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Track Description
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"The Trial" (working title "Trial by Puppet") is a track from Pink Floyd's 1979 rock opera/concept album The Wall. Written by Roger Waters and Bob Ezrin, it marks the climax of the album and film.
Plot
The song centres on the main character, Pink, who having lived a life filled with emotional trauma and substance abuse has reached a critical psychological break. "The Trial" is the fulcrum on which Pink's mental state balances. In the song, Pink is charged with "showing feelings of an almost human nature." This means that Pink has committed a crime against himself by actually attempting to interact with his fellow human beings, defying the mission towards self-isolation that defined much of his life. Through the course of the song, he is confronted by the primary influences of his life (who have been introduced over the course of the album): an abusive schoolmaster, his wife, and his overprotective mother; in the animated sequence, they are depicted as grotesque caricatures. Pink's subconscious struggle for sanity is overseen by a new character, "The Judge." In Pink Floyd -- The Wall and the concert animations, the Judge is a giant worm for most of the song until his verse, at which point he transforms into a giant anthropomorphic body from the waist-down (bigger than the marching hammers in "Waiting for the Worms"), his face constructed from various elements of the buttocks and genitals. A prosecutor conducts the early portions, which consist of the antagonists explaining their actions, intercut with Pink's refrains, "Crazy/Toys in the attic, I am crazy,/Truly gone fishing" and "Crazy/Over the rainbow, I am crazy,/Bars in the window." The culmination of the trial is the judge's sentence for Pink "to be exposed before your peers" whereupon he orders Pink to "Tear down the wall!"
As Waters sings the dialogue for each character he transitions into different accents including: upper-class British dialect (the prosecutor and judge), Scottish accent (the schoolmaster) and Northern English accent (Pink's mother). For the character of Pink's wife he used his normal voice on the album and the original 1980-81 tour. However, in his solo 2010-13 tour of The Wall he portrays the wife with a distinctively French accent.
This and the following song, "Outside the Wall," are the only two songs on the album which the story is seen from an outsider's perspective, most notably through the three antagonists of "The Trial," even though it is all in Pink's mind. The song ends with the sound of a wall being demolished amid chants of "Tear down the wall!", marking the destruction of Pink's metaphorical wall.
Film version
The segment in the film version is a full-length animated sequence of vivid colour and disturbing visuals; the animation was originally designed for the album's concert performances, before being reworked for the film adaptation. Political cartoonist Gerald Scarfe directed the design for the segment. The film segment relies not only on visuals, but also on the themes, music, and lyrics of the original song. Pink, himself, is portrayed as an almost inanimate rag doll throughout the sequence. The three principal antagonists have pronounced cartoon forms and are known individually by their role:
"The Schoolmaster" is brought down like a marionette on strings, controlled by his overbearing wife, referring to the earlier song "The Happiest Days of Our Lives." He has a long face with grey skin and two pointy tufts of hair on top, making his head somewhat resemble a hammer.
"The Wife" comes out from underneath the Wall, represented as the scorpion/praying mantis, that already appeared during "Don't Leave Me Now."
The Mother comes in as an abstract, morphing image of an airplane (referencing the plane which killed Pink's father, and also the plane which Pink was playing with in "Another Brick in the Wall (Part I)"), and then transforms into a talking pair of lips, which then encircles Pink before morphing into a caricature of the archetypal mid-20th century British mother. As her voice ends, she transforms into the wall that Pink continues to be trapped behind.
The Prosecutor is a caricature of a barrister. He is short and rotund, wearing a long navy gown which trails behind him, at points above his own head, such as when he leaps onto the "wall" (depicted as being composed of white bricks, as in the album's cover). His facial features are occasionally greatly exaggerated; depending on what he is saying. For instance, when he describes Pink's charges, during saying that Pink has experienced "feelings... feelings of an almost human nature," his face moves close to the camera and assumes a grotesque expression of disgust and contempt.
The Judge is portrayed as a giant pair of buttocks — complete with two backwards facing legs, an anus for a mouth (with a monstrous voice), and a scrotum for a chin — wearing a judge's wig.
After a montage of clips from the movie shown before were played, there is a long moment of silence before the wall begins to fall apart, accompanied by a scream of agony and terror from Pink.
The animated sequence was used in the 1980/81 concert versions of The Wall with Waters singing the song in front of The Wall as "The Trial"'s animation played behind him on the wall. It was then used again in the 2010-13 touring concert version, albeit with the "crazy" interludes modified to incorporate CGI (most prominently the replacement of the floating leaf sequence with one of a deformed humanoid lashing out towards the audience, surrounded by graffiti of hateful messages).
There are also a number of differences on the 1980/81 Live version of the animation compared to the 1982 movie. Several scenes were re-shot to fit the wider screen, while in many other cases (i.e. the Crazy intervals + most scenes with the Judge) stretched to fit the widescreen format, The first scenes of the Trial being set-up there lack cuts in the live version; it's one long tracking shot through the many characters in the scene while the worms form the stage. In other cases too there are scenes entirely deleted like an crowd of large humanoids cheering for the Judge to "shit on him", as well as the bricks transforming into the Wife/Mother/Schoolmaster characters after the Judge's verse, cutting abruptly into Pink's Memories; some of these scenes appear intact in the more recent 2012 tour.
Composition
The track is noted for its distinctive voice work by Waters, as well as its grandiose musical style, which is more akin to an operetta than a rock song; it is fully orchestrated, with no traditional rock elements until David Gilmour's guitar starts as verdict is pronounced, along with Nick Mason's heavy drums.
Musically, the structure of "The Trial" is similar to an earlier track on the album, "Run Like Hell," with the same chord sequence of E minor, F, back to E minor, C, and B. However, there are various differences between the two songs, such as vastly different instrumentation. The bass alternates between the root (E) and fifth (B) of the E minor chord, and when the chord changes to F Major, the bass remains the same, resulting in a strong feeling of tension and dissonance, as the relationship between the F chord and the B note is a tritone, the most unstable interval in music.
In the last verse (The Judge's verdict), a distorted electric guitar enters, playing a leitmotif from the album, a melody first heard in "Another Brick in the Wall" (and most recently reprised in the outro to "Waiting for the Worms"). Here, the theme is in the key of E minor (indeed, most expressions of this theme have been in E minor, rather than the D minor of "Another Brick in the Wall"), and as in an earlier song from the album, "Hey You," it alternates between E minor (with the notes E, F♯, G, F♯) and A minor (A, B, C, B). However, while that section of "Hey You" alternated between E minor and A minor chords, here the overall tonality of the orchestration is really alternating between E minor and F major, in keeping with the introduction of the piece. This results in further tension, as the guitar, with its aggressive, distorted tone, is starting on the major third of the second chord, rather than the root as the listener would expect—and concluding on the tritone, B. This, combined with the bass line strictly staying on E and B in this section, results in a harmonic state that is significantly tense and unstable, leading to the explosive sound effect of the wall tumbling down.
File Hashes
HASH1: B6D697C180C5AC61
HASH2: 09F7EFC7E8687351 (MP3)
HASH1: 3890565B429C6CF9 HASH2: 6C37135111F2DD84 (MP3)
HASH1: 96C05EBF290C62FF HASH2: FE2F4B17223873EB (MP3)
Available in:
"The Trial" (working title "Trial by Puppet") is a track from Pink Floyd's 1979 rock opera/concept album The Wall. Written by Roger Waters and Bob Ezrin, it marks the climax of the album and film.
Plot
The song centres on the main character, Pink, who having lived a life filled with emotional trauma and substance abuse has reached a critical psychological break. "The Trial" is the fulcrum on which Pink's mental state balances. In the song, Pink is charged with "showing feelings of an almost human nature." This means that Pink has committed a crime against himself by actually attempting to interact with his fellow human beings, defying the mission towards self-isolation that defined much of his life. Through the course of the song, he is confronted by the primary influences of his life (who have been introduced over the course of the album): an abusive schoolmaster, his wife, and his overprotective mother; in the animated sequence, they are depicted as grotesque caricatures. Pink's subconscious struggle for sanity is overseen by a new character, "The Judge." In Pink Floyd -- The Wall and the concert animations, the Judge is a giant worm for most of the song until his verse, at which point he transforms into a giant anthropomorphic body from the waist-down (bigger than the marching hammers in "Waiting for the Worms"), his face constructed from various elements of the buttocks and genitals. A prosecutor conducts the early portions, which consist of the antagonists explaining their actions, intercut with Pink's refrains, "Crazy/Toys in the attic, I am crazy,/Truly gone fishing" and "Crazy/Over the rainbow, I am crazy,/Bars in the window." The culmination of the trial is the judge's sentence for Pink "to be exposed before your peers" whereupon he orders Pink to "Tear down the wall!"
As Waters sings the dialogue for each character he transitions into different accents including: upper-class British dialect (the prosecutor and judge), Scottish accent (the schoolmaster) and Northern English accent (Pink's mother). For the character of Pink's wife he used his normal voice on the album and the original 1980-81 tour. However, in his solo 2010-13 tour of The Wall he portrays the wife with a distinctively French accent.
This and the following song, "Outside the Wall," are the only two songs on the album which the story is seen from an outsider's perspective, most notably through the three antagonists of "The Trial," even though it is all in Pink's mind. The song ends with the sound of a wall being demolished amid chants of "Tear down the wall!", marking the destruction of Pink's metaphorical wall.
Film version
The segment in the film version is a full-length animated sequence of vivid colour and disturbing visuals; the animation was originally designed for the album's concert performances, before being reworked for the film adaptation. Political cartoonist Gerald Scarfe directed the design for the segment. The film segment relies not only on visuals, but also on the themes, music, and lyrics of the original song. Pink, himself, is portrayed as an almost inanimate rag doll throughout the sequence. The three principal antagonists have pronounced cartoon forms and are known individually by their role:
"The Schoolmaster" is brought down like a marionette on strings, controlled by his overbearing wife, referring to the earlier song "The Happiest Days of Our Lives." He has a long face with grey skin and two pointy tufts of hair on top, making his head somewhat resemble a hammer.
"The Wife" comes out from underneath the Wall, represented as the scorpion/praying mantis, that already appeared during "Don't Leave Me Now."
The Mother comes in as an abstract, morphing image of an airplane (referencing the plane which killed Pink's father, and also the plane which Pink was playing with in "Another Brick in the Wall (Part I)"), and then transforms into a talking pair of lips, which then encircles Pink before morphing into a caricature of the archetypal mid-20th century British mother. As her voice ends, she transforms into the wall that Pink continues to be trapped behind.
The Prosecutor is a caricature of a barrister. He is short and rotund, wearing a long navy gown which trails behind him, at points above his own head, such as when he leaps onto the "wall" (depicted as being composed of white bricks, as in the album's cover). His facial features are occasionally greatly exaggerated; depending on what he is saying. For instance, when he describes Pink's charges, during saying that Pink has experienced "feelings... feelings of an almost human nature," his face moves close to the camera and assumes a grotesque expression of disgust and contempt.
The Judge is portrayed as a giant pair of buttocks — complete with two backwards facing legs, an anus for a mouth (with a monstrous voice), and a scrotum for a chin — wearing a judge's wig.
After a montage of clips from the movie shown before were played, there is a long moment of silence before the wall begins to fall apart, accompanied by a scream of agony and terror from Pink.
The animated sequence was used in the 1980/81 concert versions of The Wall with Waters singing the song in front of The Wall as "The Trial"'s animation played behind him on the wall. It was then used again in the 2010-13 touring concert version, albeit with the "crazy" interludes modified to incorporate CGI (most prominently the replacement of the floating leaf sequence with one of a deformed humanoid lashing out towards the audience, surrounded by graffiti of hateful messages).
There are also a number of differences on the 1980/81 Live version of the animation compared to the 1982 movie. Several scenes were re-shot to fit the wider screen, while in many other cases (i.e. the Crazy intervals + most scenes with the Judge) stretched to fit the widescreen format, The first scenes of the Trial being set-up there lack cuts in the live version; it's one long tracking shot through the many characters in the scene while the worms form the stage. In other cases too there are scenes entirely deleted like an crowd of large humanoids cheering for the Judge to "shit on him", as well as the bricks transforming into the Wife/Mother/Schoolmaster characters after the Judge's verse, cutting abruptly into Pink's Memories; some of these scenes appear intact in the more recent 2012 tour.
Composition
The track is noted for its distinctive voice work by Waters, as well as its grandiose musical style, which is more akin to an operetta than a rock song; it is fully orchestrated, with no traditional rock elements until David Gilmour's guitar starts as verdict is pronounced, along with Nick Mason's heavy drums.
Musically, the structure of "The Trial" is similar to an earlier track on the album, "Run Like Hell," with the same chord sequence of E minor, F, back to E minor, C, and B. However, there are various differences between the two songs, such as vastly different instrumentation. The bass alternates between the root (E) and fifth (B) of the E minor chord, and when the chord changes to F Major, the bass remains the same, resulting in a strong feeling of tension and dissonance, as the relationship between the F chord and the B note is a tritone, the most unstable interval in music.
In the last verse (The Judge's verdict), a distorted electric guitar enters, playing a leitmotif from the album, a melody first heard in "Another Brick in the Wall" (and most recently reprised in the outro to "Waiting for the Worms"). Here, the theme is in the key of E minor (indeed, most expressions of this theme have been in E minor, rather than the D minor of "Another Brick in the Wall"), and as in an earlier song from the album, "Hey You," it alternates between E minor (with the notes E, F♯, G, F♯) and A minor (A, B, C, B). However, while that section of "Hey You" alternated between E minor and A minor chords, here the overall tonality of the orchestration is really alternating between E minor and F major, in keeping with the introduction of the piece. This results in further tension, as the guitar, with its aggressive, distorted tone, is starting on the major third of the second chord, rather than the root as the listener would expect—and concluding on the tritone, B. This, combined with the bass line strictly staying on E and B in this section, results in a harmonic state that is significantly tense and unstable, leading to the explosive sound effect of the wall tumbling down.
File Hashes
HASH1: B6D697C180C5AC61 HASH2: 09F7EFC7E8687351 (MP3) HASH1: 3890565B429C6CF9 HASH2: 6C37135111F2DD84 (MP3) HASH1: 96C05EBF290C62FF HASH2: FE2F4B17223873EB (MP3) Genre
Progressive Rock
Mood
Dreamy
Style
Rock/Pop
Theme
...
Music Video
None
Video Director
None
Video Production Company
None
Music Video Screenshots
Status
UnlockedData Complete
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