Wall building - those final bricks; an exclusive look at the recording sessions for THE WALL

Mid 1977 saw the end of the Animals tour and Roger Waters' legendary outburst. Once the tour was over, the band went to their respective tax-havens; Waters went to Switzerland, where he formed the general concept of The Wall and prepared rough demos in January 1978.

The title of the project was a detail that wasn't ironed out until almost the last minute. A leak to the music press in November 1978 announced the next album as "Walls" which would be performed live in a 5000 seater travelling canvas concert hall. A massively horrified management denied this and work continued in secret.

Possibly to prevent further leaks, or general record company procedure (as in the movie industry), the album was know by CBS who oversaw recording of the album in the USA only as "PROJECT # 5622-2".

Recording began in April 1979 at Superbear in France, later at CBS Studios in New York, Cherokee Studios and finally Producers Workshop in Los Angeles. What follows is an exclusive breakdown of the final sessions leading up to the release of the album at the end of 1979 - including the fabled Beach Boys/Floyd vocal collaboration cancelled on the day of the recording.

As you will see, hours were long and obviously tiring. All this information has been gleaned from CBS files, and many of the log sheets are countersigned by Bob Ezrin and in some cases, David Gilmour. All titles appear exactly as they do on the session reports - a fascinating insight into how the project developed...