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.

"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.

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.

The album also contained two spoken tracks titled "MC: Atmos" ("Master of Ceremonies" for the first North American release), which served as introductions to the songs "In the Flesh?"

Yudman's performance for "In the Flesh" (nearing just past the middle of the second act) had him dressed in white "zombie" make-up and he pretended to speak like a tape recording being played back at a slower speed.

[7] 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.

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.