Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live 1980–81


Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live 1980–81 is a live album released by Pink Floyd in 2000. It is a live rendition of The Wall, produced and engineered by James Guthrie, with tracks selected from the August 1980 and June 1981 performances at Earls Court in London. The album was first released in the United Kingdom on 27 March 2000, and a US/Canadian release by Columbia Records on 18 April.
The shows involved the construction of a wall on stage throughout the first half of the show. Once complete, members of the band performed in small openings in, atop, in front of, or even behind the wall. The album artwork featured the life-masks of the four band members in front of a black wall; the masks were worn by the "surrogate band" during the song "In the Flesh". "Goodbye Blue Sky" and parts of "Run Like Hell" were taken from the 17 June 1981 show, the very last performance by the four-man Pink Floyd until the 2005 Live 8 concert.
The album was remastered and re-released in February 2012 as part of The Wall’s ‘Immersion’ boxset. Despite this, it remained absent from most music streaming platforms—except for YouTube Music—until December 2024, when it was finally added to the Apple Music catalog. However, it continues to be unavailable on other major streaming services, including Spotify. The addition to Apple Music was likely due to Sony Music Entertainment’s acquisition of Pink Floyd’s music rights in October 2024, which may have facilitated the album’s availability on the platform. However, by September 2025, the album had been pulled from both Apple Music and YouTube Music for unknown reasons.

Content

Is There Anybody Out There? contains live versions of all the original songs along with two additional songs: "What Shall We Do Now?" and "The Last Few Bricks". "What Shall We Do Now?" was planned for the original album but cut just before release. "The Last Few Bricks" was an instrumental bridge between "Another Brick in the Wall " and "Goodbye Cruel World", and contained themes from "The Happiest Days of Our Lives", "Don't Leave Me Now", "Young Lust", and "Empty Spaces", all transposed to D minor. It was played to allow the bricklayers to almost completely seal off the stage before Roger Waters appeared in the last brick-wide space in the wall to sing "Goodbye Cruel World", ending the first set of the show. This music never had an official title before the release of the live album. Fans named the track "Almost Gone" on some bootleg albums of the shows, but the official name was suggested by producer James Guthrie during the mixing of the live album. The album also contained two spoken tracks titled "MC: Atmos", which served as introductions to the songs "In the Flesh?" and "In the Flesh", respectively. These were performed by Gary Yudman, MC for the Earls Court and Nassau Coliseum shows. Yudman's performance for "In the Flesh" had him dressed in white "zombie" make-up and he pretended to speak like a tape recording being played back at a slower speed. It's a common misconception that these are actual recordings of the first intro at the beginning of the concert. In fact the words from both of his performances at the beginning of the show and then towards the end never actually match at all. Every performance was different and was used by many bootleg collectors to identify which concert they were listening to of waiting for the band to start. Other performances featured Jim Ladd and his then fellow KMET disc jockey Cynthia Fox.
The tracks differed slightly from the studio album, primarily in terms of longer intros and extended solos. Due to the constraints of vinyl records, the band had been forced to severely edit many songs for the album, removing whole sections, many of which were restored in concert. For example, "The Show Must Go On" had an extra verse that was deleted from the original studio recording "Outside the Wall" was longer and re-arranged with mandolin, accordion, clarinet, acoustic guitars, tambourines and more natural-sounding vocal harmonies from the quartet of Joe Chemay, Jim Farber, Jim Haas, and Jon Joyce.

Release

The album was released to commemorate the 20th anniversary of The Wall and The Wall Tour.
Is There Anybody Out There? was re-issued in the US and Canada in July 2005, remastered by James Guthrie, Joel Plante and Kim Richards. The booklet features some songwriting updates and mentions that the MC: Atmos on disc one used a sample of "We'll Meet Again" by Vera Lynn.

Track listing

Personnel

Pink Floyd
Additional personnel
  • Peter Wood – keyboards, acoustic guitar on "Outside the Wall"
  • Snowy White – guitars
  • Andy Roberts – guitars
  • Andy Bown – bass guitar, acoustic guitar on "Outside the Wall"
  • Willie Wilson – drums, percussion
  • Clive Brooks – drums, percussion
  • Joe Chemay – backing vocals
  • Stan Farber – backing vocals
  • Jim Haas – backing vocals
  • Jon Joyce – backing vocals
  • Gary Yudman – MC

    Charts and certifications

Chart Peak
position
Argentina 8
Portuguese Albums 1

Chart Peak
position
UK Albums 202

Certifications