Happy Birthday Gerald Scarfe

Gerald Anthony Scarfe was born this day in 1936. That means, a star was born this day, 76 years ago. Gerald is an cartoonist and illustrator, and the reason why I am writing about this man today, is because I concider him to be the face of Pink Floyds animation. Say, let’s look at “The Wall”. Movie, album, concerts. He is the man behind all the craziness. And, for all of you faithful readers, if you remember when I wrote about the song “Welcome to the machine”, I also put out a video of the song, and the animation is made by the one and only, Gerald Scarfe. He’s been doing so much great work for Pink Floyd, and I’m sure that either the movie or the cd “The Wall” would be the same without Gerald in the boat! All the animation is making “The Wall” even better. It gives it more power and you are able to understand things better.

GS with a "The Wall" inspired guitar. (I want that one...)

It was Nick Mason who saw Geralds film “Long drawn out trip”, and when he’d seen it, he called up Roger Waters to let him know about this guy, and see if Roger did agree weather they should do something together with this guy or not. Roger said: “It was beautiful, exquisitely insane. He’s fucking mad, let’s get him on board”. This is almost 40 years ago (1973).  Here’s a clip of the movie “Long draw out trip”. I love it! Mickey Mouse, smoking something he probably should not! It’s funny.     

"Long Draw Out Trip"                                                               

Roger Waters said in the forewords in Gerald Scarfe’s book “The making of The Wall”:  

Gerald is similarily obsessed with alienation, as witnessed in his Vietnam works and also in the drawings of the moment in August 1962 when an 18-year-old East German bricklayer called Peter Frechter climbed over the Berlin Wall. He was shot by the border guards and lay beside the wall for hours screaming before he bled to death. Geralds work was full of alienated beings and tortured souls and it was obvious to me and Nick that he had just the right dark but humane imagination we needed”.      

Roger Waters was a big fan of Geralds work and they had a blast together while they were working on “The Wall”. Roger said “Gerald has a very loud laugh. I can hear it now. Not literally of course because I’m in New York, and he’s in London. I mean it was loud but not that loud”. Hahaha, funny guys!     

Gerald is the man behind many of my favorite animations, and I’ll put out some of them.    

Gerald and Roger

Happy birthday once again Gerald Scarfe! You are some of the reason why “The Wall” got to turn into such a huge success! All the best wishes for you!

From 'Empty Spaces' and 'What shall we do now?'. The flowers are one of my favourites, next to the hammers, so I reckon I do need a tattoo of the flowers!!

'The Trial'. This truly is a masterpiece! The music, the lyrics and last but not least, THE ANIMATION!

'Goodbye blue sky'. This is one of Gerald's personal favorite from the album. I understand why!

'Long Draw Out Trip'