Roger Waters rebuilds Pink Floyd's "The Wall"

(CBS News) Forty-two high-definition projectors beam thousands of animated images onto a wall that is nearly three stories tall and longer than the length of a football field -- that's the set for Roger Waters' rock opera "The Wall," inspired by the iconic piece he composed with Pink Floyd in the late 1970's. The show is now on the road, selling out soccer stadiums and baseball parks from Santiago, Chile, to San Francisco. It took Waters, now 68, nearly three years of planning to create this light-and-sound extravaganza, but he says "the emotional payback is enormous . . . the work is the reward."

The following script is from "Roger Waters" which originally aired on May 20, 2012. Steve Kroft is the correspondent. James Jacoby and Michael Karzis, producers.

In the music world, Madonna and Springsteen are rolling out their new worldwide tours. But one of -- if not the biggest act of this coming summer -- is a 68-year-old man who is not a household name performing a double album that was first recorded on vinyl 33 years ago.

The artist is Rogers Waters: the lyricist, bass player, and creative force behind the legendary rock band Pink Floyd. The music being performed is "The Wall," Waters' iconic master work that has proven to be one of the most interesting and durable pieces in rock and roll history. And it's being rediscovered by audiences all over the world.

For openers "The Wall" is not an ordinary rock concert -- it is an operatic spectacle that has garnered glowing reviews and has sold out soccer stadiums and baseball parks from Santiago, Chile to San Francisco.

It's has been re-imagined and re-staged by Roger Waters, the man who composed virtually all of it in 1979 when he was a member of Pink Floyd, and now he's performing it without them.

We taped this concert two months ago in Buenos Aires, where Waters performed before 400,000 people in nine-sellout performances at River Plate Stadium, breaking a record held by the Rolling Stones.

Steve Kroft: I mean this is one of the most resilient rock pieces in history.

Roger Waters: Yeah.

Steve Kroft: Why is that, do you think?

Roger Waters: I think it strikes some chords that may be just beneath surface in most of us. What it's about is the walls that exist between human beings, whether on a family level or on a global level. And I think that resonates with people.

Steve Kroft: Were you surprised at how successful it was?

Roger Waters: At the beginning, yeah. The initial response was very, very positive. The word got out very quickly that this was a very special show.

In fact it's one of the most ambitious, complicated and dazzling shows ever produced: an amalgam of music, theatre, and cinema. It requires 42 high-definition projectors to beam thousands of animated images onto various sections of a wall that is nearly three stories tall and 140 yards long, more than the length of a football field. And it all has to be synchronized with the music.

It took Waters and his tech team nearly three years to complete all the animation and figure out if all of this could be done.

Steve Kroft: Has anybody tried this before?

Roger Waters: No. Nothing even close.

They painstakingly plotted out and choreographed every song, every scene, every image at this production studio in downtown New York.

Steve Kroft: You're 68 years old. Why are you doing this? Why are you going out on the-- on the road?

Roger Waters: The emotional payback is enormous. The truth of the matter is that the work is the reward. I mean, the shows are great. Don't get me wrong. I love the shows. I love it. But I love this. I love-- I love the nature of putting the thing together, you know. I like not just the nuts and bolts, but I like the process of trying to work out how to make it better all the time.

Waters, who studied to be an architect, is drawn to solitary pursuits. He has the bearing, and the trappings of an English gentleman. He is cultured and has written the music for an opera on the French Revolution. He is headstrong, a little prickly, but gracious and totally committed to his work. He also has a deep personal connection to "The Wall," through a father he never knew - a casualty of World War II.

Roger Waters: That's my dad.

Steve Kroft: He was killed at Anzio?

Roger Waters: Yeah.

His grandfather was also killed in a war - the first World War.

Roger Waters: It seemed to have skipped a generation, thank God. Not that there is a God, but you know what I mean.

Waters wrote "The Wall" to be autobiographical, about the loss of a father and how it affected the son, about alienation and isolation, war and repression, and finally redemption. All conveyed through the haunting images on "The Wall" and the beauty and power of the music.

Steve Kroft: Do people come to this concert to see "The Wall" or come to see Roger Waters?

Roger Waters: Oh, I think "The Wall." There are-- maybe-- maybe my name is being connected with it more than it ever was in the past. But I don't think Pink Floyd and "The Wall" will ever become disassociated. And neither it should be.

Waters is taking great pains to re-reproduce the sound of the original album, and treats "The Wall" as a piece of classical music. He uses several artists to recreate the sound of Pink Floyd's singer and guitarist David Gilmour, note for note.

Roger Waters: I like them. I think that was a great-- I think we made a great record.

Steve Kroft: Did you think for a moment when you were putting this thing together, you know, why don't I get Dave and Nick and--

Roger Waters: There must have been a reason back in 1985 why I left Pink Floyd, left the name, left that big umbrella of comfort and why-- there was-- there was a reason for why I did, okay. And it didn't go away, certainly, in the intervening 25 years or however long it's been.

Pink Floyd made a lot of great records together but it did not end well. Waters wrote or co-wrote virtually all of their songs, including most of the tracks on "Dark Side of the Moon," one of the most successful albums in history. It stayed on the billboard chart for 15 years - sold more than 50 million copies and produced an endowment that would make them all wealthy for life.

But the fights, mostly over control, were epic and in 1985 Waters walked away...a move he says he's never regretted, but there were some trying moments.

Roger Waters: I played a gig in Cincinnati in 1987 when David and Nick and Rick were touring. And I played to, I think, 1,500 people in a 4,000 seat arena, when they were playing the next day in the Bengals' football stadium to 70,000 people. It was character-forming to be stood in front of those 1,500 people.

But Waters left with the concert rights to "The Wall," at a time it was about to re-enter the public consciousness. He was in discussions with a charity about performing his rock opus at a huge outdoor benefit, they hadn't decided where. Then, in the fall of 1989 Berliners began chipping away at the most formidable wall in the world.

Roger Waters: Boom! The wall came down. We flew to Berlin and there was already some bits missing from the wall. They'd made a little hole at the Potsdamer Platz. I'll never forget. And then we went up and we stuck our heads, you know, through this gap. And looked at that piece of no man's land that was-- still nobody was on it or anything. And we went, "We got to do it here. We've got it." And from then on, it became an extraordinary adventure.

Waters and British producer Tony Hollingsworth had to get permission from governments in East and West Berlin to hold the concert and see that the bombs and mines that had littered the landscape were cleared away. It took eight months to organize but on July 21st, 1990 one of the greatest cultural events in post-war Germany finally came together.

Steve Kroft: How many people?

Roger Waters: Nobody knows. They opened the gates at 260,000. And they just opened everything and let everybody else in for nothing, 'cause it was getting really, really dangerous. People trying to get in and there was no-- so they just opened everything. Certainly north of 300,000, but nobody will ever know how many. It was an extraordinary night.

"The Wall" -- live from Berlin -- was broadcast into more than 50 countries. It was performed by Waters and an ad hoc cast that included a philharmonic orchestra and choir from East Berlin, a soviet military band, and a bevy of international stars.

Roger Waters: The people we had playing were so great. To play with, you know, Van Morrison and the Band and Joni Mitchell and you know, and-- well, there's too many to mention everybody, but was just fabulous.

It was the last time anyone performed "The Wall" for two decades -- until Waters took it on the road in 2010. It was the second biggest grossing tour in America, and this year "The Wall" is headed to much bigger venues like Wrigley Field, Fenway Park and Yankee Stadium. It's proof, Waters says, that the message and the music that he wrote 35 years ago is still relevant today. At 68, Roger Waters is finally getting his due and he's enjoying every minute of it.

Roger Waters: People always used to say, it must be so hard you know, how do you do it? You know, it must be so hard being on the road, being in a rock and roll band. It's amazing that you survived. And I would look at them like, what are you talking about? It's the easiest job in the world. Somebody comes and wakes us up at about half past 12 in the afternoon, and then you get driven to a private airport, and you climb on to, you know, whatever it might be - in the United States, it's a 737, you know, that we've rented from the Cavaliers or somebody, a great, big plane and whatever. Then you get flown somewhere and you have a snack and then you work for three hours. And then, you let the adrenaline go away, and you go back to sleep again. I mean, compared with something really hard, like for instance, looking after a two-year-old child -- I mean, compared with looking after a two-year-old, it's an absolute doddle.