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Intro to "The Wall"
Very young musicians, particularly in the … mid 60's, you know, it's … it's different now, it's uh … when I was … 15 or 16 … when I signed my record contract, I'd never … I'd never met anybody … who'd ever had a record contract … on a big label … And there wasn't anyone in the E Street Band … … or anyone that I knew that had ever been on an airplane … We were like the a … lost tribes of New Guinea, you know, we … we saw them flying overhead … We knew they were real …Didn't know what they were about … But uh … We were lucky that in our … neighborhood, there were … some excellent musicians … And there were … two brothers, particularly that meant a great, great deal of a hero … called The Cichon brothers, and they … had a group called the Motifs … Ray Cichon was a … was a particurlary fluent guitarist, he was a very tall man … And he held his guitar, I remember, way up here … But he was so incredibly fluent on it … and then he would take the time to tutor me … He worked in the shoe store and he would come … after his work and he would come to… a little dining room and uh … in our little shotgun house and he was … take away 45 minutes or so to tutor me … on solos of the day … And he had a … he had a … another brother that was called Walter and … Walter was this uh … I think the first person I ever saw this felt … like a real … rock star to me, you know, you were afraid to talk to him … he was kinda scary … he had long curly hair … really long … and uh … and he was just very sort of uh … he had a tremendous animal presence and … he was great, great frontman.
I wrote this song really thinking about Walter … and thinking about Bart Haynes … who was the drummer in my first band, The Castiles … And uh … Both Bart and Walter were … were killed in action in Vietnam, they were very, very young … I don't know, 19, I suppose … at best … And uh, it was a … a tremendous, tremendous loss, tremendous loss … to our neighbourhood, to our town … to uh … that thing inside of you … that feels somehow … that the best should, should get their shot … And uh … you know as it went along … met a lot of Vietnam veterans over the years … And, uh … probably since the mid, mid and late 70's … and of course … many guys who were injured and hurt terribly … and who swore themselves that they … never again, never again … But of course uh… of course it happens again and again … So this is for uh… any of our veterans out there … and uh … Not just Vietnam, but … Iraq, Afghanistan … This is a uh … this is a short … but this basically is I guess is … this is a … short prayer … for my country, so this is called The Wall.
| Compiled by : Frank van Dorresteijn. |