's title in their coverage but the papers were not put on trial. The hearing's chairman described the now-classic album as "vulgar exploitation of the worst instincts of human nature for the purchases of commercial profits." He said the not guilty verdict was delivered "reluctantly." Rock was f***ing transformed.

In a 2016 Pitchfork interview, John Lydon (a.k.a. Johnny Rotten) made headlines again for "forgiving" Nirvana for reflecting the Sex Pistols' sound. But the Sex Pistols' musically riveting flare and defiance had the heavy influence of greatness on what hundreds if not thousands of other musicians chose to do with their art.

In 2015 Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols was inducted into the Recording Academy's GRAMMY Hall Of Fame. It was both the Sex Pistols' debut as well as the only studio album they recorded, ever.

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