Roger Waters wanted ‘more humour’ in Pink Floyd’s The Wall as he says there ‘are no laughs anywhere’

“More humour” was needed for Pink Floyd‘s album The Wall, according to its creator, Roger Waters.

The bassist and songwriter would adapt the album into a film and stage production in the years to follow the 1979 album release, but hoped the latter adaptation would have a better “depth.” An interview with the former Pink Floyd frontman confirmed his desire to bring a more humorous touch to the Broadway adaptation of Pink Floyd’s The Wall. An adaptation had been in the works in the early 2000s and was set to be produced by Miramax, though the project appears to have fallen through. A Broadway adaptation never came to be, and, as such, the humour Waters had promised to write about in the show did not come to light.

An adaptation of The Wall to Broadway was announced in August 2004, with Thomas D. Mottola involved in the production. He called it The Wall a “timeless” project which he had hoped to bring to Broadway with Waters and Miramax head, Harvey Weinsten. The project never came to be, though Waters had been keen to make rewrites to Pink Floyd’s 1979 album.

He said: “My motivation is primarily that both the record and film, proud of them as I am, well, they have depth. They endure. There are no laughs anywhere. There are not many jokes. Humour is very important part of my life. I think it’s a part of the life of the central character in the film, Pink. There will be a lot more humour in the Broadway version.”

Though it never came to be, Waters had spoken highly of the Broadway adaptation and sounded like he was fully invested in the ambitious project. Elsewhere in the interview, he would say part of why he wanted to adapt it to the stage is being convinced by the musical background of his partners.

He said: “Well, I was approached by Harvey Weinstein and Tommy Mottola last summer. So I went and had a meeting with them in New York. I had been toying with the idea for a number of years.

“I think Harvey had been wanting to get into Broadway production for some time. I think they’d been investing in Broadway shows for some time. Harvey is a music guy. I believe his original background is in radio in Albany. He comes from a rock ‘n’ roll background.”

Waters would go on to suggest the play would be different to the film adaptation, with Waters confimring he had been “writing episodically” before the project was cancelled for unknown reasons.

He added: “I don’t think the play will be anything like the film. A situation where you have live music is quite different from sitting in a cinema. I have been writing episodically. I have been trying to get some humour off my chest.

“I have been talking with Adrian Noble to direct. He was a director of the Royal Shakespeare. He directed Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in London. Another person involved is a young English writer, Lee Hall. Lee Hall is helping me write. He has written a lot for the radio in England. He has written a number of plays.”