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With The Wall, the English art rock band Pink Floyd created a milestone in music history at the end of the 1970s. To date, the double album has sold more than 30 million copies. For years, Another Brick in the Wall, ringing out from the voices of a children's choir, has remained an earworm. In 1980, the band fronted by Roger Waters embarked on a tour. Because of the elaborate stage design the tour was limited to four cities: Los Angeles, New York, London and Dortmund. Willi Thomczyk, now 72, still remembers the concert at Dortmund's Westfalenhalle – because he himself was on stage back then.
Dortmund, February 20, 1981: In the sold-out Westfalenhalle, thousands of people are eagerly waiting for the much-anticipated event of the century. But instead of Pink Floyd, a man in a tailcoat with teased hair walks onto the stage and announces over the microphone that fireworks and recording are not permitted. The crowd responds with a barrage of boos. "The band will be ready shortly", the announcer tells the increasingly impatient concertgoers, getting on their nerves. Then the band begins to play, and thunderous applause for the four musicians drowns out the announcer's words.
Götterdämmerung at Dortmund's Westfalenhalle. Pink Floyd's "The Wall" stood literally between the band and its announcer Willi Thomczyk (pictured), who never saw the four musicians anywhere but on stage. Photo: Willi Thomczyk's private collection
"I felt that 20,000 people hated me", recalls Herne-based Willi Thomczyk of his role as an announcer that night. Only later did he learn more about the purpose of his role backstage. What happened on stage that night went down in music history and surpassed anything audiences had seen before. While the four members of Pink Floyd played their instruments, a 12-metre-high and 60-metre-long wall was built, stone by stone. Oversized hammers marched in step across the stage, a fighter jet flew over the audience, and giant dolls and marionettes with glowing eyes moved around the stage. Then the colossal wall collapsed, leaving the audience wide-eyed and open-mouthed.
"That was a bombastic show. Nothing like it had ever been seen before", says Thomczyk, who was making a living as a young actor at the time and learned about the announcer's job through a girlfriend. He was paid 450 German marks per night. "I was young and needed the money", recalls the Ruhr native, who had no idea what kind of role he had actually stepped into. It was only after his performance that Thomczyk learned from the promoter's girlfriend, who accompanied Pink Floyd on their tour, that the announcer's role was part of the band's concept and had its roots in American show business. "The announcement could have been played from a tape, but they needed a boo man at the beginning to whip up the crowd. The audience didn't want to see some 'sausage' like me – they wanted to see Pink Floyd. They had already been waiting for half an hour," Thomczyk explains.
That Pink Floyd played in Dortmund at all was thanks to Marcel Avram. "I discovered the band for Germany, and over the years we developed a close working relationship", says concert promoter, who promoted all of Pink Floyd's concerts in Germany from 1970 to 1994. "Dortmund was the largest hall in Germany at the time, and the only one where the equipment brought in for The Wall could be set up", explains Avram, now 88. All 100,000 tickets for the eight concerts in the Ruhr metropolis sold out in a very short time, months in advance. Several months before the shows, sound engineers from the United States tested the acoustics of the Westfalenhalle. The 500 technicians and helpers arrived with 100 tons of equipment in tow, constructing the stage and erecting gigantic speaker towers for a quadraphonic sound system – the precursor to today's Dolby Surround technology.
Roger Waters' idea for The Wall, a concept album whose songs are closely interconnected, emerged during a Pink Floyd concert in Montreal in 1977, when the musician became frustrated by the unruly behaviour of a fan. "Some moron wanted to climb on stage. And I spat in his face", Waters recalled in an interview with Eclipsed magazine in 2018. He later had "terrible remorse" over what he described as his "horrible reaction" and began thinking about how he could deal with it. "We produce a big show where we build a damn wall on stage. Just to show my feelings of alienation, shame, torture, etc.," Waters said in 2018.
The Wall tells the story of a young, washed-up musician named Pink, plagued by an over-protective mother, by the death of his father, who was killed in the war, sadistic and abusive teachers, and a relationship that has fallen apart. Increasingly isolated from society, he builds an imaginary wall to protect himself from further pain. The concept album was written by Roger Waters, who sought to come to terms with his own sense of alienation – between himself and the audience, and between himself and the people around him.
"They had absolutely no contact with me. I found that strange. I would have liked to get to know them. But everything was so tightly guarded", Thomczyk recalls of Pink Floyd, who literally also built a wall backstage and left a lasting impression on him. "Backstage, in the loo, they all had a 'cold', which I only understood when the promoter's girlfriend explained it to me – there was a cocaine orgy going on there". For Thomczyk that was the ultimate contradiction to Roger Waters, who sang "And I don't need no drugs to calm me": all show on the outside, but a very different story behind the scenes. That was enough for Thomczyk. At the time, he had at least hoped that, after the final performance, he would be introduced to the audience – something he knew from his work in theatre.
Instead, Pink Floyd marked his appearance at Dortmund's Westfalenhalle 45 years ago with a cake. At the end of the final show, singer and frontman Roger Waters slapped it into Thomczyk's face as the band took their bows – without an announcement.
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Willi Thomczyk was born in Wanne-Eickel in 1953 into a mining family from Upper Silesia. After attending the Westfälische Schauspielschule Bochum, he went on to work at theatres in Germany, including venues beyond the Ruhr area. Thomczyk became known to a wider audience through his role as informer Udo "Bombe" Blickel in the Schimanski episode "Der Grenzgänger" (1981) of the German crime series "Tatort". He later became known for playing camper Benno "Zisch-und-klack-und-weg" Ewermann in the RTL comedy series "Die Camper" (1997-2006), and foreman Horst in the feature film "Was nicht passt, wird passend gemacht" (2002). Alongside acting, Thomczyk works as an author, musician and painter. These days, the former television star drives through the Ruhr area with "Willi Taxi".
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