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Matt Wilson
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Re: Pink Floyd

Postby Matt Wilson » 25 Apr 2022, 21:02

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The Wall 1979
Roger's magnum opus, the summation of all of the major themes in his work: The daddy issues with WWII, madness, alienation/isolation, the rock star life, etc. The preachy nature of his upcoming solo work is already evident, as is the arrogance which seems to put off his detractors, yet the brilliance of the songs can handle the weighty themes for the most part, and the album's success at a time when prog (and classic rock in general) was on the wane should be noted. It's fashionable to put the record down for its pretensions, but I'm not gonna do that. I don't hear a better progressive rock LP in 1979, and I rank this right up there with Tommy, Quadrophenia, and The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, in terms of classic double-LP-concept albums.

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Wiki: "The Wall is the eleventh studio album by the English progressive rock band Pink Floyd, released on 30 November 1979 by Harvest and Columbia Records. It is a rock opera that explores Pink, a jaded rock star whose eventual self-imposed isolation from society forms a figurative wall. The album was a commercial success, topping the US charts for 15 weeks and reaching number three in the UK. It initially received mixed reviews from critics, many of whom found it overblown and pretentious, but later received accolades as one of the greatest albums of all time and one of the band's finest works.

Bassist Roger Waters conceived The Wall during Pink Floyd's 1977 In The Flesh tour, modelling the character of Pink after himself and former bandmate Syd Barrett. Recording spanned from December 1978 to November 1979. Producer Bob Ezrin helped to refine the concept and bridge tensions during recording, as the band members were struggling with personal and financial issues at the time. The Wall was the last album to feature Pink Floyd as a quartet; keyboardist Richard Wright was fired by Waters during production but stayed on as a salaried musician.

Three singles were issued from the album: "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2" (Pink Floyd's only UK and US number-one single), "Run Like Hell", and "Comfortably Numb". From 1980 to 1981, Pink Floyd performed the full album on a tour that featured elaborate theatrical effects. In 1982, The Wall was adapted into a feature film for which Waters wrote the screenplay.

The Wall is one of the best-known concept albums. With over 30 million copies sold, it is the second best-selling album in the band's catalogue (behind The Dark Side of the Moon) and one of the best-selling albums of all time. Some of the outtakes from the recording sessions were used on the group's next album, The Final Cut (1983). In 2000, it was voted number 30 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums. In 2003, 2012, and 2020, it was included in Rolling Stone's lists of the greatest albums of all time. From 2010 to 2013, Waters staged a new Wall live tour that became the highest-grossing tour by a solo musician.

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Background
In 1977, Pink Floyd played the In the Flesh Tour, their first playing in stadiums. Bassist and singer-songwriter Roger Waters despised the experience, feeling the audience was not listening and that many were too far away to see the band. He said: "It became a social event rather than a more controlled and ordinary relationship between musicians and an audience." Some audience members set off firecrackers, leading Waters to stop playing and scold them. In July 1977, on the final date at the Montreal Olympic Stadium, a group of noisy and excited fans near the stage irritated Waters so much that he spat on one of them.

Guitarist and singer-songwriter David Gilmour refused to perform a final encore and sat at the soundboard, leaving the band, with backup guitarist Snowy White, to improvise a slow, sad 12-bar blues, which Waters announced to the audience as "some music to go home to". That night, Waters spoke with producer Bob Ezrin and Ezrin's psychiatrist friend about the alienation and despair he was experiencing, and he articulated his desire to isolate himself by constructing a wall across the stage between the performers—himself, along with the rest of the band—and the audience.

While Gilmour and Wright were in France recording solo albums, and drummer Nick Mason was busy producing Steve Hillage's Green, Waters began to write material. The spitting incident became the starting point for a new concept, which explored the protagonist's self-imposed isolation after years of traumatic interactions with authority figures and the loss of his father as a child.

In July 1978, Pink Floyd reconvened at Britannia Row Studios, where Waters presented two new ideas for concept albums. The first was a 90-minute demo with the working title Bricks in the Wall. The second was about a man's dreams across one night, and dealt with marriage, sex, and the pros and cons of monogamy and family life versus promiscuity. The band chose the first option; the second eventually became Waters's first solo album, The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking (1984).

By September, Pink Floyd were having financial problems and urgently needed to produce an album to make money. Financial planners Norton Warburg Group (NWG) had invested £1.3–3.3 million, up to £19.4 million in contemporary value, of the group's money in high-risk venture capital to reduce their tax liabilities. The strategy failed when many of the businesses NWG invested in lost money, leaving the band facing tax rates potentially as high as 83 percent. "We made Dark Side and it looked as if we'd cracked it," recalled Waters. "Then suddenly these bastards had stolen it all. It looked as if we might be faced with huge tax bills for the money that had been lost. Eighty-three per cent was a lot of money in those days and we didn't have it." Pink Floyd terminated their relationship with NWG, demanding the return of uninvested funds. "By force of necessity, I had to become closely involved in the business side," said Gilmour, "because no one around us has shown themselves sufficiently capable or honest to cope with it, and I saw with Norton Warburg that the shit was heading inexorably towards the fan. They weren't the first crooks we stupidly allied ourselves with. Ever since then, there's not a penny that I haven't signed for. I sign every cheque and examine everything."

To help manage the project's 26 tracks, Waters decided to bring in an outside producer and collaborator, feeling he needed "a collaborator who was musically and intellectually in a similar place to where I was". They hired Ezrin at the suggestion of Waters's then-girlfriend Carolyne Christie, who had worked as Ezrin's secretary. Ezrin had previously worked with Alice Cooper, Lou Reed, Kiss, and Peter Gabriel. From the start, Waters made it clear who was in charge, telling him: "You can write anything you want. Just don't expect any credit."

Ezrin and Gilmour reviewed Waters's concept, discarding what they thought was not good enough. Waters and Ezrin worked mostly on the story, improving the concept. Ezrin presented a 40-page script to the rest of the band, with positive results. He recalled: "The next day at the studio, we had a table read, like you would with a play, but with the whole of the band, and their eyes all twinkled, because then they could see the album." Ezrin broadened the storyline, distancing it from the autobiographical work Waters had written and basing it on a composite character named Pink. Engineer Nick Griffiths later said: "Ezrin was very good in The Wall, because he did manage to pull the whole thing together. He's a very forceful guy. There was a lot of argument about how it should sound between Roger and Dave, and he bridged the gap between them." Waters wrote most of the album, with Gilmour co-writing "Comfortably Numb", "Run Like Hell", and "Young Lust", and Ezrin co-writing "The Trial".

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Concept and storyline
The Wall is a rock opera that explores abandonment and isolation, symbolized by a wall. The songs create an approximate storyline of events in the life of the protagonist, Pink, a character based on Syd Barrett as well as Roger Waters, whose father was killed during World War II, which is where Pink starts to build a metaphorical wall around himself. The album includes several references to former band member Syd Barrett, including "Nobody Home", which hints at his condition during Pink Floyd's abortive US tour of 1967, with lyrics such as "wild, staring eyes", "the obligatory Hendrix perm" and "elastic bands keeping my shoes on". "Comfortably Numb" was inspired by Waters' injection with a muscle relaxant to combat the effects of hepatitis during the In the Flesh Tour, while in Philadelphia.

Plot
Pink is a depressed rock star. He imagines a crowd of fans entering one of his concerts, and a flashback on his life up to that point begins. In the flashback, it is revealed that his father was killed defending the Anzio bridgehead during World War II ("In the Flesh?", "When the Tigers Broke Free" (Movie Only)). Pink's mother raises him alone ("The Thin Ice"), and with the death of his father, Pink starts to build a metaphorical wall around himself ("Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1"). Growing older, Pink is tormented at school by tyrannical, abusive teachers ("The Happiest Days of Our Lives"), and memories of these traumas become metaphorical "bricks in the wall" ("Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2").

As an adult now, Pink remembers his oppressive and overprotective mother ("Mother") and his upbringing during the Blitz ("Goodbye Blue Sky"). Pink soon marries, and after more bricks are created through more trauma, he is preparing to complete his "wall" ("Empty Spaces"). While touring in the United States, he is wanting casual sex with a woman to relieve the tedium of touring, though in making a phone call home, he learns of his wife's infidelity ("Young Lust"). He brings a groupie back to his hotel room, only to trash it in a violent fit of rage, terrifying her out of the room ("One of My Turns"). Pink, depressed, thinks about his wife, and feels trapped in his room ("Don't Leave Me Now"), dismissing every traumatic experience he has ever had as even more "bricks" in the metaphorical wall ("Another Brick in the Wall, Part 3"), Pink's wall is now finished, completely isolating himself from human contact ("Goodbye Cruel World").

Immediately after the wall's completion, Pink questions his decisions ("Hey You") and locks himself in his hotel room ("Is There Anybody Out There?"). Beginning to feel depressed, Pink turns to his possessions for comfort ("Nobody Home"), and yearns for the idea of reconnecting with his personal roots ("Vera"). Pink's mind flashes back to World War II, with the people demanding that the soldiers return home ("Bring the Boys Back Home"). Returning to the present, Pink's manager and roadies have busted into his hotel room, where they find him unresponsive. A paramedic injects him with drugs to enable him to perform ("Comfortably Numb").

The drugs kick in, resulting in a hallucinatory on-stage performance ("The Show Must Go On") where he believes that he is a fascist dictator, and that his concert is a Neo-Nazi rally, at which he sets brownshirt-like men on fans that he considers unworthy ("In the Flesh"). He proceeds to attack ethnic minorities ("Run Like Hell"), and then holds a rally in suburban London, symbolizing his descent into insanity ("Waiting for the Worms"). Pink's hallucination then ceases, and he begs for everything to stop ("Stop"). Tormented with guilt, Pink places himself on trial for "showing feelings of an almost human nature" before his inner judge orders him to "tear down the wall" ("The Trial"). This is an opening Pink to the outside world ("Outside the Wall").

The album turns full circle with its closing words "Isn't this where...", the first words of the phrase that begins the album, "...we came in?", with a continuation of the melody of the last song hinting at the cyclical nature of Waters' theme, and that the existential crisis at the heart of the album will never truly end.

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Production
Recording
The album was recorded in several locations. In France, Super Bear Studios was used between January and July 1979, and Waters recorded his vocals at the nearby Studio Miraval. Michael Kamen supervised the orchestral arrangements at CBS Studios in New York, in September. Over the next two months the band used Cherokee Studios, Producers Workshop and The Village Recorder in Los Angeles. A plan to work with the Beach Boys at the Sundance Productions studio in Los Angeles was cancelled.

James Guthrie, recommended by previous Floyd collaborator Alan Parsons, arrived early in the production process. He replaced engineer Brian Humphries, who was emotionally drained by his five years with the band. Guthrie was hired as a co-producer, but was initially unaware of Ezrin's role: "I saw myself as a hot young producer ... When we arrived, I think we both felt we'd been booked to do the same job." The early sessions at Britannia Row were emotionally charged, as Ezrin, Guthrie and Waters each had strong ideas about the direction the album would take. Relations within the band were at a low ebb, and Ezrin became an intermediary between Waters and the rest of the band.

As Britannia Row was initially regarded as inadequate for The Wall, the band upgraded much of its equipment, and by March another set of demos was complete. However, their former relationship with NWG placed them at risk of bankruptcy, and they were advised to leave the UK by no later than 6 April 1979, for a minimum of one year. As non-residents they would pay no UK taxes during that time, and within a month all four members and their families had left. Waters moved to Switzerland, Mason to France, and Gilmour and Wright to the Greek Islands. Some equipment from Britannia Row was relocated in Super Bear Studios near Nice. Gilmour and Wright were both familiar with the studio and enjoyed its atmosphere, having recorded solo albums there. While Wright and Mason lived at the studio, Waters and Gilmour stayed in nearby houses. Mason later moved into Waters's villa near Vence, while Ezrin stayed in Nice.

Ezrin's poor punctuality caused problems with the tight schedule dictated by Waters. Mason found Ezrin's behaviour "erratic", but used his elaborate and unlikely excuses for his lateness as ammunition for "tongue-in-cheek resentment". Ezrin's share of the royalties was less than the rest of the band and he viewed Waters as a bully, especially when Waters mocked him by having badges made that read NOPE (No Points Ezrin), alluding to his lesser share. Ezrin later said he had had marital problems and was not "in the best shape emotionally".

More problems became apparent when Waters's relationship with Wright broke down. The band were rarely in the studio together. Ezrin and Guthrie spliced Mason's previously recorded drum tracks together, and Guthrie worked with Waters and Gilmour during the day, returning at night to record Wright's contributions. Wright, worried about the effect that the introduction of Ezrin would have on band relationships, was keen to have a producer's credit on the album; their albums since 1969's More had credited production to "Pink Floyd". Waters agreed to a trial period with Wright producing, after which he was to be given a producer's credit, but after a few weeks he and Ezrin expressed dissatisfaction with Wright's methods. A confrontation with Ezrin led to Wright working only at nights. Gilmour also expressed his annoyance, complaining that Wright's lack of input was "driving us all mad". Ezrin later reflected: "it sometimes felt that Roger was setting him up to fail. Rick gets performance anxiety. You have to leave him alone to freeform, to create ..."

Wright was troubled by a failing marriage and the onset of depression, exacerbated by his non-residency. While the other band members brought their children, Wright's were older and could not join as they were attending school; he said he missed them "terribly". The band's holidays were booked for August, after which they were to reconvene at Cherokee Studios in Los Angeles, but Columbia offered the band a better deal in exchange for a Christmas release of the album. Waters increased the band's workload accordingly, booking time at the nearby Studio Miraval. He also suggested recording in Los Angeles ten days earlier than agreed, and hiring another keyboardist to work alongside Wright, whose keyboard parts had not yet been recorded. Wright, however, refused to cut short his family holiday in Rhodes.

Accounts of Wright's subsequent departure from the band differ. In his autobiography, Inside Out, Mason says that Waters called O'Rourke, who was travelling to the US on the QE2, and told him to have Wright out of the band by the time Waters arrived in LA to mix the album. In another version recorded by a later historian of the band, Waters called O'Rourke and asked him to tell Wright about the new recording arrangements, to which Wright responded: "Tell Roger to fuck off". Wright denied this, stating that the band had agreed to record only through the spring and early summer, and that he had no idea they were so far behind schedule. Mason later wrote that Waters was "stunned and furious", and felt that Wright was not doing enough. Gilmour was on holiday in Dublin when he learnt of Waters's ultimatum, and tried to calm the situation. He later spoke with Wright and gave him his support, but reminded him about his minimal contributions. Waters, however, insisted that Wright leave, or he would refuse to release The Wall. Several days later, worried about their financial situation and the failing interpersonal relationships within the band, Wright quit. News of his departure was kept from the music press. Although his name did not appear on some editions of the album (it does appear on the U.K. gatefold sleeve), he was employed as a session musician on the band's subsequent tour.

By August 1979, the running order was largely complete. Wright completed his duties at Cherokee Studios aided by session musicians Peter Wood and Fred Mandel, and Jeff Porcaro played drums in Mason's stead on "Mother". Mason left the final mix to Waters, Gilmour, Ezrin and Guthrie, and traveled to New York to record his debut solo album, Nick Mason's Fictitious Sports. In advance of its release, technical constraints led to some changes to the running order and content of The Wall, with "What Shall We Do Now?" replaced by the similar but shorter "Empty Spaces", and "Hey You" being moved from the end of side three to the beginning. With the November 1979 deadline approaching, the band left the inner sleeves of the album unchanged.

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Instrumentation
Mason's early drum sessions were performed in an open space on the top floor of Britannia Row Studios. The 16-track recordings from these sessions were mixed down and copied onto a 24-track master, as guide tracks for the rest of the band to play to. This gave the engineers greater flexibility, but also improved the audio quality of the mix, as the original 16-track drum recordings were synced to the 24-track master and the duplicated guide tracks removed. Ezrin later related the band's alarm at this method of working – they apparently viewed the erasure of material from the 24-track master as "witchcraft".

While at Super Bear studios, Waters agreed to Ezrin's suggestion that several tracks, including "Nobody Home", "The Trial" and "Comfortably Numb", should have an orchestral accompaniment. Michael Kamen, who had previously worked with David Bowie, was booked to oversee these arrangements, which were performed by musicians from the New York Philharmonic and New York Symphony Orchestras, and a choir from the New York City Opera. Their sessions were recorded at CBS Studios in New York without Pink Floyd present. Kamen eventually met the band once recording was complete.

"Comfortably Numb" has its origins in Gilmour's debut solo album, and was the source of much argument between Waters and Gilmour. Ezrin claimed that the song initially started life as "Roger's record, about Roger, for Roger", but he thought that it needed further work. Waters changed the key of the verse and added more lyrics to the chorus, and Gilmour added extra bars for the line "I have become comfortably numb". Waters's "stripped-down and harder" recording was not to Gilmour's liking; Gilmour preferred Ezrin's "grander Technicolor, orchestral version", although Ezrin preferred Waters's version. Following a major argument in a North Hollywood restaurant, the two compromised; the song's body included the orchestral arrangement, with Gilmour's second and final guitar solo standing alone.

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Sound design
Ezrin and Waters oversaw the capture of the album's sound effects. Waters recorded the phone call used on the original demo for "Young Lust", but neglected to inform its recipient, Mason, who assumed it was a prank call and angrily hung up. A real telephone operator was also an unwitting participant. The call references Waters' viewpoint of his bitter 1975 divorce from first wife Judy. Waters also recorded ambient sounds along Hollywood Boulevard by hanging a microphone from a studio window. Engineer Phil Taylor recorded some of the screeching tire noises on "Run Like Hell" from a studio car park, and a television set being destroyed was used on "One of My Turns". At Britannia Row Studios, Nick Griffiths recorded the smashing of crockery for the same song. Television broadcasts were used, and one actor, recognizing his voice, accepted a financial settlement from the group in lieu of legal action against them.

The maniacal schoolmaster was voiced by Waters, and actress Trudy Young supplied the groupie's voice. Backing vocals were performed by a range of artists, although a planned appearance by the Beach Boys on "The Show Must Go On" and "Waiting for the Worms" was cancelled by Waters, who instead settled for Beach Boy Bruce Johnston and Toni Tennille.

Ezrin's suggestion to release "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2" as a single with a disco-style beat did not initially find favour with Gilmour, although Mason and Waters were more enthusiastic. Waters opposed releasing a single, but became receptive once he listened to Ezrin and Guthrie's mix. With two identical verses the song was felt to be lacking, and so a copy was sent to Griffiths in London with a request to find children to perform several versions of the lyrics. Griffiths contacted Alun Renshaw, head of music at the nearby Islington Green school, who was enthusiastic, saying: "I wanted to make music relevant to the kids – not just sitting around listening to Tchaikovsky. I thought the lyrics were great – 'We don't need no education, we don't need no thought control ...' I just thought it would be a wonderful experience for the kids."

Griffiths first recorded small groups of pupils and then invited more, telling them to affect a Cockney accent and shout rather than sing. He multitracked the voices, making the groups sound larger, before sending his recordings back to Los Angeles. The result delighted Waters, and the song was released as a single, becoming a Christmas number one. There was some controversy when the British press reported that the children had not been paid for their efforts; they were eventually given copies of the album, and the school received a £1,000 donation (£4,000 in contemporary value).

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Artwork and packaging
The album's cover art is one of Pink Floyd's most minimal – a white brick wall and no text. Waters had a falling out with Hipgnosis designer Storm Thorgerson a few years earlier when Thorgerson had included the cover of Animals in his book The Work of Hipgnosis: 'Walk Away René'. The Wall is therefore the first album cover of the band since The Piper at the Gates of Dawn not to be created by the design group. Issues of the album would include the lettering of the artist name and album title by cartoonist Gerald Scarfe, either as a sticker on sleeve wrapping or printed onto the cover itself, in either black or red. Scarfe, who had previously created animations for the band's In the Flesh tour, also created the LP's inside sleeve art and labels of both vinyl records of the album, showing the eponymous wall in various stages of construction, accompanied by characters from the story. The drawings would be translated into dolls for The Wall Tour, as well as into Scarfe's animated segments shown during the tour and the film based on the album. It is notable that the stadium drawn in the inner sleeve looks a lot like the Montreal Olympic Stadium where the album's concept happens to find its origin. It seems plausible that the artist was inspired by the stadium's appearance in 1977 and its inclined tower which was completed only at a third of its projected (and present) height, reminiscent of the many "towers" pictured in the artist's stadium.

Reissues
A 1994 digitally remastered CD version manufactured in China omits "Young Lust", but retains a composition credit for Waters/Gilmour in the booklet. The album was reissued in three versions as part of the Why Pink Floyd...? campaign, which featured a massive restoration of the band's catalog with remastering by producer James Guthrie: in 2011, a Discovery edition, featuring the remastered version with no extras; and in 2012, both the Experience edition, which adds a bonus disc of unreleased material and other supplementary items, and the Immersion version, a seven-disc collection that also adds video materials. The album was reissued under the Pink Floyd Records label on 26 August 2016 along with The Division Bell.

Despite it eventually becoming possible to fit more than 80 minutes of audio onto a single CD, all official uncut releases of the album have so far comprised two CDs.

Tour
The Wall Tour opened at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena on 7 February 1980. As the band played, a 40-foot (12 m) wall of cardboard bricks was gradually built between them and the audience. Several characters were realized as giant inflatables, including a pig, replete with a crossed hammers logo. Scarfe was employed to produce a series of animations to be projected onto the wall. At his London studio, he employed a team of 40 animators to create nightmarish visions of the future, including a dove of peace, a schoolmaster, and Pink's mother.

For "Comfortably Numb", while Waters sang his opening verse, Gilmour waited in darkness at the top of the wall, standing on a flight case on casters, held steady by a technician, both precariously balanced atop a hydraulic platform. On cue, bright blue and white lights would suddenly illuminate him. At the end of the concert, the wall collapsed, revealing the band. Along with the songs on the album, the tour featured an instrumental medley, "The Last Few Bricks", played before "Goodbye Cruel World" to allow the construction crew to complete the wall.

During the tour, band relationships dropped to an all-time low; four Winnebagos were parked in a circle, with the doors facing away from the centre. Waters used his own vehicle to arrive at the venue, and stayed in separate hotels from the rest of the band. Wright, returning as a salaried musician, was the only member of the band to profit from the tour, which lost about £400,000.

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Adaptations
A film adaptation, Pink Floyd – The Wall, was released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in July 1982. It was written by Waters and directed by Alan Parker, with Bob Geldof as Pink. It used Scarfe's animation alongside actors, with little conventional dialogue. A modified soundtrack was created for some of the film's songs.

On 21 July 1990, Waters and producer Tony Hollingsworth created The Wall – Live in Berlin, staged for charity at a site once occupied by part of the Berlin Wall. In the concert, great artists of the 80's played at the concert, such as Scorpions, Cyndi Lauper, Sinéad O'Connor, Ute Lemper, Tim Curry, Van Morrison, Bryan Adams and many more artists. The concert was broadcast on television in 52 countries, and was later released as a video and album at the end of that same year, although they omitted the song "Outside the Wall" and instead played "The Tide Is Turning", a song from Roger Waters' 1987 solo album Radio K.A.O.S. In 2003, the album was remastered and for the first time, the video was released on DVD.

In 2000, Pink Floyd released Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live 1980–81, which contains portions of various live shows from the Wall Tour, but mainly the shows in the Earls Court in London. In 2012, it was remastered and released on The Wall Immersion Box-Set as an extra.

Beginning in 2010 and with dates lasting into 2013, Waters performed the album worldwide on his tour, The Wall Live. This had a much wider wall, updated higher quality projected content and leading-edge projection technology. Gilmour and Mason played at one show in London at The O2 Arena. A film of the live concert, Roger Waters: The Wall, was released in 2015.

In 2016, Waters adapted The Wall into an opera, Another Brick in the Wall: The Opera with contemporary classical composer Julien Bilodeau. It premiered at Opéra de Montréal in March 2017, and was produced by Cincinnati Opera in July 2018. It is orchestrated for a score of eight soloists, 48 chorus members, and a standard 70-piece operatic orchestra.

In 2018, a tribute album The Wall [Redux] was released, with individual artists covering the entire album. This included Melvins' version of "In The Flesh?", Pallbearer covering "Run Like Hell", former Screaming Trees' singer Mark Lanegan covering "Nobody Home" and Church of the Cosmic Skull reworking "The Trial"."

Pink Floyd
Roger Waters – vocals, bass guitar, synthesizer, acoustic guitar on "Mother" and "Vera", electric guitar on "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 3", sleeve design, co-production
David Gilmour – vocals, electric and acoustic guitars, bass guitar, synthesizer, clavinet, percussion, co-production
Nick Mason – drums, percussion
Richard Wright – acoustic and electric pianos, Hammond organ, synthesizer, clavinet, bass pedals

Additional musicians
Bruce Johnston – backing vocals
Toni Tennille – backing vocals on "In the Flesh?", "The Show Must Go On", "In the Flesh" and "Waiting for the Worms"
Joe Chemay – backing vocals
Jon Joyce – backing vocals
Stan Farber – backing vocals
Jim Haas – backing vocals
Bob Ezrin – production, piano, Hammond organ, synthesizer, reed organ, orchestral arrangement, music on "The Trial", backing vocals
James Guthrie – percussion, synthesizer, sound effects, co-producer, engineer
Jeff Porcaro – drums on "Mother"
Children of Islington Green School – vocals on "Another Brick in the Wall Part II"
Joe Porcaro – snare drums on "Bring the Boys Back Home"
Lee Ritenour – rhythm guitar on "One of My Turns", additional acoustic guitar on "Comfortably Numb"
Joe (Ron) di Blasi – classical guitar on "Is There Anybody Out There?"
Fred Mandel – Hammond organ on "In The Flesh?" and "In the Flesh"
Bobbye Hall – congas and bongos on "Run Like Hell"
Frank Marocco – concertina on "Outside the Wall"
Larry Williams – clarinet on "Outside the Wall"
Trevor Veitch – mandolin on "Outside the Wall"
New York Orchestra – orchestra
New York Opera – choral vocals
Vicki Brown and Clare Torry (credited simply as "Vicki & Clare") – backing vocals on "The Trial"
Harry Waters – child's voice on "Goodbye Blue Sky"
Chris Fitzmorris – male telephone voice
Trudy Young – voice of the groupie
Phil Taylor – sound effects

All tracks written by Roger Waters, except where noted.

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Side one

1. "In the Flesh?" 3:16
After some cursory music in the background, the full guitar-laden opening chords come crashing in and the perhaps ponderous-but-still-impressive first song begins. Roger's voice is the primary vocal on this entire LP, so you'd better get used to it. I love the bombast of it all though.

"The title is a reference to the band's 1977 In the Flesh Tour, during which Roger Waters, in frustration, spat at a fan attempting to climb the fence separating the band from the crowd.

Composition
The majority of the songs are in the key of A Major and its time signature is 6/8. The arrangement is highly dynamic and dramatic. The first few seconds of the first song ("In the Flesh?") are very quiet, and feature the melody of the song "Outside the Wall", which is the album's closing track. The recording begins abruptly as a man quietly speaks the phrase "...we came in?" completing the sentence cut off at the end of the end of the album as the man says "Isn't this where..." This demonstrates a cyclical nature to the concept of the album, much in the way that The Dark Side of the Moon opens and closes with the sound of a heartbeat.

The quiet melody of "Outside the Wall" is interrupted in mid-phrase, as the main body of the song starts loudly, with a succession of power chords on organ and distorted guitars. A low-pitched melody begins, at a slow pace, with rapid snare drum fills. This introduction is the first occasion where the album's leitmotif is heard, with a pattern of D-E-F-E in the guitars. The introduction lasts for more than a minute before the singing starts, and the tone shifts to gentle keyboards and male doo-wop harmony in the background. Following the lyrics, the loud guitar melody returns. During this outro, Roger Waters shouts out stage directions, and a Stuka dive-bomber can be heard. The final sound of the first track is that of a baby crying, which leads into "The Thin Ice", the second track in the album.

The reprise ("In the Flesh") begins the same explosive organ sequence heard in the first song. Following this, the song then moves into a slightly quieter choir chorus, before the lyrical section. The end of the song features another organ sequence, and the song fades out to the chanting of "Pink! Floyd! Pink! Floyd!".

Waters has said that the main chord sequence and melody was not initially part of The Wall, but was borrowed from The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking, which Waters wrote at the same time as The Wall, but recorded as a solo release.

Plot
"In the Flesh?" introduces the story of Pink, a rock star. It begins with the opening of a rock concert. The lyrics inform us that despite his outward appearances, things are much different "behind these cold eyes" and that if the listener wants to know what's really going on with Pink, you'll "just have to claw your way through this disguise." The song also subtly indicates that Pink's father is killed in a war, with the sound effect of the dive-bomber. Finally, we hear a baby crying, indicating that Pink and his mother are left without a father and husband, respectively (this is expanded upon two songs later, in "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1").

Later in the album, the reprise marks the first of a series of songs in which Pink, in a drug-induced hallucination, believes himself to be a fascist dictator, crowing over his faithful audience; this particular song is his hallucination that his concerts can be likened to a political rally. He begins exhorting his fans to show their devotion to him by throwing undesirables such as "queers", Jews, and "coons", "up against the wall". He punctuates the end of the song with "If I had my way I'd have all of you shot!". The incited crowd then chant Pink's name as the song segues into "Run Like Hell".

Live performances
During the original tour supporting The Wall, the song would be performed onstage by the backing musicians wearing masks to make them look like the real members of Pink Floyd, playing on the lines "Tell me, is something eluding you sunshine? Is this not what you expected to see? You'll just have to claw your way through this disguise", as well as the references to a "surrogate band" in the song's reprise later on.

In Waters' 2010–13 tour, The Wall Live, he performs the song himself, in the guise of the megalomaniacal dictator that his character Pink becomes at the climax of the show.

Waters has also regularly performed the song on his other solo tours, with it featuring in the set for his The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking, Radio K.A.O.S., In the Flesh and The Dark Side of the Moon Live tours, as well as the aforementioned The Wall Live tour.

Film version
The beginning of the film shows Pink sitting in a locked hotel room. A housekeeper knocks repeatedly, then uses her keys to let herself in. While this happens, Pink's mind is flashing back to a concert, in which a massive crowd of eager concertgoers manage to break down a chained door to the concert venue, and rush inside, trampling each other in the process. The film shows quick cuts of rioting fans and a violent police response, interspersed with scenes of soldiers being bombed in the fields of war. A German Ju 87 Stuka bombs a bunker, in which Pink's father is killed.

The song is performed by Pink (Bob Geldof) in his dictator garb, with the set decorated like a Nazi rally, an insignia of two crossed hammers replacing the swastika. Geldof recorded his own vocals over the original Pink Floyd music track, replacing Waters' vocals.

The film version also uses a mix in which the song's intro was longer, with the E minor power chord riff, and a short David Gilmour solo, repeating twice. This was edited out of the record due to time constraints, but the song has been performed full length in most live performances.

Later in the movie the reprise is used in a similar way as in the album, picking up shortly after Pink's transformation into the Dictator. The song is one of the most radically changed among movie versions, having been converted to an orchestral piece. The Dictator questions the loyalty of the fans, while setting his dogs against the "queers" and "coons" he singles out. As the song ends, the crowd's chant of "Pink Floyd!" is replaced with "Hammer", invoking the film motif of hammers. In addition, both Pink and the crowd display the "Hammer" salute, arms crossed in front of the chest at the wrists like a pair of crossed hammers. In addition, the "Crossed Hammer" logo can be seen everywhere. The song immediately segues into "Run Like Hell"." - Wikipedia

2. "The Thin Ice" 2:27
A much more gentle contrast to the furious nature of the first cut. This song is sung from the perspective of Pink's mother, as she tells him she's going to protect him from things. David handles this part, but Roger quickly comes in with his more menacing manner and the tune takes on a darker tone.

Wiki - "Composition
The song, which is two minutes and 30 seconds in length, begins with the sound of an infant crying. The main body of the song is a 50s progression, with time signature in 6/8, commonly heard in doo-wop songs such as "Stand by Me", progressing from C Major to A minor, then F Major to G Major, played softly on piano and synthesiser. The first half of the lyrics are sung by David Gilmour in a gentle tone, beginning with "Mama loves her baby", and a refrain of "Ooh babe, ooh, baby blue". A bass guitar creates a dissonant effect mid-song, when it plays an F♯ against an A minor, the major sixth of the chord, and the augmented fourth of the key. Then Roger Waters takes over the lead vocal. The piano becomes staccato, as the lyric takes on a warning tone, with Waters singing "If you should go skating/On the thin ice of modern life...."

As the lyrics end, the diatonic sense of C Major is abandoned, as the melody heard earlier (E, D, F, E, and A) becomes stripped to a simple power chord riff, played loud by distorted guitars, with brief soloing. The song ends on a sustained C Major chord, but through crossfading with the next song on the album, "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1", a D minor chord is interpolated, contributing to uneasiness intimated by the lyrics.

Plot
"The Thin Ice" can be seen as the introduction to Pink's story, since the previous song, the album's opening track "In The Flesh?" is chronologically placed later in the album's narrative, and then the story is begun via flashback. "The Thin Ice" introduces Pink as a baby and young child, and while the lyrics assure the listener that "Mama loves her baby, and Daddy loves you, too", it warns that "The sea may look warm... the sky may look blue", but "Don't be surprised when a crack in the ice/Appears under your feet".

Film version
The film shows hundreds of soldiers in the war, either wounded or dead, then cuts to Pink floating in his hotel pool. As shown later in the film (in the segment for "One of My Turns"), Pink has cut his hand, and the amount of blood in the water is exaggerated, until he appears to be floating in a pool of blood.

The film version has an extended piano intro that plays before Gilmour's vocal."

3. "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1" 3:11
The first of three versions of this number to grace the record. Roger is using his speak/sing vocal style, and the music chugs along nicely. We're getting the wall theme now where Pink uses his past traumatic experiences to isolate himself from humanity.

"The three parts of "Another Brick in the Wall" appear on Pink Floyd's 1979 rock opera album The Wall. During "Part 1", the protagonist, Pink, begins building a metaphorical wall around himself following the death of his father. In "Part 2", traumas involving his overprotective mother and abusive schoolteachers become bricks in the wall. Following a violent breakdown in "Part 3", Pink dismisses everyone he knows as "just bricks in the wall".

Bassist Roger Waters wrote "Part 2" as a protest against rigid schooling, particularly boarding schools. "Another Brick in the Wall" appears in the film based on the album. In the "Part 2" sequence, children enter a school and march in unison through a meat grinder, becoming "putty-faced" clones, before rioting and burning down the school.

Recording
At the suggestion of producer Bob Ezrin, Pink Floyd added elements of disco, which was popular at the time. According to guitarist David Gilmour:

[Ezrin] said to me, "Go to a couple of clubs and listen to what's happening with disco music," so I forced myself out and listened to loud, four-to-the-bar bass drums and stuff and thought, Gawd, awful! Then we went back and tried to turn one of the parts into one of those so it would be catchy.

Gilmour recorded his guitar solo using a 1955 Gibson Les Paul Gold Top guitar with P-90 pick-ups. Despite his reservations about Ezrin's additions, Gilmour felt the final song still sounded like Pink Floyd. When Ezrin heard the song with a disco beat, he was convinced it could become a hit, but felt it needed to be longer, with two verses and two choruses. The band resisted, saying they did not release singles; Waters told him: "Go ahead and waste your time doing silly stuff."

While the band members were away, Ezrin edited the takes into an extended version. He also had engineer Nick Griffiths record children singing the verse at Islington Green School, close to Pink Floyd's studio. Griffiths was instructed to record only two or three children; inspired by a Todd Rundgren album featuring an audience in each stereo channel, he suggested recording an entire school choir. The school allotted only 40 minutes for the recording.

Alun Renshaw, head of music at the school, was enthusiastic, and said later: "I wanted to make music relevant to the kids – not just sitting around listening to Tchaikovsky. I thought the lyrics were great – 'We don't need no education, we don't need no thought control' ... I just thought it would be a wonderful experience for the kids." Renshaw hid the lyrics from the headteacher, Margaret Maden, fearing she might stop the recording. Maden said: "I was only told about it after the event, which didn't please me. But on balance it was part of a very rich musical education." Renshaw and the children spent a week practicing before he took them to a recording studio near the school. According to Ezrin, when he played the children's vocals to Waters, "there was a total softening of his face, and you just knew that he knew it was going to be an important record". Waters said: "It was great—exactly the thing I expected from a collaborator."

For the single version, a four-bar instrumental intro was added to the song that was created by looping a section of the backing track. The single fades out during the guitar solo. The version included on the compilation A Collection of Great Dance Songs combines the single version's intro and the LP version's ending. (Later compilations such as Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd and The Best of Pink Floyd: A Foot in the Door instead include the album version prefaced by "The Happiest Days of Our Lives".)

In exchange for performing vocals, the children of Islington School received tickets to a Pink Floyd concert, an album, and a single. Though the school received a payment of £1,000, there was no contractual arrangement for royalties for the children. Following a change to UK copyright law in 1996, they became eligible for royalties from broadcasts. After royalties agent Peter Rowan traced the choir members through the website Friends Reunited and other means, they successfully lodged a claim for royalties with the Performing Artists' Media Rights Association in 2004." - Wiki

4. "The Happiest Days of Our Lives" 1:46
A respite between the first two parts of "Another Brick in the Wall" really. All three tracks could be one long song to me. The school theme is introduced with the teachers bullying the kids and the "fat and psychopathic wives" bullying the teachers at home. Shit rolls downhill, it seems.

Wiki: "Composition
The song is approximately one minute, 46 seconds in length, beginning with 24 seconds of a helicopter sound effect, followed by the schoolmaster shouting, "You! Yes, you! Stand still, laddie!" performed by Roger Waters. Waters's lead vocal is treated with a reverse echo. The lead instrument is an electric guitar with an added delay effect, playing roots (mostly D, G and A over a melody in D minor). The bass and guitar figure heard during the verses, G to A, is similar to the one in "Waiting for the Worms", a song that appears much later in the album. During the transition to "Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2", the key shifts from D minor to the relative major, F major, with dramatic drum rolls and harmony vocals.

On the album, "The Happiest Days of Our Lives" segues into "Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2" with a loud, high-pitched scream by Roger Waters, similar to one of the band's earlier work: "Careful with That Axe, Eugene." Because of this segue, many radio stations play one right after the other, and subsequent Floyd compilation albums (both Echoes and A Foot in the Door) use this song as the extended intro to "Another Brick in the Wall".

In the film based on the album, the sound at the beginning of the song is depicted as coming from a train entering a large tunnel, rather than a helicopter, as heard on the album. According to Gerald Scarfe, there was supposed to be a puppet of the teacher at the end of the tunnel in the film. Alan Parker made shots of it, but it didn't work out, so they used Alex McAvoy, who played the schoolteacher, to do the scene instead. Before the cut in the middle for the Schoolmaster to mock Pink, somewhat quiet hysterical laughter is heard, extremely similar to the Schoolmaster's voice. Additionally, the song is slightly faster and the bass is noticeably louder compared to the album version.

Plot
"The Happiest Days of Our Lives" concerns Pink's youth, attending a school run by strict and often violent teachers who treat the pupils with contempt.

According to Waters, the lyrics were a reflection of his own negative experience in school. He described this in an interview with Tommy Vance of BBC Radio One.

Film version
Pink and his two friends go down to a railway track to lay bullets on the rails and watch them explode under the passing train. Pink, putting himself up against the tunnel wall, sees that the train cars are packed with faceless people. He sees his teacher at the other end of the tunnel yelling at him to stand still. In the next scene, in Pink's school, the teacher discovers Pink writing a poem (which contains lyrics from "Money") and, as punishment, ridicules Pink by reading his poem out loud to the entire class then slaps his left hand with a ruler. The following scene shows the Schoolmaster in his own home, being forced to eat a piece of tough meat during dinner at his wife's silent command. To relieve himself of his humiliation, the teacher spanks a child with a belt the next day. Immediately after this comes “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2”.

5. "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2" 3:59
Their biggest hit, and Roger has Ezrin to thank for that as it was Bob's idea to utilize the kids' voices. You couldn't escape this on the radio over forty years ago. Wiki already detailed the making of this track, but here's some more:

"Reception
"Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)" was released as a single, Pink Floyd's first in the UK since "Point Me at the Sky" (1968). It was also the final Christmas number one of the decade in the UK. In the US, it reached number 57 on the disco chart. The single sold over 4 million copies worldwide. Cash Box described it as a "catchy but foreboding selection, with its ominously steady drum work and angry lyrics."

The song won Waters the 1983 British Academy Award for Best Original Song for its appearance in the Wall film. "Part 2" was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Performance by a Rock Duo or Group. It appeared at number 384 on Rolling Stone's 2010 list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time".

The lyrics attracted controversy. The Inner London Education Authority described the song as "scandalous", and according to Renshaw, prime minister Margaret Thatcher "hated it". Renshaw said, "There was a political knee-jerk reaction to a song that had nothing to do with the education system. It was [Waters'] reflections on his life and how his schooling was part of that." The single, as well as the album The Wall, were banned in South Africa in 1980 after it was adopted by supporters of a nationwide school boycott protesting instituted racial inequities in education under apartheid." - Wiki

6. "Mother" 5:32
Another mellower contrast to the previous track. But even the quieter moments on this record are filled with foreboding. Gilmour sings with Waters as on the previous cut. This is where the mother lays out her plan to 'protect' Pink from harm, but ends up causing more difficulties for him.

"Composition
"Mother" is 5:32 in length. The majority of the song is in G major, though the chorus is predominantly a plagal cadence in C major. The song is notable for its varied use of time signatures, such as 5/8 and 9/8.[3] Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason found these time-signature changes difficult to learn, and, with the band recording on a very tight schedule, ceded the drumming duties to session drummer Jeff Porcaro.

The song begins quietly with solo voice and a single acoustic guitar, and gradually expands its instrumentation to include, by song's end, reed organ, piano, drums, electric bass, and electric guitar. The song has a short introduction, consisting only of a sharp inhalation and rapid exhalation before the first verses are sung by Roger Waters. The verse timing progression is: 5/8 - 8/8 × 4 - 5/8 - 8/8 × 8 - 6/8 - 8/8 × 2 - 5/8 - 8/8 × 4 - 5/8 - 8/8 × 8 - 6/8 - 8/8 × 3.

The chorus, sung by David Gilmour, starts out on two measures of 4/4 before going into 6/8 (or "compound duple meter") for most of the chorus, in a narrative response to the first set of lyrics. There is also one measure of 9/8. Then a guitar solo follows over a chord progression in 4/4 time. Waters sings another verse, which is once more followed by Gilmour's chorus (with different lyrics). Finally, the song concludes with an arrangement stripped back down to one acoustic guitar and Waters's voice, and a ritardando in which Waters sings, "Mother, did it need to be so high?", a reference to the metaphorical wall constructed by the character Pink. The song ends on the subdominant, C major, which may create an "unfinished" or "dissatisfying" feeling.

Waters explained to Mojo magazine that the song is about "the idea that we can be controlled by our parents' views on things like sex. The single mother of boys, particularly, can make sex harder than it needs to be."

Plot
As told through the song "Mother", part of Pink's sense of alienation comes from being raised by an overprotective single mother, who lost her husband, Pink's father, in World War II. The song narrates a conversation by Pink (voiced by Waters) and his mother (voiced by Gilmour). The listener learns of the overprotectiveness of Pink's mother, who is helping Pink build his wall to try to protect him from the outside world, evidenced by the line "Of course Momma's gonna help build the wall," spoken by Pink's mother. She insists that Pink stay by her side even after he grows up, and cannot stand it when Pink eventually grows older and falls in love.

Film version
For the film, the song was re-recorded completely with the exception of David Gilmour's guitar solo. One line of the lyrics, "Is it just a waste of time", became "Mother, am I really dying", as the original LP lyrics read. This change ties in with a brief subplot in the film where Pink contracts a fever after caring for a sick rat that died from it." - Wikipedia

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Side two

7. "Goodbye Blue Sky" 2:45
Beautiful number reminiscent of something like "Grantchester Meadows" to these ears. Pink is thinking of his childhood and WWII. Nice harmonies too. Roger can get away with this sort of self-obsessed songwriting as long as the melodies are so pretty. Something he couldn't do as easily on his solo albums. One of David's better vocals too.

Wiki - "Plot
In a brief prologue, a skylark is heard chirping. The sound of approaching bombers catches the attention of a child (voiced by a young Harry Waters), who states, "Look mummy, there's an aeroplane up in the sky".

The lyrics go on to describe the memory of the Blitz: Did you see the frightened ones? Did you hear the falling bombs? Did you ever wonder why we had to run for shelter when the promise of a brave new world unfurled beneath a clear blue sky? ... The flames are all long gone, but the pain lingers on.

Film version
In the film version, this segment is animated by Gerald Scarfe. It begins in live-action with a cat trying to catch the white dove but then flies away. It transitions to animation with the dove flying peacefully up only to suddenly be gorily torn apart by a black Nazi eagle (Reichsadler). It glides over the countryside and swoops down to grasp the earth with its talons, ripping up a huge section leaving a sulfurous trail in its wake, giving way to a warlord that morphs into a metallic factory that releases warplanes. Next, naked, gas-masked people (the frightened ones) are seen running about on all fours and hiding from The Blitz. The warplanes turned into crosses just as the Union Jack fragments into a bleeding cross. The Nazi eagle crashes and shatters and the dove emerges from it while the dead soldiers are able to finally rest in peace. Finally, the blood from the cross runs down the hill and into a storm drain.

Unlike the album, this comes in after the reprise of "When the Tigers Broke Free" and before "The Happiest Days of Our Lives".

Live versions
For the 1990 large-scale concert The Wall – Live in Berlin, vocals for this song were provided by Joni Mitchell, with visuals largely reprised from the film version.

Roger Waters' 2010–13 tour The Wall Live uses the song to depict a metaphorical "cultural bombing". As bomber planes fly in from the distance, they drop not bombs, but dollar signs, euro signs, religious symbols, and corporate logos. This imagery ended up attracting controversy due to the juxtaposition of dollar signs and the Star of David, which was deemed antisemitic by the Anti-Defamation League; Waters later removed the offending iconography and wrote an open letter to The Independent clarifying that the Star was meant to critique the Israeli government."

8. "Empty Spaces" Waters 2:10
There's almost a Wish You Were Here machine-like vibe to this song with Roger back to his speaking style of singing. This can be seen as a kind of intro to "Young Lust" as the two tracks have a seamless segue.

9. "Young Lust" (Waters, Gilmour) 3:25
David is in full-on rock mode when he sings this one, and it's another song I heard all the time on the airwaves in the eighties. Every time he sings a number on this album it's a welcome break from Roger's dreary voice.

"Composition
"Young Lust" is a blues-inflected hard rock number in E minor, approximately three minutes, 25 seconds in length. Lead vocals are sung by David Gilmour, with background vocals from Roger Waters during the chorus. The lyrics are about a "rock-and-roll refugee" seeking casual sex to relieve the tedium of touring. It's one of few Pink Floyd songs in which Gilmour plays bass guitar and one of three songs Gilmour co-wrote for The Wall. On the album, the preceding song, "Empty Spaces," ends with an abrupt transition into "Young Lust."

An extended 7" single version was released in Italy, South Africa and Rhodesia. It was 3:58 in length and included a 12-bar instrumental intro with a simple 16-beat drum rhythm that leads into an 8-bar guitar intro. The final 32-bar outro is unobscured by the phone call that is on the album version.

Plot
At this point in the album's narrative, Pink has achieved wealth and fame, and is usually away from home, due to the demands of his career as a touring performer. He is having casual sex with groupies to relieve the tedium of the road, and is living a separate life from his wife.

The end of the song is a segment of dialogue between Pink and a telephone operator, as Pink twice attempts to place a transatlantic collect call to his wife. A man answers, and when the operator asks if he will accept the charges, the man simply hangs up. This is how Pink learns that his wife is cheating on him. ("See, he keeps hanging up," says the operator. "And it's a man answering!") With this betrayal, his mental breakdown accelerates.

The dialogue with the operator was the result of an arrangement co-producer James Guthrie made with a neighbor in London, Chris Fitzmorris, while the album was being recorded in Los Angeles. He wanted realism, for the operator to actually believe they had caught his wife having an affair, and so didn't inform her she was being recorded. The operator heard in the recording is the second operator they tried the routine with, after the first operator's reaction was deemed unsatisfactory.

Film version
In the film, the scene with the attempted phone call, in which Pink learns his wife is cheating on him, occurs at the very beginning of the song "What Shall We Do Now", which is the extended version of "Empty Spaces", before the "Young Lust" song rather than at the end of the "Young Lust" song. The implications of the song are therefore slightly different. On the album, he is already unfaithful to his wife while on tour, making him a hypocrite when he is appalled at her own unfaithfulness. In the film, he is only seen with a groupie after he learns of his wife's affair, which shows the character in a more sympathetic light.

In the film, several groupies (including a young Joanne Whalley, in her film debut) seduce security guards and roadies to get backstage passes, where one of them (Jenny Wright) ends up going with Pink (Bob Geldof) to his room.

Cover versions
During Roger Waters' The Wall concert in Berlin on 21 July 1990, the song was performed by Canadian rock star Bryan Adams. This version reached #7 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart and is still popular. It has been added to YouTube from Adams' official channel.
Producer John Law covered the song with banjo and electronics.
Luther Wright and the Wrongs covered the song as a reimagined loud, raucous rocker on Rebuild the Wall." - Wiki

10. "One of My Turns" 3:41
Pink is descending into psychosis now after the reveal of his wife's infidelity. He has a casual girl in his hotel room but mentally, he's barely there. Waters is back in speak/sing and these kinds of songs are good indications of his future solo albums. Geldof was most effective in the film doing this kind of thing. The Syd specter is here as well.

Wikipedia: Composition
The song is split into distinct segments: a groupie (Trudy Young) performs a monologue ("Oh my God, what a fabulous room!") while a television plays, under which a synthesizer makes atonal sounds, which eventually resolve into a quiet song in C major in 3/4 time ("Day after day / Love turns grey / Like the skin of a dying man."). Finally, the song abruptly leaps into a hard rock song in B-flat major in 4/4 time. The song features some of Waters' most strenuous recorded vocal workouts, with him ending at a relatively high A above middle C.

Plot
"One of My Turns" finds Pink inviting a groupie into his room after learning of his wife's affair. While the groupie tries to get his attention, he ignores her, and muses on his failed relationship with his wife. A TV can be heard in the background, the dialogue mixed in with the groupie's attempts at conversation.

While the hapless groupie continues trying to get his attention, Pink feels "Cold as a razor blade / Tight as a tourniquet / Dry as a funeral drum," before exploding into a fit of violence, destroying his room, and frightening the young woman away. When his hotel room is finally in complete shambles, and the groupie is gone, Pink feels something more: Self-pity, and a lack of empathy for others, as he screams "Why are you running away?"

The show that is on the television during the beginning of the song is from September 24–26, 1979, Another World episodes 3864–3866. Kirk Laverty brings Iris Bancroft and her maid, Vivan Gorrow, to his lodge in the Adirondacks. Dobbs was the caretaker of the lodge. Laverty is the man talking to Dobbs, not Mr. Bancroft. Laverty was played by Charles Cioffi.

Film version
Pink enters his hotel room with an American groupie, played by actress Jenny Wright. The groupie tries to be friendly to Pink (Wright performs nearly the same monologue as Trudy Young did on the album). Pink is oblivious to the groupie as he watches the film The Dam Busters on television. When the groupie tries to make contact with Pink saying "Are you feeling okay?", he explodes into a violent fit of rage and begins to destroy everything in his hotel room. Pink then chases the groupie around the room throwing various objects at her, cutting his own hand after he throws a television set out his window onto the street below, shouting "Take that, fuckers!", his only non-lyrical line spoken in the film.

The scene where Pink hurts his hand while destroying the Venetian blinds was not faked. Bob Geldof did indeed cut his hand and he can be seen looking at it for a brief second, but director Alan Parker decided not to stop filming until the scene was over, despite Geldof's injury. In the next scene, the viewer can see a towel or shirt wrapped around Geldof's injured hand. Also, according to Parker's DVD commentary, Wright was informed that Geldof (as Pink) would yell at her and chase her during the scene; however the director, in order to get an authentic reaction from the actress, did not tell her that Geldof would also throw a wine bottle at her (albeit an easily breakable, prop-made bottle) at the start of his enraged outburst. Moreover, years later in an interview Wright stated that she was not told that a food cart, which just missed her for a few inches, would be thrown at her."

11. "Don't Leave Me Now" 4:08
The longest cut on side two deals with Pink's isolation when dealing with his wife's cheating. The fact that Pink cheats doesn't seem to bother him I guess. This is slow and ponderous, but Roger sells it fairly well. The music doesn't really have a melody, but then the guitar solo enters the picture and we know it's a Pink Floyd song again. Waters'/Pink's self pity is at an apex here.

""Don't Leave Me Now" is a song by Pink Floyd. It appears on The Wall album (1979) and was released as a B-side on the single of "Run Like Hell". A 12" single of "Run Like Hell," "Don't Leave Me Now" and "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)" peaked at #57 on the Disco Top 100 chart in the U.S.

Composition
The main section of "Don't Leave Me Now", recorded with synthesizer bass, organ, piano, and a delay-treated guitar, does not adhere to one single key, but rather cycles slowly through four dissonant and seemingly-unrelated chords, for two measures of each: An E augmented chord, followed by a D flat major seventh chord, a B flat dominant seventh chord with a suspended second, followed by a G Major chord, which, after one bar, augments its fifth, before returning to the beginning of the progression. The first three chords all sustain the notes G♯/A♭ and C, and this interval is then lowered chromatically by one semitone for the conclusion on G Major. Furthermore, the roots of this chord progression (E, D♭, B♭, and G) outline the intervals of a diminished seventh chord. The roots relate to each other as a pair of tritones - the E and B♭ form one tritone, and the D♭ and G form the other. Musicologist and author Phil Rose described this section of the song as "entirely non-functional harmonically" and stated that "Most of the time when a phrase ends, Waters is either singing one of the most dissonant notes in the accompanying chord, or a non-chord tone." There is no percussion, and the tempo is very slow.

In the second section, drums, bass, and guitar enter, and the music becomes more consonant, resolving to the key of A minor through the use of D and A suspended second chords, as David Gilmour sings a refrain of "Ooh, babe".

Plot
At this point in the album's narrative, Pink has discovered his wife's infidelity. He invites a groupie to his hotel room in L.A., during his American tour and destroys the hotel room in a fit of rage, scaring the groupie away. Pink falls into a depression. Despite the dysfunctionality of the marriage, he listlessly pleads with his wife not to leave him, stating "I need you, babe / To put through the shredder in front of my friends".

Waters, in a 1980 interview with Jim Ladd, described this song as being about "two people who have treated each other very badly", yet are devastated at the prospect of their relationship ending. He also stated during the 1992 US radio special Pink Floyd: The 25th Anniversary Special that the lyrics had nothing to do with his personal life, as he had a more cordial relationship with his wife in real life than Pink did.

Film version
The song begins with a close-up of the debris in Pink's hotel room, then switches over to the hotel's pool, where Pink is seen floating in a crucifix position. Having cut open his right hand during his violent outburst, his blood stains the pool water. What follows is a fantasy sequence in which Pink watches The Dam Busters on TV in a much larger, and entirely empty, hotel room. The shadow of Pink's wife emerges on the back wall before materialising into a praying mantis-like monster, which then transforms into the vulva-shaped flower from "What Shall We Do Now?". The song ends with Pink cowering in the corner of the room, tortured by both the imaginary mantis in front of him, and thoughts of his wife's adultery." - Wiki

12. "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 3" 1:18
Lyrically, Pink is saying he doesn't need anybody in his life anymore, musically, they bring back the "Another Brick in the Wall" song for a third and final time - but it's probably the least effective version on the LP with a bit of a filler quality to this cut. Here's some more though from Wiki regarding the song - mostly the Part 2 version:

Pink Floyd live versions
The song featured in most Pink Floyd live gigs since its release (the only notable exceptions being the Knebworth 1990 appearance and the Live 8 reunion gig).

During the 1980/1981 Wall tour, the song was performed close to the original recording (with the children's singing played from tape), except that the ending was markedly expanded. As can be heard on Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live 1980–81, Gilmour's solo was followed by another guitar solo (played by Snowy White in 1980 and Andy Roberts in 1981) and finally an organ solo by Richard Wright.

The song was differently arranged on both tours after the departure of Roger Waters. On all shows of the Gilmour-led Floyd, Gilmour sang the lead vocals in unison with Guy Pratt, the children's vocals were augmented by live singing from the female backing vocalists, and the song incorporated a second guitar solo (by Tim Renwick) but no keyboard solo. Aside from this, the overall arrangements in 1987-1989 and 1994 were different. On the A Momentary Lapse of Reason tour, the two guitar solos were adjoined by a short piece of jamming. The song now started with an intro similar to the single version but with a 'teaser break' before the start of the vocals, and ended with a fadeout drowned out by children's voices (not dissimilar to the album version). This arrangement can be heard on Delicate Sound of Thunder.

The 1994 tour, instead, saw a different and longer version that combines elements of all the songs's three parts. On Pulse, the song opens with the phone signal (which originally bridged Part 2 with "Mother"), then a helicopter is heard (from "The Happiest Days of Our Lives"), before the band starts playing a short instrumental excerpt of Part 1. The bombastic ending of "The Happiest Days of Our Lives" leads into Part 2 (as on the album), and the ending incorporates the keyboard arpeggio of Part 3, the return of helicopter noises before the song comes to a full stop (as opposed to a fade-out). On the version from the video, the final minute also includes a sample of the vocal echo of "Dogs".

From 1988 onwards, Pink Floyd utilized additional sampled parts of the kids' choir, which were triggered by Jon Carin. Most notably, the space between the second verse and David Gilmour's solo was always filled with the shout "Hey, teacher!". In addition, on 1988 and 1989 shows, Carin also triggered the same sample in a 'stuttering' manner over Guy Pratt's short bass solo bridging Gilmour's and Renwick's solo. On the original releases of Delicate Sound of Thunder and Pulse however, this effect was muted (even though the DVD of Pulse still shows the stage LEDs spelling out "HEY TEACHER" at the appropriate moments). The 2019 remix of Delicate Sound of Thunder restores the first "Hey, teacher" and even brings the second sampling up in the mix, despite it being relatively quiet on all bootlegs of the era and inaudible on the mix of the Venice concert, which however has the first "Hey, teacher" intact.

Roger Waters versions
A live version of "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2" with Cyndi Lauper on vocals, recorded on 21 July 1990 at Potsdamer Platz, was released as a single on 10 September 1990 to promote The Wall – Live in Berlin. The B-side was the live version of "Run Like Hell" performed with Scorpions at the same concert.

In promotion of The Wall – Live in Berlin a new studio version was recorded by Roger Waters & The Bleeding Heart Band that was released on promo compilation titled The Wall Berlin '90 featuring Pink Floyd and Roger Waters solo recordings.

Another live version appeared on Waters' album In the Flesh – Live, integrated between "The Happiest Days of Our Lives" and "Mother" as on the original album, but with a reprise of the first verse ending the song.

For later shows, Waters usually employed local school choirs to perform the song with him (as can be seen on Roger Waters: The Wall). From 2011 to 2013, Waters added an acoustic coda called "The Ballad of Jean Charles de Menezes".

Korn version
Nu metal band Korn covered all three parts along with "Goodbye Cruel World" in 2004 for the compilation album Greatest Hits, Vol. 1. The cover was released as a promotional single, peaking at number 37 on the Modern Rock chart and number 12 on the Mainstream Rock chart. A live music video was released to promote the single, directed by Bill Yukich.

Will Levith of Ultimate Classic Rock called Korn's cover "one of the worst covers of a classic rock song of all time". Jason Birchmeier of AllMusic described it as "overwrought, yet enticingly so"

13. "Goodbye Cruel World" 1:16
This last little ditty ends the first half of the album in a suitably depressing fashion as Pink seemingly signs off with a suicide-like goodbye aimed at...well, it's not certain really. And he's back for side three so no need to fear...

Wiki: "Composition
A quiet song, the Prophet-5 analog synthesiser provides the D major chord sequence: D, G, D, A, D, while the bass guitar plays the root notes and their octaves. A similar bass riff was used in the earlier Pink Floyd songs "Careful with That Axe, Eugene" and the fade-out of "See Emily Play".

Plot
As with all tracks on The Wall, "Goodbye Cruel World" relates to the listener a segment of Pink's (the album's protagonist) story. More specifically, this song expresses Pink's recognition of the completion of his mental wall, and acknowledgement of his thorough isolation from society.

Live versions
In all performances of The Wall, both by Pink Floyd and in Roger Waters' solo career, the song represents the end of the first half of the show. The wall is built, apart from one brick. Waters appears in this small gap and as he sings the final word, "goodbye", the last brick is put into place, ending the first half of the show.

Cover versions
Anathema covered the song for the re-release of their album, Alternative 4.
Korn's cover of "Another Brick in the Wall" on their album Greatest Hits Volume 1 includes this song at the end.
Noel Gallagher of Oasis covered the song in 1995 as a guest of an American radio station.
Musician Orlando Francisco Garcia performs an acoustic version of this song."

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Side three

14. "Hey You" 4:40
This is another good one, which starts the third side after some less-than enthralling songs at the close of side two. Of course, it's another one that David primarily sings and you know how I feel about that.

"The song, along with "The Show Must Go On", was edited out of the film for fear on the part of the filmmakers that the film was running too long; however, a rough version is available as an extra on the 25th Anniversary Edition DVD.

The song starts off with an acoustic guitar, restrung in a fashion similar to Nashville tuning, but with the low E string replaced by a high E tuned two full octaves higher than normal. It plays arpeggios over E and D minor added ninth chords. The alternate stringing allows for adjacent pitches (such as the E, F♯, and G of the Em9 chord) to ring out separately on separate strings throughout the arpeggio. A fretless bass enters, also played by guitarist David Gilmour rather than usual bassist Roger Waters. Next to join in is the Fender Rhodes electric piano by Richard Wright, Gilmour's vocals, singing in the first person, as the character "Pink" ("Can you feel me?"), and overdubbed acoustic guitar and drums at the start of the second verse. In the middle is a guitar solo which is played over the album's leitmotif of the melody to "Another Brick in the Wall" (in E minor and A minor, rather than D minor). After the solo, Roger Waters sings the lead vocal for the rest of the song, in a narrative role, referring to "Pink" in the third person ("No matter how he tried") and then as Pink ("don't tell me there's no hope at all"). The bridge is a chord sequence later heard on the album as "Bring the Boys Back Home", ending on an E minor chord, leading to a reprise of the instrumental introduction, augmented by prominent ARP Quadra riffs and a faintly audible sound of a hand-held power drill boring into an undefined material, the latter of which is courtesy of the album's chief sound engineer, James Guthrie. At this point, there is a piece of indecipherable whispering from the left channel. Drums and vocals then join in. At about 3:23 into the song, a sonar-like sound, similar to the ping in "Echoes", is heard. When Waters sings the final verse, he does so one octave higher than Gilmour, with the highest note being the first C above middle C.

Plot
In "Hey You", Pink realizes his mistake of shunning society and attempts to regain contact with the outside world. However, he cannot see or hear beyond the wall. Pink's call becomes more and more desperate as he begins to realize there is no escape.

Film version
"Hey You" was shot for the film Pink Floyd—The Wall, but the sequence (also known as Reel 13) was ultimately not included. A workprint appears on the special edition DVD, in black and white. Most of the footage was used in other sequences (most notably "Another Brick in the Wall (Part III)").

The scene begins with Pink trying to claw out of his freshly completed wall. The scene then switches to Pink's concert-goers, all of them with a blank and vacant look on their faces. These are the people "Standing in the aisles with itchy feet and fading smiles" that Pink is trying to reach out to. Next is a shot of empty infirmary beds followed by a view of two empty chairs in a white room. A motionless Pink fades into the chair on the left, with his nude wife fading into the right chair a short time later. After turning her head to look at her unresponsive husband, she fades out of the scene, which shifts to a montage of rioting scenes, with people tipping over cars and throwing Molotov cocktails at riot police. After the montage, a hand is shown clawing at a window (the colour version of this is actually shown at the end of "The Trial") followed by a large group of maggots (the "worms" eating into Pink's brain). After a shot of Pink in an infirmary bed and his screaming wife superimposed over the image, the scene takes back to the riot, where a long line of police officers hold back a mob of rioters who have barricaded themselves behind a pile of desks and mattresses. The scene ends with Pink against his wall, having given up on finding a way out." - Wiki

15. "Is There Anybody Out There?" 2:44
Completely shut off from the outside world, our protagonist asks the question in the title with the usual found sounds and effects which are on so many PF discs. Nice acoustic guitar, and it's over before you know it.

Wiki: "Music
The first half of the piece has the same concept of "Hey You", being a distress call from Pink. Musically, it's a droning bass synthesizer with various sound effects layered on top, and a repeating chorus of "Is there anybody out there?". The shrill siren-like sound effect used during this song is also used in an earlier Pink Floyd work, "Echoes". The noise is mimicking a seagull cry. The seagull noise was created by David Gilmour using a wah-wah pedal with the guitar and output leads plugged in the wrong way round.

The second half of the song is an instrumental classical guitar solo. In interviews, David Gilmour has said that he tried to perform it, and was not satisfied with the final result ("I could play it with a leather pick but couldn't play it properly fingerstyle"). Accordingly, session musician Joe DiBlasi was brought in by Michael Kamen to play with the rest of the orchestra. He was wrongly credited as "Ron DiBlasi" on the album sleeve and Pink Floyd website because Roger Waters only remembered that it was a three-letter name; Ron was the closest name he could remember to Joe when creating the record.

Plot
At this point in the plot, the bitter and alienated Pink is attempting to reach anybody outside of his self-built wall. The repeated question "Is there anybody out there?" suggests that no response is heard.

On the other hand, "Comfortably Numb", some songs later in the album, starts with the sentence "Hello, Is there anybody in there?" addressed to Pink.

Film Version
In the film, during the ominous opening to the song, Pink is standing in front of the completed wall, and throws himself against it several times as if trying to escape. Then, during the acoustic guitar section, it cuts to Pink laying out all his possessions on the floor of the hotel room in neat piles. At the end of the song, it cuts to the bathroom where Pink shaves off his eyebrows and body hair, and tries to cut off his nipples with the razor, severing them.

TV excerpts
There are two excerpts from the TV programs Gunsmoke and Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. overlaid in the background of the track.

The Gunsmoke excerpt is from the episode entitled "Fandango" (first aired: 11 February 1967); Dialog starts at 32:54 of the show; the dialogue is as follows:

Marshall Dillon: Well, we got only about an hour of daylight left. We better get started.
Miss Tyson: Is it unsafe to travel at night?
Marshall Dillon: It'll be a lot less safe to stay here. Your father's gonna pick up our trail before long.
Miss Tyson: Can Lorca ride?
Marshall Dillon: He'll have to ride. Lorca, time to go! Chengra, thank you for everything. Let's go.
Miss Tyson: Goodbye, Chengra!
Chengra: Goodbye, Missy!
Miss Tyson: I'll be back — one day.
Chengra: The bones have told Chengra.
Miss Tyson: Take care of yourself.
Chengra: Marshall, look after my Missy.

The Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. excerpt is from the episode entitled "Gomer Says 'Hey' to the President" (first aired: 20 October 1967); Dialog starts at 1:45 of the show; the dialogue is as follows:

Sgt. Carter: All right, I'll take care of him part of the time.
(This is where the next song in the album, "Nobody Home" starts.)
Sgt. Carter: But there's somebody else that needs taking care of in Washington.
Cpl. Chuck Boyle: Who's that?
Sgt. Carter: Rose Pilchek.
Cpl. Chuck Boyle: Rose Pilchek? Who's that?
Sgt. Carter: 36-24-36. Does that answer your question?
Cpl. Chuck Boyle: Yeah, but you still didn't tell me, who is she?
Sgt. Carter: She was Miss Armoured Division of 1961. And she was still growing.
Cpl. Chuck Boyle: I get the picture.
Sgt. Carter: She's a waitress now; she dropped out of nursing school.
Cpl. Chuck Boyle: Well how'd you get to meet her?

Versions
An alternate version appears in the film Pink Floyd – The Wall
The Oliver Hart song "Ode to the Wall", from The Many Faces of Oliver Hart, samples this song extensively.
The Zac Brown Band song "Junkyard", from Jekyll + Hyde, samples the song extensively."

16. "Nobody Home" 3:26
A continuation of the last song with more TV sounds and Pink/Roger still consumed with self pity. More Syd imagery but really, even though I used to think there was a lot of Barrett in this album, it's really Waters who the story is about.

"This song was one of several to be considered for the band's "best of" album, Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd.

Background
"Nobody Home" was written late into the development of The Wall after an argument between the band and Roger Waters. David Gilmour said that the song "came along when we were well into the thing [The Wall] and he’d [Waters] gone off in a sulk the night before and came in the next day with something fantastic."

Lyrics
In the song, the character Pink describes his lonely life of isolation behind his self-created mental wall. He has no one to talk to, and all he has are his possessions. The song describes what Roger Waters says he experienced during the band's 1977 tour, the band's first major stadium tour. Additionally, the song contains some references to founding Pink Floyd member, Syd Barrett. The song was written after an argument between Gilmour, Waters, and co-producer Bob Ezrin during production of The Wall in which Gilmour and Ezrin challenged Waters to come up with one more song for the album. Waters then wrote "Nobody Home" and returned to the studio two days later to present it to the band. It was the last song written for The Wall. On the 30th anniversary of The Wall episode of the US radio show In the Studio with Redbeard, Gilmour revealed that "Nobody Home" was one of his favorite songs from the album.

A television playing in the background is frequently heard, including the line, "Surprise! Surprise, Surprise!" from Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. are said to have been written specifically about Floyd's pianist Richard Wright, who was allegedly struggling with cocaine addiction at the time.

Cover versions
An orchestrated version, arranged by Jaz Coleman and performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Peter Scholes, appears on the 1995 instrumental album Us and Them: Symphonic Pink Floyd.
On Metric's 2011 tour, for their 2009 album, Fantasies.
On the tribute album Back Against the Wall, the track is performed by Rick Wakeman." - Wikipedia

17. "Vera" 1:35
Same thing at the beginning with the TV sounds. Now Roger is on about Vera Lynn whom Wiki will explain about below. By this point in the proceedings, a faster-tempo is much needed. Too short to cause much consternation though.

Wiki: "The title is a reference to Vera Lynn, a British singer who came to prominence during World War II with her popular song "We'll Meet Again". The reference is ironic, as Roger Waters (and his fictional character "Pink") would not meet his father who died in the war.

The song's intro features a collage of superimposed audio excerpts from the 1969 film Battle of Britain. Among the used clips are a piece of dialogue ("Where the hell are you, Simon?"), a BBC broadcast and battle sound effects."

18. "Bring the Boys Back Home" 1:21
Another quick piece continuing the WWII theme. Filler, to be sure, and little to do with Pink Floyd. Roger, of course, loved it.

"The song was released as a B-side on the single, "When the Tigers Broke Free".

Composition
As the final notes of the previous song "Vera" decay, the listener hears several snare drums articulating a march beat in 4
4 time, fading in like approaching soldiers. The song proves to be polyrhythmic, as this beat continues unchanged while the orchestra, choir, and lead vocals begin in 12/8.

Roger Waters sings the simple and direct lyric in his upper register, stridently, supported by a choir. A IV-V-I chord progression in G major repeats, providing a sense of satisfaction. This is followed by a reversal, from G to D major with F-sharp in the bass, to C major, which features a tritone movement in the bassline, going from F♯ to C, introducing a sense of instability. This progression is a recurring Pink Floyd theme, appearing throughout the album in "Hey You", "Vera", and others, as well as several songs on Waters and company's follow-up concept album on the losses of war, The Final Cut. Waters and choir exhort, "Bring the boys back home / Don't leave the children on their own". On the final iteration, the song climaxes on the relative minor of E minor. The choir abruptly drops away, leaving Waters' voice alone, agonized and struggling to sustain the high note (the first B above middle C). A lone snare drum also remains, continuing its now-threatening march beat, as insane laughter and voices from Pink's past and present mingle while his manager pounds on his hotel-room door.

According to songwriter Roger Waters, "Bring the Boys Back Home" is the central, unifying song on The Wall:

... it's partly about not letting people go off and be killed in wars, but it's partly about not allowing rock and roll, or making cars, or selling soap, or getting involved in biological research, or anything that anybody might do ... not letting that become such an important and 'jolly boy's game' that it becomes more important than friends, wives, children, or other people.

— Roger Waters, in Interview by Tommy Vance, broadcast 30 November 1979, BBC Radio One

Performances
The original Pink Floyd concerts of The Wall were so expensive that, ultimately, the band lost money staging them. They were also, at that time, the most elaborate stage productions a rock band had ever mounted. For these reasons, and others, it is understandable that the band chose to use the original recordings of Michael Kamen's orchestral arrangements, rather than hire and rehearse a live orchestra, for what was then considered a rock and roll concert. Recordings of the original sound effects (televisions, helicopters, various atmospheric effects) were also used (as were the specific echo effects in several songs, such as "Hey You" or "Stop"). With the use of click tracks, the musicians were able to play in sync with the recordings (with the additional result that they reproduced nearly every song at its precise original tempo).

As "Bring the Boys Back Home" is performed by an orchestra, with a large number of drummers, and none of the typical rock and roll instruments, Roger Waters would simply sing along to a remix of the studio recording. This is demonstrated on Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live 1980–81, paying special attention to the ending, when the "live" Roger Waters drops out, and his recorded lead vocal remains, sustaining the last note with the unique wavering heard on the studio album.

Ten years later, when Roger Waters—by then a solo artist—decided to stage a massive re-production of The Wall at the site of the recently dismantled Berlin Wall, he had the personnel and the finances for a full-scale arrangement (Particularly because it was understood to be a charity concert for the Memorial For Disaster Relief). Using the extended arrangement from the film, Waters sang (in his most strident, histrionic style) while backed by the Rundfunk Orchestra and Choir, band of the Combined Soviet Forces in Germany and the Red Army Chorus.

When Waters resurrected the concept of The Wall for his 2010-2012 tour, The Wall Live, the song was again central to the show's political message. Throughout the song, the projections on the fully built wall slowly gave a 1953 quote from former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.

Film appearance
In the film, the song is sung by a large choir, without Waters' lead vocal. It is also expanded, with an extended vamp on the subdominant before repetition of the full four-line lyric.

"Bring the Boys Back Home" is about not letting war, or careers, overshadow family relationships or leave children neglected. This is symbolized in the film, in which the protagonist, Pink, is seen as a young boy at a train station. The station is filled with soldiers returning from war, their loved ones happy to greet them. But though he wanders around in vain, there is no one for Pink to embrace, as his father did not make it home alive. The happy crowd sings an exultant tune, "Bring the Boys Back Home", but the song ends abruptly on a minor chord as Pink suddenly realizes he is alone. The crowd of reunited families then vanish. As the last notes die away, we see his embittered and alienated adulthood. Memories of events that drove Pink to isolation begin to recur in a loop: The teacher from "Another Brick in the Wall", the operator from "Young Lust", and the groupie from "One of My Turns", Pink's manager knocking and yelling out, "Time to go!" (to play a concert) and insane laughter are also mixed into the closing seconds, concluding with the ominous voice from "Is There Anybody Out There?", reverberating slowly into silence, and segueing into "Comfortably Numb" as Pink’s manager bursts through the door finding Pink unconscious from an overdose." - Wiki

19. "Comfortably Numb" (Gilmour, Waters) 6:23
Many people's fave song on the LP comes a bit late to fully save side three, as there hasn't been a great song since "Hey You." But what the hell, better late than never, right? Dave's shining moment on the record.

Wikipedia: "It was released as a single in 1980, with "Hey You" as the B-side. The music was composed by guitarist David Gilmour, and the lyrics were written by bassist Roger Waters.

"Comfortably Numb" is one of Pink Floyd's most well-known songs, notable for its two guitar solos. In 2004, it was ranked number 314 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. It was re-ranked number 321 in 2010, and re-ranked number 179 in 2021. In 2005, it became the last song ever performed by Waters, Gilmour, keyboardist Richard Wright, and drummer Nick Mason together. An early version was included on the 2012 Wall Immersion Box Set. The song was covered by Scissor Sisters with a radically different arrangement, which was a UK top ten hit.

Composition
In "Comfortably Numb," Pink is medicated by a doctor so he can perform for a show. The song was inspired by Waters' injection with a muscle relaxant to combat the effects of hepatitis during the In the Flesh Tour, while in Philadelphia.

The verses are in B minor, while the chorus has been described as using a modal interchange of that key's relative major, D major, and D Mixolydian. The song, together with "Mother", is one of two tracks on The Wall that are not connected with an adjacent track. It is also the longest on the album at 6:21, followed by "Mother", which is 5:32.

Writing
Guitarist David Gilmour recorded a wordless demo while working on his debut solo album in 1978. He didn't use the chord sequence for that album, but kept it for future work. Bassist Roger Waters listened to the demo during sessions for The Wall but was reluctant to use it as he wanted to take sole responsibility for writing the album. Producer Bob Ezrin suggested that Waters should reconsider, agreeing that Gilmour's demo needed fleshing out. Subsequently, Waters wrote another chord structure for the verses, and added lyrics inspired from an experience of being injected with tranquilizers for stomach cramps before a 1977 performance in Philadelphia on the In the Flesh Tour. "That was the longest two hours of my life," Waters said, "trying to do a show when you can hardly lift your arm." The song's working title was "The Doctor". Ezrin looked at the completed lyrics and said they "just gave me goosebumps".

For the chorus, Gilmour and session player Lee Ritenour used a pair of acoustic guitars strung similarly to Nashville tuning, but with the low E string replaced with a high E string, two octaves higher than standard tuning. This tuning was also used for the arpeggios in "Hey You".

The band disagreed about how to record the song. Waters and Ezrin preferred a mix containing numerous orchestral overdubs, overseen by Michael Kamen, while Gilmour preferred a stripped-down mix with heavier rock elements. Gilmour later said: "We argued over 'Comfortably Numb' like mad. Really had a big fight, went on for ages." In the end, a compromise was reached where the main portion of the song would include the orchestral elements, while the final guitar solo would contain the stripped-down mix preferred by Gilmour. Ezrin later said he was happy with the final mix as it provided a good contrast, while Gilmour said it represented "the last embers of mine and Roger's ability to work collaboratively together".

To write the two guitar solos, Gilmour pieced together elements from several other solos he had been working on, marking his preferred segments for the final take. He used a Big Muff distortion and delay effects on the solos.

Cash Box said that "Gilmour's guitar cries out eloquently."

Live performances
Pink Floyd
During the 1980/81 The Wall tour, where a giant wall was constructed across the stage during the performance, the song was performed with Roger Waters dressed as a doctor at the bottom of the wall, and David Gilmour singing and playing guitar from the top of the wall on a raised platform with spotlights shining from behind him. It was the first time the audience's attention was drawn to the top of the completed wall. According to Gilmour, the final solo was one of the few opportunities during those concerts that he was free to improvise completely. Gilmour said:

It was a fantastic moment, I can tell, to be standing up on there, and Roger's just finished singing his thing, and I'm standing there, waiting. I'm in pitch darkness and no one knows I'm there yet. And Roger's down and he finishes his line, I start mine and the big back spots and everything go on and the audience, they're all looking straight ahead and down, and suddenly there's all this light up there and they all sort of—their heads all lift up and there's this thing up there and the sound's coming out and everything. Every night there's this sort of "[gasp!]" from about 15,000 people. And that's quite something, let me tell you.

After Waters left the band, Gilmour revised the verses to suit his "grungier" preference for live performances. Verse vocals were arranged for three-part harmony. In both 1987–88 and 1994, these were sung by Richard Wright, Guy Pratt and Jon Carin.

In December 1988, a video of the live performance from Delicate Sound of Thunder reached number 11 on MTV's Top 20 Video Countdown. The video was two minutes shorter than the album version and the video clip had different camera angles from the home video version.

Pink Floyd performed the song at Knebworth Park on 30 June 1990, published on Knebworth: The Album (CD) and on Live At Knebworth 1990 (DVD).

A 10-minute version of "Comfortably Numb" was performed at Earls Court, London on 20 October 1994, as part of The Division Bell tour. The Pulse video release edited out approximately 1:20 minutes of the ending solo, whereas the original pay-per-view video showed the unedited version.

Pink Floyd, complete with Waters, reunited briefly to perform at the Live 8 concert in Hyde Park, London in July 2005. The set consisted of four songs, of which "Comfortably Numb" was the last.

Roger Waters
After leaving Pink Floyd, Waters first performed "Comfortably Numb" at the 1990 concert staging of The Wall – Live in Berlin on 21 July 1990. The event's purpose was to commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall. Waters sang lead, Van Morrison sang Gilmour's vocal parts backed by Rick Danko and Levon Helm of The Band, with guitar solo by Rick Di Fonzo and Snowy White, and backup by the Rundfunk Orchestra & Choir. This version was used in the Academy Award-winning 2006 film The Departed, directed by Martin Scorsese. It is also heard in the TV show episode of The Sopranos, titled "Kennedy and Heidi", when Christopher Moltisanti plays The Departed soundtrack on his car stereo before a serious accident. Van Morrison's 2007 compilation album, Van Morrison at the Movies – Soundtrack Hits includes this version.

Waters subsequently performed the song at the "Guitar Legends" festival in Spain in 1991 (with White on guitar solos, waters playing acoustic guitar during the second solo and guest vocals by Bruce Hornsby), and at the Walden Woods benefit concert in Los Angeles in 1992 with guest vocals by Don Henley.

During 1999–2000, Doyle Bramhall II and Snowy White stood in for Gilmour's vocals and guitar solos; a role carried out by Chester Kamen and White in 2002 with Andy Fairweather Low on bass while Waters played acoustic guitar in unison with Jon Carin with Andy Fairweather Low on bass; whose role was carried out by Harry Waters in 2002. In 2006–2007 Gilmour's vocals were performed by Jon Carin and Andy Fairweather-Low (while both playing acoustic guitar and Waters playing bass) with Dave Kilminster and White performing the guitar solos.

During Waters' The Wall Live tour, Robbie Wyckoff sang Gilmour's vocals, and Dave Kilminster performed the guitar solos with G E Smith on bass, both of them atop the wall, as Gilmour had been in the original tour. During the performance of 12 May 2011 at the London O2 Arena, David Gilmour appeared as a guest during this song, and both sang the choruses and played guitar from the top of the wall, echoing the original Earls Court performances. The song contains one of the show's most memorable moments, when, at a specific point of the final guitar solo, Waters steps toward the wall and pounds it with his fists, triggering both an explosion of colours on the previously dark-grey screen projections and a collapsing wall.

Waters performed the song with Eddie Vedder singing Gilmour's vocals at 12-12-12: The Concert for Sandy Relief.

During Mexico City and Desert Trip shows Waters performed with the same band setup as The Wall tour.

During the Us + Them Tour, Gilmour's vocals were performed by Jonathan Wilson with Guitar Solos by Kilminster and bass by Gus Seyffert

David Gilmour
Gilmour has performed the song during each of his solo tours. In his 1984 tour to promote his album About Face, the set list referred to the song as "Come on Big Bum". The vocals during the verses were performed by band members Gregg Dechert and Mickey Feat (in harmony).

In 2001 and 2002, the verse vocals were performed on different dates by guest singers: Robert Wyatt, Kate Bush, Durga McBroom, and Bob Geldof, who had played Pink in the film version of The Wall. Geldof, who had not memorized the verses, read the lyrics as he sang.

On 29 May 2006, at the Royal Albert Hall, David Bowie, in a guest appearance, sang the verses. The next day, 30 May, Richard Wright sang the verses, by himself (as per the rest of the tour), at the same venue. Both performances were included on Gilmour's Remember That Night concert video, compiled from all three of his shows there on 29, 30 and 31 May 2006, which were part of his On an Island Tour to promote his new album of the same name.

In 2006, Gilmour performed the song in a concert, with the Polish Baltic Philharmonic Orchestra providing the orchestral parts that had usually been done with backing tapes or multiple synthesizers. This version would be released on Live in Gdańsk.

On the 2016 Rattle That Lock tour, the verses were sung by Jon Carin (on legs 1–3), Chuck Leavell (on leg 4) (this version can be seen and heard on Live at Pompeii and Bryan Chambers (leg 5). They were also performed by Benedict Cumberbatch on 28 September 2016 at the Royal Albert Hall.

During a performance at the Royal Albert Hall on 24 April 2016, Gilmour and his band incorporated the final refrain of the Prince song "Purple Rain" into the song as a tribute to that artist, who had died three days earlier.

Reception
In 2011, the song was ranked 5th in the BBC Radio 4's listeners' Desert Island Discs choices. Gilmour's solo was rated the 4th best guitar solo of all-time by Guitar World magazine, in a reader poll. In August 2006, it was voted the greatest guitar solo of all time in a poll by listeners of digital radio station Planet Rock. Gilmour's guitar tone in the song was named best guitar sound by Guitarist magazine in November 2010. The two guitar solos were ranked as the greatest guitar solos of all time by Planet Rock listeners. In 2017, Billboard and Paste both ranked the song number four on their lists of the greatest Pink Floyd songs.

Scissor Sisters version
American pop rock band Scissor Sisters recorded a radically re-arranged disco-oriented version released in January 2004 on Polydor, with the B-side "Rock My Spot (Crevice Canyon)". This release reached number 10 on the UK Singles Chart. David Gilmour and Nick Mason expressed a liking for the group's version, and Roger Waters is said to have congratulated the Scissor Sisters on the version, although a lyric was changed, from "a distant ship's smoke on the horizon" to "a distant ship floats on the horizon". Jake Shears, the band's lead singer, was invited by Gilmour to sing "Comfortably Numb" with him in some 2006 shows, but the idea was dropped at the last moment to Shears' public disappointment. This cover received a Grammy nomination for Best Dance Recording but lost to "Toxic" by Britney Spears."

Image

Side four

20 "The Show Must Go On" 1:36
With such a barn-burner ending side three, the beginning of side four could only be a letdown. Only this song isn't that bad. The harmonies, the melody, and its brief length combined with Gilmour's vocal make this a pleasant surprise. The show must go on indeed, as we enter the final stretch in this lengthy endeavor.

"Recording and lyrics
Roger Waters wanted to create a "Beach Boys" type sound for the backing vocals, and got Bruce Johnston to come and help create it, but this was only after the Beach Boys themselves had agreed to do so, only to cancel at the last possible moment (the morning of the session, 2 October 1979). The song's chord patterns closely resemble those found in "Mother", "In the Flesh", and "Waiting for the Worms".

The track does not appear in the 1982 film version of The Wall nor in Waters' post-Pink Floyd 1990 concert The Wall – Live in Berlin. It also has an extra verse that was cut from the studio album, but is nevertheless included in the lyrics printed on its sleeve.

Do I have to stand up
Wild eyed in the spotlight
What a nightmare
Why don't I turn and run

After this, the line "There must be some mistake..." starts.

The full song was performed live in concert, and as such appears on Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live 1980–81. It was also included on Waters' 2010-2013 solo Wall tour, and is included in the concert film and album of that tour.

It's the only song from the album which Waters does not perform any kind of instrument and vocal, although his voice is audible on unofficially released recordings of the demo. He is heard singing a verse that was cut from the final version and has never been played live, located right before David Gilmour's bridge:

Am I really unsure,
Wild eyed in the spotlight?
Fuck me, what a nightmare
Who's there?
Have they all gone?

It's okay, now you're in luck,
The worms have fled the rising sun.
Their evil power is on the wane.
Forget the past and start again.

There must be some mistake...

Plot
As with the other songs on The Wall, "The Show Must Go On" tells a segment of the story of Pink, the story's protagonist. This song leads into "In the Flesh", where the show is performed by Pink as he begins to mentally unravel and hallucinate that he is a fascist dictator." - Wikipedia

21. "In the Flesh" 4:15
Reprise of the first song on the LP, but this time in a longer version, signals that we're finishing up with the tale of Pink. The first time was a flashback, but now we're all caught up in the story.

Wiki - ""In the Flesh?" and "In the Flesh" are two songs by the English rock band Pink Floyd, released on their 1979 album, The Wall. "In the Flesh?" is the opening track, and introduces the story concept of the album. "In the Flesh" is the twenty-first song of the album, and is a reprise of the first with a choir, different verses and more extended instrumentation."

Indeed.

22. "Run Like Hell" (Gilmour, Waters) 4:20
The highlight of side four, this churning rocker was another radio staple in the '80s. Anything that David contributed adds to the overall quality of the album.

" It was released as a single in 1980, reaching #15 in the Canadian singles chart as well as #18 in Sweden, but only reached #53 in the U.S. A 12" single of "Run Like Hell," "Don't Leave Me Now" and "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)" peaked at #57 on the Disco Top 100 chart in the U.S. To date, it is the last original composition written by both Gilmour and Waters, the last of such under the Pink Floyd banner, and is the last composition ever recorded by all four members of the classic 70s-era Floyd lineup together, within their traditional instrumental roles of Waters on bass, Gilmour on guitars, Nick Mason on drums, and Richard Wright on keyboards, on the same song.

Film adaptation
In the film adaptation, Pink directs his jackbooted thugs to attack the "riff-raff" mentioned in the previous song, in which he ordered them to raid and destroy the homes of queers, Jews, and black people. One scene depicts an interracial couple cuddling in the back seat of a car when a group of neo-Nazis accost them, beating the boy and raping the girl.

The Wall director Alan Parker hired the Tilbury Skins, a skinhead gang from Essex, for a scene in which Pink's "hammer guard" (in black, militaristic uniforms designed by the film's animator, Gerald Scarfe) smashes up a Pakistani diner; Parker recalled how the action "always seemed to continue long after I had yelled out 'Cut!'."

History
The music was solely written by David Gilmour (one of three songs on The Wall for which Gilmour is credited as a co-writer), and the lyrics were written by Roger Waters. Waters provides the vocals (except for Gilmour's multitracked harmonies singing "Run, run, run, run,"). The first version of the song had music written by Waters (which appears on the Immersion box set of The Wall) with the lyrics as on the album but then Waters's music was scrapped in favour of Gilmour's music during the recording of the band demos (which too appears on the Immersion box set). The song features the only keyboard solo on The Wall by Richard Wright (although on live performances, "Young Lust" and "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2" would also feature keyboard solos); after the last line of lyrics, a synthesizer solo is played over the verse sequence, in place of vocals. Following the solo, the arrangement "empties out" and becomes sparse, with the guitar only playing an ostinato with rhythmic echoes, and brief variations every other bar. Sound effects are used to create a sense of paranoia, with the sound of cruel laughter, running footsteps, car tyres skidding, and a loud scream. The original 7" single version and Pink Floyd The Wall -- Special Radio Construction promotional EP both contain a clean guitar intro, without the live crowd effects. The EP version also contains an extended, 32-beat intro and an extended 64-beat outro where David Gilmour's main guitar phrase repeats before the track ends.

As with "Comfortably Numb", also from The Wall, the music to "Run Like Hell" has its roots in Gilmour's first solo album. "Short and Sweet" can be seen as this song's precursor. "Yes," Gilmour told Musician magazine, "it's a guitar with the bottom string tuned down to a D, and thrashing around on the chord shapes over a D root. Which is the same in both [songs]. [Smiling] It's part of my musical repertoire, yes."

Composition
After the previous song, "In The Flesh", the crowd continues to chant, "Pink! Floyd! Pink! Floyd!" The guitar intro begins with the scratching of strings dampened with left-hand muting, before settling on an open D string dampened by palm muting. As heard earlier on the album in "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1", the muted D is treated with a specific delay setting, providing three to four loud but gradually decaying repeats, one dotted-eighth note apart, with the result that simply playing quarter notes (at 116 beats per minute) will produce a strict rhythm of one eighth note followed by two sixteenth notes, with rhythmic echoes overlapping. Over this pedal tone of D, Gilmour plays descending triads in D major (mostly D, A, and G), down to the open chord position (a quieter, second overdubbed guitar plays open chords only). Some of the guitar tracks are also treated with a heavy flanging effect.

The verses are in E minor, with pedal tones of the guitar's open E, B, and G strings (a full E minor triad) ringing out over a sequence of power chords, resulting in the chords E minor, Fmaj7sus2(♯11), C major seventh, and Bsus4(add♭6). Providing contrast, another guitar, equally treated with delay, plays a low-pitched riff on the roots and minor sevenths of each chord, although the E♭ (minor seventh of F) and B♭ (minor seventh of C) do not match the sustaining open E and B strings an octave above.

Aside from the added tones in each chord, the basic verse sequence of E minor, F major, E minor, C major, and B major is reprised later in "The Trial", the conceptual climax of The Wall. However, David Gilmour is not credited as a co-writer of "The Trial", which is credited to Waters and producer Bob Ezrin.

Before the final riff ends the song, a piercing shriek by Roger Waters can be heard, not unlike one heard between "The Happiest Days of Our Lives" and "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2". At the conclusion of the song, the crowd begins chanting, "Hammer! Hammer!" as the sound of soldiers marching is heard before segueing into the next song, "Waiting for the Worms".

Film version
The movie version of the song is considerably shorter than the album version, likely done for the sake of pacing. The second guitar refrain between the first and second verses was taken out, with the verse's last line, "You better run", leading directly to Gilmour's harmonized chant ("Run, run, run, run"), which now echoed back and forth between the left and right channels. Also, Richard Wright's synth solo was superimposed over the second verse, and the long instrumental break between the end of the synth solo and Waters' scream was removed.

Reception
Billboard felt that the lyrics were not as "biting" as Pink Floyd's previous single "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2," but stated that "it's the driving, dance-oriented, percussion-filled rhythm which makes the song come alive." In 2017, they ranked the song number two on their list of the 50 greatest Pink Floyd songs. Cash Box said that "David Gilmour’s hard bitten guitar and Roger Water's incessant bass beat set the perfect instrumental mood for the lyrical paranoia."

Live performances
Pink Floyd
The Wall Tour

During the previous song, "In the Flesh", a giant inflatable pig was released, which Waters refers to in a speech between both songs. The speech given varied slightly on each concert and therefore can be used to identify which show a recording came from. On Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live 1980–81, the speech is a mix of the 15 June 1981 and 17 June 1981 speeches. It was sometimes introduced by Waters as "Run Like Fuck" and Waters and Gilmour sang alternating lines in the verses, while the vocal quartet of Stan Farber, Jim Haas, Joe Chemay, and John Joyce sang the choruses.

During the song, the "surrogate band" (also referred to, in Nick Mason's book, as the "shadow band") are onstage with the Pink Floyd members and their quartet of singers. Both Andy Bown and Roger Waters play bass on this song. Bown plays the bass exactly as it was recorded—four quarter notes per bar, playing only roots, using the lowest possible root in drop D tuning. Waters, meanwhile, plays variations at key moments, plays whole notes while singing, and, during the "emptied out" section on D following the synth solo, Waters sometimes improvised high-pitched riffs above Bown's low D.

Later tours
Following Waters' departure from Pink Floyd, the song became a regular number in the band's concerts, usually ending the show and going over nine minutes long. One live version was used as the B-side to "On the Turning Away". The song also was the closing track on the live album Delicate Sound of Thunder. Gilmour generally played an extended guitar introduction, sharing vocals with touring bassist Guy Pratt, with Pratt singing Waters' lines. In the 1994 tour, Pratt sometimes sang the name of the city where they were playing instead of the word mother in the line "...they're going to send you back to mother in a cardboard box..." – in the Pulse video (live at Earls Court, 1994), he clearly sings London. According to Phil Taylor, David Gilmour played "Run Like Hell" on a Fender Telecaster guitar tuned to a drop-D on the 1994 tour.

Roger Waters
In Roger Waters' The Wall concert in Berlin in 1990, he made no speech and sang all the lines alone. He didn't play the bass guitar for this live version.

For Waters' worldwide 2010–2013 Wall tour, the song was transposed one whole step down, from D to C.[14] This is commonly done in live performances when a singer has difficulty reaching the highest notes in the song's original key. During the intro of the song, Waters clapped to the beat and in some cases shouted, exhorting the audience to clap along and "have a good time, enjoy yourselves", which might be considered ironic, given the paranoid tone of the actual lyrics. Again, he did not play bass guitar, instead gesturing with a prop submachine gun at various points throughout the song.

David Gilmour
In addition to performing the song with Pink Floyd, Gilmour has also performed it himself on his 1984 solo tour in support of his About Face album. In Waters' absence, Gilmour would trade lines with bass guitarist Mickey Feat. He also performed the song solo at the Colombian Volcano benefit concert in 1986, trading lines with house-band keyboardist John "Rabbit" Bundrick (who would later play on Waters' solo album, Amused to Death) and again during his 2015-2016 Rattle That Lock Tour, trading lines with Guy Pratt. Gilmour also performed the song in 2016 in Live At Pompeii.

Cover versions
In 2001, the Canadian all-female metal band Kittie, recorded a cover and was released on their full-length album Oracle. In this version, lead vocalist and lead guitarist Morgan Lander actually does incorporate the title of the song within the lyrics.
The Disco Biscuits have covered "Run Like Hell" live since 1997.
In 2011, Italian metal band Mastercastle recorded a cover that was released on their album Last Desire.
On 6 March 2019, American heavy metal band Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo and guitarist Kirk Hammett jammed on the song during a concert in Kansas City, Missouri. The moment was recorded and uploaded to the band's YouTube channel the next day.

In popular culture
The opening to "Run Like Hell" is used by the Pittsburgh Pirates as the opening song when introducing the Pierogies for the Great Pierogi Race in between the 5th and 6th innings." - Wiki

23. "Waiting for the Worms" 4:04
More of the Beach Boys styled harmonies in the beginning as Roger tells his tale of worm-waiting to symbolize Pink's mental deterioration. The impending sense of doom is all-pervasive as we wait...er, for the album to end?

Wiki: "Composition and plot
At this point in the album, protagonist Pink has lost hope ("You cannot reach me now") and his thinking has decayed, bringing to mind the "worms". In his hallucination, he is a fascist dictator, fomenting racist outrage and violence, as begun in the preceding song, "Run Like Hell". The count-in is Eins, zwei, drei, alle —German for "one, two, three, all". In the beginning and end the crowd chants, "Hammer", a recurring representation of fascism and violence in The Wall.

The song is a slow, leaden march in G Major, begun with David Gilmour and Roger Waters alternating calm and strident voices, respectively. Waters takes over with an extended vamp on A minor, musically similar to the album's earlier "The Happiest Days of Our Lives". Through a megaphone, he barks forceful invectives ("Waiting to put on a black shirt ... for the queens and the coons and the Reds and the Jews"). After an extended rant, Gilmour's calmer voice returns, with the promise that his followers will "see Britannia rule again" and "send our coloured cousins home again," with Waters concluding "All you need to do is follow the worms!"

Finally, the song changes into a minor-key musical theme: root, major second, minor third, major second—that has recurred throughout the album, as the main theme to "Another Brick in the Wall", the instrumental section of "Hey You", and will be heard in the album's climax, "The Trial". The riff is repeated in E minor, with E minor and D Major chords played atop it on keyboards. From the megaphone, Waters's rant lapses into incomprehensibility, while the music and the crowd's chanting grows louder. Finally, the song abruptly halts with a shout of "Stop!"

Film version
The imagery features a live action segment with some teenagers (the same ones from "In the Flesh?") trampling over a rag doll replica of Pink. He then shouts through a megaphone while his followers march through the street. Following the images of the fascist crowd, the screaming face and the fascist bashing a man's skull from "What Shall We Do Now?", a dog biting meat off a hook then consumed by a larger one (from the Animals tour), and the famous goose-stepping hammer sequence, we see Pink yell "Stop".

Concerts
In the concerts of The Wall, a member of Pink Floyd, often Waters, would wear a leather trenchcoat. Gilmour would provide the high pitched "Ooooh, you cannot reach me now, ooooooh!" The song would build up until the lights extinguish in preparation to introduce the "Pink puppet" that sings "Stop". The marching hammers animation would be displayed on a circular screen above the stage during concerts.

Later concerts, performed by Waters after his departure from the band, featured a similar scene. Backing singers provided Gilmour's lines, and, in the 2010-2013 tour of The Wall, ending with the marching hammers filling the entire wall.

Animation

The full, uncut animation shown at the concert begins with a cartoon image of a hill. On top of the hill are indistinct objects, moving. Suddenly, as the guitar leitmotif plays briefly, the sky goes dark grey, a symbol of evil. The scene scrolls down to reveal London being enveloped in darkness as "Would you like to see..." and the rest of the verse is sung. Then, an abandoned tricycle is shown, as "Would you like to send..." and the rest of that verse is sung. An abandoned playground is shown as the final verse is sung. Then a viaduct appears, where something is goose-stepping. At long last it is revealed that the objects on the hill, what possibly scared the children and what was under the viaduct, are marching hammers. As the fascist dictator shows increasing desperation, louder and angrier, there is a whip pan in to the hammers, and as the camera pans there is a sudden, loud, abrupt instrumental sound, which is quickly replaced by a piano. The animation stops, as the song "Stop" begins.

Reaction
Jorge Sacido Romero and Luis Miguel Varela Cabo opined that "Waiting for the Worms" represented Waters' fears of a "potential ideological drift towards an ultranationalist, imperialist and racist stand that calls for the resurrection of a Britannia that is both pure and almighty."
In 2010, Dublin band Twinkranes covered the song for a Mojo magazine tribute album."

24. "Stop" 0:30
More self pity, but since it's the shortest track here by some distance, all is forgiven. We're about to enter into the trial portion of the tale.

"Plot
Pink is tired of his life as a fascist dictator and the hallucination ends. Also tired of "The Wall", he accordingly devolves into his own mind and puts himself on trial.

Film version
After "Waiting for the Worms", Pink screams out "stop", where we find him sitting at the bottom of a bathroom stall. He seems to be reading the lyrics from a sheet of paper where a few of the lines come from, at the time, unreleased material written by Waters. The line "Do you remember me / How we used to be / Do you think we should be closer?", comes from "Your Possible Pasts". Other lines come from "5:11AM (The Moment of Clarity)"). As Pink finishes the lyrics to "Stop", the security guard seen in the segment for "Young Lust" slowly pushes open the stall door, which leads to the animated intro of "The Trial". - Wikipedia

25. "The Trial" (Waters, Bob Ezrin) 5:13
One of the more memorable songs on the album actually. And it's good that Roger relented and gave Ezrin co-writing credit on at least this one song as he was such a big help in the making of this album. I know every word. LOL

Wiki: "Plot
The song centers on the main character, Pink, who having lived a life filled with emotional trauma and substance abuse has reached a critical psychological break. "The Trial" is the fulcrum on which Pink's mental state balances. In the song, Pink is charged with "showing feelings of an almost human nature." This means that Pink has committed a crime against himself by actually attempting to interact with his fellow human beings, defying the mission towards self-isolation that defined much of his life. Through the course of the song, he is confronted by the primary influences of his life (who have been introduced over the course of the album): an abusive schoolmaster, his wife, and his overprotective mother; in the animated sequence, they are depicted as grotesque caricatures. Pink's subconscious struggle for sanity is overseen by a new character, "The Judge." In Pink Floyd -- The Wall and the concert animations, the Judge is a giant worm for most of the song until his verse, at which point he transforms into a giant anthropomorphic body from the waist-down (bigger than the marching hammers in "Waiting for the Worms"), his face constructed from various elements of the buttocks and genitals. A prosecutor conducts the early portions, which consist of the antagonists explaining their actions, intercut with Pink's refrains, "Crazy/Toys in the attic, I am crazy,/Truly gone fishing" and "Crazy/Over the rainbow, I am crazy,/Bars in the window." The culmination of the trial is the judge's sentence for Pink "to be exposed before your peers" whereupon he orders Pink to "Tear down the wall!"

As Waters sings the dialogue for each character he transitions into different accents including: Cockney accent (the prosecutor and judge), Scottish accent (the schoolmaster) and Northern English accent (Pink's mother). For the character of Pink's wife he used his normal voice on the album and the original 1980-81 tour. However, in his solo 2010-13 tour of The Wall he portrays the wife with a distinctively French accent.

This and the following song, "Outside the Wall," are the only two songs on the album which the story is (partly) seen from an outsider's perspective, most notably through the three antagonists of "The Trial," even though it is all in Pink's mind. The song ends with the sound of a wall being demolished amid chants of "Tear down the wall!", marking the destruction of Pink's metaphorical wall.

Film version
The segment in the film version is a full-length animated sequence of vivid colour and disturbing visuals; the animation was originally designed for the album's concert performances, before being reworked for the film adaptation. Political cartoonist Gerald Scarfe directed the design for the segment. The film segment relies not only on visuals, but also on the themes, music, and lyrics of the original song. Pink, himself, is portrayed as an almost inanimate rag doll throughout the sequence. Pink's schoolmaster, wife and mother and the prosecutor and judge are depicted as large and grotesque caricatures and are known individually by their role:

The prosecutor is a caricature of a Victorian barrister. He is short and rotund, wearing a long navy gown which trails behind him, at points above his own head, such as when he leaps onto the wall (depicted as being composed of white bricks, as in the album's cover). His facial features are occasionally greatly exaggerated; depending on what he is saying. For instance, when he describes Pink's charges, during saying that Pink has experienced "feelings of an almost human nature," his face moves close to the camera and assumes a grotesque expression of disgust and contempt.
The schoolmaster is brought down like a marionette on strings, controlled by his overbearing wife, referring to the earlier song "The Happiest Days of Our Lives." He has a long face with grey skin and two pointy tufts of hair on top, making his head somewhat resemble a hammer.
The wife comes out from underneath the wall, represented as the scorpion/praying mantis that previously appeared during "Don't Leave Me Now."
The mother comes in as an abstract, morphing image of an airplane (referencing the plane which killed Pink's father, and also the plane which Pink was playing with in "Another Brick in the Wall (Part I)"), and then transforms into a talking vagina, which then encircles Pink before morphing into a caricature of the archetypal mid-20th century British mother. As her verse ends, she transforms into the wall that Pink continues to be trapped behind.
The judge is portrayed as a giant pair of buttocks — complete with two backwards facing legs, an anus for a mouth (with a monstrous voice), and a scrotum for a chin — wearing a judge's wig.
The judge reaches the final verdict to tear down the wall and vomits out a montage of clips from the movie shown before were played, following this is a long moment of silence before the wall begins to burst apart, accompanied by a scream of agony and terror from Pink.

The animated sequence was used in the 1980/81 concert versions of The Wall with Waters singing the song in front of the wall as "The Trial"'s animation played behind him on the wall. It was then used again in the 2010-13 touring concert version, albeit with the "crazy" interludes modified to incorporate CGI (most prominently the replacement of the floating leaf sequence with one of a deformed humanoid lashing out towards the audience, surrounded by graffiti of hateful messages).

There are also a number of differences on the 1980/81 Live version of the animation compared to the 1982 movie. Several scenes were re-shot to fit the wider screen, while in many other cases (i.e. the "crazy" intervals + most scenes with the judge) stretched to fit the widescreen format, The first scenes of "The Trial" being set-up there lack cuts in the live version; it's one long tracking shot through the many characters in the scene while the worms form the stage. In other cases too there are scenes entirely deleted like an crowd of large humanoids cheering for the judge to "shit on him", as well as the bricks transforming into the wife/mother/schoolmaster characters after the judge's verse, cutting abruptly into Pink's memories; some of these scenes appear intact in the more recent 2012 tour.

Composition
The track is noted for its distinctive voice work by Waters, as well as its grandiose musical style, which is more akin to an operetta than a rock song; it is fully orchestrated, with no traditional rock elements until David Gilmour's guitar starts as the verdict is pronounced, along with Nick Mason's heavy drums.

Musically, the structure of "The Trial" is similar to an earlier track on the album, "Run Like Hell," with the same chord sequence of E minor, F, back to E minor, C, and B. However, there are various differences between the two songs, such as vastly different instrumentation. The bass alternates between the root (E) and fifth (B) of the E minor chord, and when the chord changes to F Major, the bass remains the same, resulting in a strong feeling of tension and dissonance, as the relationship between the F chord and the B note is a tritone, the most unstable interval in music.

In the last verse (The Judge's verdict), a distorted electric guitar enters, playing a leitmotif from the album, a melody first heard in "Another Brick in the Wall" (and most recently reprised in the outro to "Waiting for the Worms").

Concerts and versions
In the Berlin performance, before The Wall crumbles, it briefly "becomes" the Berlin Wall, building up graffiti like the actual wall until it is pulled down.
In the gatefold art, when the judge looks over the crowd, it seems that the "marching hammers" of fame are all lined up in his possession.
In the film version, the animation from the stage show is used, but certain shots (including the Schoolmaster turning into a hammer) were stretched from their original full-frame image to a 2.39:1 aspect ratio. The rest of the animation that was featured reused the original cels though expanded the backgrounds to fill the cinematic image. Waters used the film's anamorphic version for his 2010–13 tour of The Wall.
In 2009, pianist Andreas Behrendt released an instrumental version of the song.
The British rock group Church of the Cosmic Skull covered the song on the 2018 tribute album The Wall [Redux]."

26. "Outside the Wall" 1:41
And our journey with Roger's neurotic story comes to a close with the destruction of his mental wall and desolation laid bare for all the world to see. I guess some sort of catharsis is reached by exorcising his demons regarding his father, the antipathy felt for his fans, his feelings about casual sex with groupies and infidelity. And if he didn't receive this catharsis, then I'm sure the millions of pounds he deposited in the Waters coffers both from the sales of this record and subsequent solo tours went some way towards calming his mental waters.

Wiki: "Overview
This song is meant as a dénouement to the album. The story ends with "The Trial", in which a "judge" decrees, "Tear down the wall!". An explosion is heard to signify the wall's destruction, and "Outside the Wall" quietly begins. It is not explicitly stated what happens to Pink, the protagonist, after the dismantling of his psychological "wall". At the end, the song cuts off abruptly, as the man says "Isn't this where...", leading into the voice clip at the beginning of "In the Flesh?" that states "...we came in?", giving a sort of circularity to the album.

Composition
The song is the quietest on the album. It is a diatonic song in C Major, in 3/4 and is 1:41 in length. In the original demo version of this song, a harmonica was used in place of the clarinet heard on the album version.

Plot
Unlike the other songs on the album, this particular song offers little to the plot involving Pink as a whole. It notes that "the ones who really love you" are standing outside the wall and warns that, if you do not tear down your metaphorical wall, some might eventually give up on you and leave you to live out a lonely life instead of "banging [their] heart against some mad bugger's wall". This is what happens to the main character, Pink, during the course of the album.

Roger Waters himself has refused to provide any explanation when asked for one.

Film version
A longer and more elaborate version was recorded for the film which runs for a little more than four minutes and includes the National Philharmonic Orchestra, the Pontarddulais Male Choir and Waters singing the lyrics melodically, rather than reciting them as on the album version. Helping extend the song through the entire end credits is an instrumental bridge, composed of the chords and melody from "Southampton Dock", from The Wall's eventual successor, The Fin[i]al Cut. This version was never released officially, but was later reused for the credits for [/i]The Wall – Live in Berlin. It is in E-flat major rather than C, while "Southampton Dock" would be finalized in F major.[6][7]

Stage performance
The stage performances of The Wall ended with "Outside the Wall" after "The Trial", where the performers came walking over the stage in front of the now demolished wall, playing acoustic instruments and singing the vocal tracks. Waters played clarinet, and recited the lyrics, while the backing singers sang the lyrics in harmony. David Gilmour played mandolin, Richard Wright played accordion, Willie Wilson played tambourine, Andy Bown played 12-string acoustic guitar, and Snowy White (replaced by Andy Roberts for the 1981 shows), Peter Wood and (unusually) Nick Mason played 6-string acoustic guitars. A similar format was used for the track during Waters' 2010-2013 tour, The Wall Live, including the appearance of Gilmour playing the mandolin and Mason playing a tambourine.

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Release and reception
When the completed album was played for an assembled group of executives at Columbia's headquarters in California, several were reportedly unimpressed by what they heard. Matters had not been helped when Columbia Records offered Waters smaller publishing rights on the grounds that The Wall was a double album, a position he did not accept. When one executive offered to settle the dispute with a coin toss, Waters asked why he should gamble on something he owned. He eventually prevailed. The record company's concerns were alleviated when "Another Brick in the Wall Part 2" reached number one in the UK, US, Norway, Portugal, West Germany and South Africa. It was certified platinum in the UK in December 1979, and platinum in the US three months later. In Germany, the album reached the one million sales mark within three months of its release. In Canada, the album had sold 830,000 copies by January 1981.

The Wall was released in the UK and in the US on 30 November 1979. Coinciding with its release, Waters was interviewed by veteran DJ Tommy Vance, who played the album in its entirety on BBC Radio 1. Critical opinion of its content was mixed. Reviewing for Rolling Stone in February 1980, Kurt Loder hailed it as "a stunning synthesis of Waters's by now familiar thematic obsessions" that "leaps to life with a relentless lyrical rage that's clearly genuine and, in its painstaking particularity, ultimately horrifying." By contrast, The Village Voice critic Robert Christgau regarded it as "a dumb tribulations-of-a-rock-star epic" backed by "kitschy minimal maximalism with sound effects and speech fragments", adding in The New York Times that its worldview is "self-indulgent" and "presents the self-pity of its rich, famous and decidedly post-adolescent protagonist as a species of heroism". Melody Maker declared, "I'm not sure whether it's brilliant or terrible, but I find it utterly compelling."

Nevertheless, the album topped the Billboard charts for 15 weeks, selling over a million copies in its first two months of sales and in 1999 was certified 23x platinum. It remains one of the best-selling albums of all time in the US, between 1979 and 1990 selling over 19 million copies worldwide. The Wall is Pink Floyd's second best selling album after 1973's The Dark Side of the Moon. Engineer James Guthrie's efforts were rewarded in 1980 with a Grammy award for Best Engineered Recording (non-classical), and the album was nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Rolling Stone placed it at number 87 on its 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list in 2003, maintaining the rating in a 2012 revised list, although this was updated to 129 with the list's 2020 revision. Based on such rankings, the aggregate website Acclaimed Music lists The Wall as the 166th most acclaimed album in history.

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trans-chigley express
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Re: Pink Floyd

Postby trans-chigley express » 26 Apr 2022, 05:48

The Wall gets a lot of hate but I adore it. It's a double album where everything is essential. Not every track is brilliant, of course, but the sequencing is perfect and the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, rather like the band itself. Scarfe's superb art work is the finishing touch.

It's the last thing Water's (and Floyd for that matter) has done that I can fully get behind, everything since has been a disappointment.

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Re: Pink Floyd

Postby ConnyOlivetti » 26 Apr 2022, 07:32

Great album, a masterpiece.
But very seldom play it these days, or the last 30 years or so.
Love this quote from Gilmour / from
https://www.loudersound.com/features/pi ... ling-album
"
With Waters having been painted as the domineering force in Pink Floyd,
his assertion that his relationship with David Gilmour had “fallen to pieces
during the making of Wish You Were Here” did not come as much of a surprise.
What did, however, was how Gilmour viewed the scenario.
“I can categorically tell you that’s untrue. Roger wanted to be the leader
and the boss and in charge, which he, de facto, was,” Gilmour said.
Yet Gilmour also maintains that, from his point of view, all was fine
during the making of The Wall, despite him having only three co-writing credits.

“There’s a lot of misconceptions about the start of major hostilities
between myself and Roger,” he said. “We had a highly productive
working relationship that operated pretty well through The Wall.
There were some major arguments, but they were on artistic disagreements.
The intention behind The Wall was to make the best record we could.”
Charlie O. wrote:I think Coan and Googa are right.


Un enfant dans electronica!
Je suis!

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Re: Pink Floyd

Postby Brickyard Jack » 26 Apr 2022, 11:26

The Wall is fantastic. Over the years different songs have popped up as my favourite, though Nobody Home has nearly always been near the top. The scissor sisters’ cover of Comfortably numb reinvigorated the song.
I remember seeing the film when it came out and thought it was good. I haven’t seen it for thirty years I expect.

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Re: Pink Floyd

Postby robertff » 26 Apr 2022, 16:04

The usual great detail of a write up Matt but as I said some time ago I think this is album is almost the nadir of Pink Floyd, only The Final Cut is worse, things only improved once Waters moved on.



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Re: Pink Floyd

Postby Matt Wilson » 26 Apr 2022, 18:45

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"When the Tigers Broke Free" (45) 1982
Floyd spent 1980 and 1981 touring The Wall and having the group dynamic gradually disintegrate to the point that they were barely on speaking terms by 1982 when the film was released. This song was in the movie, but wasn't considered of high enough quality to be included on the Wall album. It consists of Roger's speak/sing style (well, not much singing, really) and I can't for the life of me think that anyone actually thought this would be a hit. It's pretty dreary and much more Roger than Pink Floyd. Good indicator of how The Final Cut would sound though.

Wiki - "When the Tigers Broke Free" is a Pink Floyd song by Roger Waters, describing the death of his father, Eric Fletcher Waters, in the Battle of Anzio during the Italian Campaign of the Second World War.

Writing and recording
The song was originally titled "Anzio, 1944". Its working title was "When the Tigers Break Through" and was written at the same time as The Wall, hence its copyright date of 1979, and was originally intended to be part of that album, but was rejected by the other members of the band on the grounds that it was too personal. It was subsequently recorded and included in the movie version of The Wall and first released as a separate track on a 7" single on 26 July 1982 (running time 3:00), before appearing in The Wall film. The 7" was labelled "Taken from the album The Final Cut" but was not included on that album until the 2004 CD reissue.

The single version is a unique mix and differs from the versions that appear in the film and all subsequent releases. It has a different intro that is shorter than most other versions. The first verse uses a different vocal take that has never appeared on any other release of the track. This recording also features different percussion accents — short snare roll fills throughout the track.

Lyrics
The song sets up the story premise for The Wall movie, set over footage recreating the British contribution to Operation Shingle, where American and British troops landed on the beaches near Anzio, Italy, with the goal of liberating Rome from German control. These forces included Z Company of the 8th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers, in which Waters' father Eric served. As Waters tells it, the forward commander had asked to withdraw his forces from a German Tiger I tank assault, but the generals refused, and "the generals gave thanks / As the other ranks / Held back the enemy tanks for a while" and "the Anzio bridgehead was held for the price / Of a few hundred ordinary lives" as the German assault inflicted heavy losses including Eric Waters.

In the second verse of the song (which makes up the reprise later in The Wall film), Waters describes how he found a letter of condolence from the British government, described as a note from George VI in the form of a gold leaf scroll which "His Majesty signed / with his own rubber stamp." Waters' resentment then explodes in the final line "And that's how the High Command took my daddy from me."

The underlying theme of the song is one of the primary catalysts for the character Pink's descent into isolation throughout the story of The Wall, especially in the film version.

On 18 February 2014, 70 years to the day after his father was killed at Anzio, Waters unveiled a memorial to the 8th Battalion, and his father, near to the site of the battle. Another monument had already been erected at the approximate spot where his father fell. After many years of not knowing the details of what happened on that fateful day, Waters was finally able to get some closure after 93-year-old Fusilier and Anzio veteran Harry Shindler uncovered precise details of the time and place of Waters' father's death. Both of them were present at the unveiling of the memorial.

Waters has indicated that his father was originally a conscientious objector during the outbreak of the Second World War. However, as the German expansion grew, Waters' father felt compelled to join the armed forces. Waters goes on to say, "So he went back to the conscription board in London and told them he had changed his mind. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Royal Fusiliers, which is how he ended up here 70 years ago. He believed he was involved in a necessary fight against the Nazis, and for that he paid the ultimate price."

Subsequent releases
The song made its first CD appearance on a promotional disc in conjunction with Roger Waters' 1990 live performance of The Wall at Potsdamer Platz in Berlin. This was the Pink Floyd recording from the original 1982 single, and had a running time of 3 minutes.

It was generally released on CD on Pink Floyd's 2001 compilation album Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd. With a duration of 3:42, this version is longer than the single release and features an extended intro section. There is less percussion heard in the Echoes mix, but the male choir comes in much earlier than it does in the single version.

The next time the song appeared was on the 2004 re-released, remastered version of The Final Cut, where it was placed between "One of the Few" and "The Hero's Return", this time an edited version of 3:16. This mix is similar to that of the Echoes version, but with a shorter intro.

Film version
The first verse is at the opening of the film, where Pink's father is cleaning and loading a revolver while smoking a cigarette and hearing bombs or bombers fly overhead. It then goes into the song "In the Flesh?", showing his fate. The second verse (after "Another Brick in the Wall Part 1") shows Pink finding his father's uniform, the letter of condolence, straight razor, and bullets. He then puts on the uniform, where it cuts between his father doing the same.

Reception
In a review for The Final Cut, Patrick Schabe of PopMatters believed the addition of "When the Tigers Broke Free" to The Final Cut enhanced the album, specifically "making it easier to fathom the imagery of 'The Hero's Return'". Schabe also believed the track "draws a direct line between One of the Few's exhortations to 'teach' and a moment captured in history – the story of Waters' father's death."

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The Final Cut 1983
The last of the Waters-era Floyd albums, and frankly, not one of their best. Rogers fans love it, of course, while Dave fans tend to ignore it, I guess. Which isn't hard to do as there really weren't any songs which were successful on the radio (at least on this side of the pond). But of course, like any PF record, it's quite good when you've absorbed and played it enough. Almost like a Wall Part II really, and indeed - a clutch of songs were from the Wall sessions but considered not good enough for that LP. Waters wrote a few more (the other two really weren't contributing much), and presto! It was time for a new Pink Floyd album.

I'll set the scene first though: The band really hadn't gotten along for quite some time when they were recording this record. Roger had set himself up as the de facto leader, both as chief songwriter and lyricist. Now this was happening at a time when David wasn't coming up with that much material himself, and Rick was already ousted (by Waters, natch) from the group. He's not on this endeavor at all. Something to consider when dealing with folks who will tell you that A Momentary Lapse of Reason isn't a real PF LP because Roger isn't on it. Well, Rick isn't on this one, and barely contributed to The Wall either. And then there are those who will say it's not really Floyd without Syd. One decides what is or isn't a real Pink Floyd record on an individual basis it seems. Personally, I enjoy it all, though with caveats - which I'll discuss as I review the discs.

"The Final Cut is the 12th studio album by English rock band Pink Floyd, released on 21 March 1983 in the United Kingdom and on 2 April in the United States through Harvest and Columbia Records. It comprises unused material from the previous Pink Floyd album, The Wall (1979), alongside new material recorded throughout 1982.

The Final Cut was the last Pink Floyd album to feature founding member Roger Waters, who departed from the band in 1985. It is also the only Pink Floyd album not to feature founding member and keyboardist Richard Wright, who left the band after the Wall sessions. The recording was plagued by conflict; guitarist David Gilmour felt many of the tracks were not worthy of inclusion, but Waters accused him of failing to contribute material himself. Drummer Nick Mason's contributions were mostly limited to sound effects.

Waters planned the album as a soundtrack for the 1982 film adaptation of The Wall. With the onset of the Falklands War, he rewrote it as a concept album exploring what he considered the betrayal of his father, who died serving in the Second World War. Waters provided lead vocals for all but one track, and he is credited for all songwriting. The album was accompanied by a short film released in the same year.

The Final Cut received mixed reviews, though retrospective reception has been more favorable. Though it reached number one in the UK and number six in the US, it was the lowest-selling Pink Floyd studio album worldwide since Meddle (1971).

Background
The Final Cut was conceived as a soundtrack album for Pink Floyd – The Wall, the 1982 film based on Pink Floyd's 1979 album The Wall. Under its working title Spare Bricks, it would have featured new music rerecorded for the film, such as "When the Tigers Broke Free". Bassist, vocalist, and primary songwriter Roger Waters also planned to record a small amount of new material, expanding The Wall's narrative.

As a result of the Falklands War, Waters changed direction and wrote new material. He saw British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's response to Argentina's invasion of the islands as jingoistic and unnecessary, and dedicated the new album—provisionally titled Requiem for a Post-War Dream—to his father, Eric Fletcher Waters. A second lieutenant of the 8th Royal Fusiliers, Eric Waters died during the Second World War at Aprilia in Italy, on 18 February 1944, when Roger was five months old. Waters said:

The Final Cut was about how, with the introduction of the Welfare State, we felt we were moving forward into something resembling a liberal country where we would all look after one another ... but I'd seen all that chiselled away, and I'd seen a return to an almost Dickensian society under Margaret Thatcher. I felt then, as now, that the British government should have pursued diplomatic avenues, rather than steaming in the moment that task force arrived in the South Atlantic.

Guitarist David Gilmour disliked Waters' politicising, and the new creative direction prompted arguments. Five other tracks not used on The Wall ("Your Possible Pasts", "One of the Few", "The Final Cut", "The Fletcher Memorial Home", and "The Hero's Return") had been set aside for Spare Bricks, and although Pink Floyd had often reused material, Gilmour felt the songs were not good enough for a new album. He wanted to write new material, but Waters remained doubtful as Gilmour had lately contributed little new music. Gilmour said:

I'm certainly guilty at times of being lazy, and moments have arrived when Roger might say, "Well, what have you got?" And I'd be like, "Well, I haven't got anything right now. I need a bit of time to put some ideas on tape." There are elements of all this stuff that, years later, you can look back on and say, "Well, he had a point there." But he wasn't right about wanting to put some duff tracks on The Final Cut. I said to Roger, "If these songs weren't good enough for The Wall, why are they good enough now?"

The title The Final Cut is a reference to William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: "This was the most unkindest cut of all". "When the Tigers Broke Free" was issued as a single titled "Pink Floyd: The Wall: Music from the Film" on 26 July 1982, with the film version of "Bring the Boys Back Home" on the B-side; the single was labelled "Taken from the album The Final Cut" but was not included on that album until the 2004 CD reissue.

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Concept
The Final Cut is an anti-war concept album that explores what Waters regards as the betrayal of fallen British servicemen—such as his father—who during the Second World War sacrificed their lives in the spirit of a post-war dream. This post-war dream was that their victory would usher in a more peaceful world, whose leaders would no longer be so eager to resolve disputes by resorting to war. The album's lyrics are critical of Thatcher, whose policies and decisions Waters regarded as an example of this betrayal. She is referred to as "Maggie" throughout the album.

The opening track, "The Post War Dream", begins with a recorded announcement that the replacement for the Atlantic Conveyor, a ship lost during the Falklands campaign, will be built in Japan. Waters' lyrics refer to his dead father, the loss of Britain's shipbuilding industry to Japan, and Margaret Thatcher, before moving on to "Your Possible Pasts", a rewritten version of a song rejected for The Wall. In "One of the Few", another rejected song, the schoolteacher from The Wall features as the main character, presented as a war hero returned to civilian life. He is unable to relate his experiences to his wife, and in "The Hero's Return" is tormented by the loss of one of his aircrew. "The Gunner's Dream" discusses the post-war dream of a world free from tyranny and the threat of terrorism (a reference to the Hyde Park bombing). It is followed in "Paranoid Eyes" by the teacher's descent into alcoholism.

The second half deals with various war issues. While "Southampton Dock" is a lament to returning war heroes and other soldiers heading out to a likely death, "Not Now John" addresses society's ignorance of political and economic problems. "Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Desert" deals with Waters' feelings about war and invasion, and "The Fletcher Memorial Home" (the title is a nod to Waters' father) reflects a fantastical application of "the final solution" on a gathering of political leaders including Leonid Brezhnev, Menachem Begin and Margaret Thatcher. The album's titular song deals with the aftermath of a man's isolation and sexual repression, as he contemplates suicide and struggles to reconnect with the world around him. The album ends with "Two Suns in the Sunset", which portrays a nuclear holocaust: the final result of a world obsessed with war and control.

Recording
American composer Michael Kamen, who had contributed to The Wall, co-produced, oversaw the orchestral arrangements, and mediated between Waters and Gilmour. He also stood in for keyboardist Richard Wright, who had left the band under pressure from Waters during the recording of The Wall. James Guthrie was studio engineer and co-producer, while Mason's drumming was supplemented by Ray Cooper on percussion; when Mason was unable to perform the complex time changes on "Two Suns in the Sunset", he was replaced by Andy Newmark. Mason also suggested the repeated reprises of "Maggie, what have we done" be rendered instrumental rather than sung. Raphael Ravenscroft was hired to play the saxophone. Recording took place in the latter half of 1982 across eight studios, including Gilmour's home studio at Hookend Manor, and Waters' Billiard Room Studios at East Sheen. The other venues were Mayfair Studios, Olympic Studios, Abbey Road Studios, Eel Pie Studios, Audio International and RAK Studios.

Tensions soon emerged, and while Waters and Gilmour initially worked together, playing the video game Donkey Kong in their spare time, they eventually chose to work separately. Engineer Andy Jackson worked with Waters on vocals, and Guthrie worked with Gilmour on guitars. They would occasionally meet to discuss the work that had been completed; while this method was not in itself unusual, Gilmour began to feel strained, sometimes barely maintaining his composure. Kamen too felt pressured; Waters had never been a confident vocalist and on one occasion, after repeated studio takes, Waters noticed him writing on a notepad. Losing his temper, he demanded to know what Kamen was doing, only to find that Kamen had been writing "I Must Not Fuck Sheep" repeatedly.

Like previous Pink Floyd albums, The Final Cut used sound effects combined with advances in audio recording technology. Mason's contributions were mostly limited to recording sound effects for the experimental Holophonic system, an audio processing technique used to add an enhanced three-dimensional effect to the recordings; The Final Cut is the second album ever to feature this technology. The technique is featured on "Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Desert", creating a sound of an explosion that surrounds the listener. Sound effects from earlier Floyd albums are also used; the wind from Meddle is re-used, as are parts of The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals and The Wall.[20]

After months of poor relations, and following a final confrontation, Gilmour was removed from the credit list as producer, but was still paid production royalties. Waters later said that he was also under significant pressure and that early in production believed he would never record with Gilmour or Mason again. He may have threatened to release the album as a solo record, although Pink Floyd were contracted to EMI and such a move would have been unlikely. Mason kept himself distant, dealing with marital problems. In a June 1987 interview, Waters recalled The Final Cut as "absolute misery to make", and that the band members were "fighting like cats and dogs". He said the experience forced them to accept that they had not worked together as a band since their 1975 album Wish You Were Here.

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Packaging
Storm Thorgerson, a founder member of Hipgnosis (designers of most of Pink Floyd's previous and future artwork), was passed over for the cover design. Instead, Waters created the cover himself, using photographs taken by his brother-in-law, Willie Christie. The front cover shows a Remembrance poppy and four Second World War medal ribbons against the black fabric of the jacket or blazer on which they are worn. From left to right, the medals are the 1939–45 Star, the Africa Star, the Defence Medal, and the Distinguished Flying Cross.

The poppy is a recurring design theme. The interior gatefold featured three photographs, the first depicting an outdoor scene with an outstretched hand holding three poppies and in the distance, a soldier with his back to the camera. Two more photographs show a welder at work, his mask emblazoned with the Japanese Rising Sun Flag, and a nuclear explosion; a clear reference to "Two Suns in the Sunset". The album's lyrics are printed on the gatefold. Side one of the vinyl disc carries an image of a poppy field and on side two, a soldier with a knife in his back lies face down amongst the poppies, a dog beside him. The back cover features a photograph of an officer standing upright and holding a film canister, with a knife protruding from his back; the film canister and knife may reflect Waters' tumultuous relationship with The Wall film director Alan Parker.

Film
The Final Cut was accompanied by a short film. It features the songs "The Gunner's Dream", "The Final Cut", "The Fletcher Memorial Home" and "Not Now John". Produced and written by Waters and directed by his brother-in-law Willie Christie, it features Waters talking to a psychiatrist named A. Parker-Marshall. Alex McAvoy, who played the teacher in Pink Floyd – The Wall, also appears. The film was released on Betamax and VHS in July 1983." - Wikipedia

Numbers noted in parenthesis below are based on the original tracklist and CD track numbering.

Pink Floyd

David Gilmour – lead and rhythm guitars (1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 10-12), co-lead vocals (11), additional backing vocals
Nick Mason – drums (1, 2, 4-5, 8, 10-11), tape effects
Roger Waters – lead vocals (all tracks), bass guitar (all tracks except 7), acoustic guitar (2-4, 6, 7, 9-12), synthesizers (3, 4, 11), twelve-string guitar (11), tape effects, production, sleeve design

Additional musicians

Michael Kamen – piano (5, 6, 8-10, 12), electric piano (2, 5), harmonium (1, 10), production
Andy Bown – Hammond organ (2, 6, 11, 12), piano (5), electric piano (4)
Ray Cooper – percussion (6)
Andy Newmark – drums (12)
Raphael Ravenscroft – tenor saxophone (5, 12)
Doreen Chanter – backing vocals (11)
Irene Chanter – backing vocals (11)
National Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted and arranged by Michael Kamen (1, 5-10)

All tracks are written by Roger Waters.

1. "The Post War Dream" 3:02
Well, it starts off so quiet you barely know a record is playing. Roger is complaining that his father gave his life for a worthless concept, and it's addressed to Thatcher. I notice Waters has no hesitation for using words like "Jews," "coons," and here, "nips" in his writing. This would continue for years hence. Just an observation, folks. His vocal style of talking, rather than singing, reaches some kind of apex on this album, and this is a good example.

Wiki: "Intro
The song's intro features a car radio being tuned in and out of different stations and can be seen on the short film for The Final Cut.

"...a group of business men announced plans to build a nuclear fallout shelter at Peterborough in Cambridgeshire..."
[radio tuning]
"...three high court judges have cleared the way..."
[radio tuning]
"...It was announced today, that the replacement for the Atlantic Conveyor the container ship lost in the Falklands conflict would be built in Japan, a spokesman for..."
[radio tuning]
"...moving in. They say the third world countries, like Bolivia, which produce the drug are suffering from rising violence..."

Composition
The song is 3 minutes in length and consists of many sound effects, such as row boats and screaming, typical of the album on which it was released. The music itself begins quietly with harmonium and Waters' hushed vocal, in addition to the sounds of certain orchestral instruments. This segues into a louder, more theatrical section dominated by electric guitars. During this particular section, Waters vocal is shouted, a definite contrast from his manner of singing during the previous part of the song.

The melody of the first part bears a strong resemblance to John Prine's 1971 song "Sam Stone", about a war veteran's tragic fate. Both songs share the same chord progression, instrumentation, and melody. They are even in the same key (F Major)."

2. "Your Possible Pasts" 4:22
All right, it should be apparent now that we're basically listening to a Roger Waters solo album with embellishments by Gilmour and Mason. The songs have that speak/sing-leading-up-to-a-shouting section, and if you're lucky, a David guitar solo (some of them quite good though). It takes some getting used to as previous Floyd albums took more care with the music, offering lots of instrumental passages for fans to gush over, while this is more of a personal nature for Roger to exorcise his feelings about his father's demise some forty years ago. If The Wall was largely autobiographical, this is all about Waters, thus its reputation as a solo more than a group project.

"This song was one of several to be considered for the band's "best of" album, Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd.

Background
The song, like many others on The Final Cut, is a rewritten version of a song rejected for The Wall, originally to be used in Spare Bricks (an early version of The Final Cut that was an extension of The Wall.) Guitarist David Gilmour objected to the use of these previously rejected tracks, as he believed that they weren't good enough for release:

[Roger Waters] wasn't right about wanting to put some duff tracks on The Final Cut. I said to Roger, "If these songs weren't good enough for The Wall, why are they good enough now?"

Despite not appearing on The Wall album, the lyrics of the chorus did appear in the film for said album, Pink Floyd – The Wall, where the lyrics were read by the main character, Pink, in-between the songs "Waiting for the Worms" and "Stop".

"Your Possible Pasts" also appeared on a 12-inch promotional single entitled Selections from The Final Cut, with "The Final Cut" on the B-side. However, despite not being released as a commercial single, the song did receive significant radio play, resulting in the song hitting number 8 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart in America.

Lyrics
The first verse describes poppies entwining with "cattle trucks lying in wait for the next time", an allusion to the railway vehicles used in The Holocaust.

The line "Do you remember me, how we used to be?" originally appeared in the song "Incarceration of a Flower Child", written by Waters in 1968. Neither Pink Floyd nor Waters recorded the song; however, it was recorded by Marianne Faithfull in 1999 for her album Vagabond Ways.

Reception
AllMusic critic Stewart Mason said of the song:

Only a handful of proper songs drift in between the linking tracks and underdeveloped themes, with the dramatic "Your Possible Pasts" among the best. Although the song's primary themes are retreads of the ideas behind The Wall ('By the cold and religious we were taken in hand/Shown how to feel good and told to feel bad' is nothing more than the Sunday school version of 'We don't need no education/We don't need no thought control'), Roger Waters uses a very soft/extremely loud dynamic effectively, in a manner quite similar to what Peter Gabriel was doing on his solo albums around the same time, and largely avoids the irritatingly schoolmarm-ish tone that his snickering vocals fall into on much of the rest of the album. However, the song has the same fundamental problem as the rest of The Final Cut: a lack of truly interesting melodic development—which was clearly what David Gilmour, who has no songwriting credits here or on the rest of the album, brought to the group.

Chris Ott of Pitchfork Media described the song as:

a titanic blend of stadium rock, psychedelia and pathos, concluding with devastating imagery", but concluded that "[t]he raucous chorus, 'Do you remember me?/ How we used to be/ Do you think we should be closer?', drifts over a somewhat predictable arrangement, certainly nothing new in the face of their defining mope-rock standard 'Comfortably Numb'." - Wiki

3. "One of the Few" 1:23
This is about the schoolteacher in The Wall presumably, who comes back from the war and decides on a career. This one could have amounted to more than just a minute-and-a-half cut had some effort been put into it.

Wiki - " It features a ticking clock in the background and a steady drumbeat. The melody features most of the D minor scale. The lyrics describe a war veteran's return from the battlefield (specifically a pilot from the Battle of Britain, commonly known as The Few) to pursue teaching. The ticking clock continues to the next track, "The Hero's Return", which is sung from the veteran's perspective. This is one of the rejected songs from The Wall, and its working title was "Teach".

The lyrics "Make 'em laugh, Make 'em cry" in the third and final verse of the song is reprised in the third verse of "Not Now John" which is the twelfth track on The Final Cut.

Reception
In a retrospective review for The Final Cut, Rachel Mann of The Quietus described "One of the Few" as "plaintive and consciously echoes Wilfred Owen's poem "The Send Off", with its talk of siding sheds and the trains ready to take young men to their deaths."

4. "The Hero's Return" 2:56
This one actually has a melody and uptempo vibe (well, the first part anyway). We're still dealing with the teacher contemplating his WWII experiences. One of the more interesting tracks to me, but it doesn't really go anywhere either. Perhaps the extended 45 mix is better, though I've never heard it.

"Like many tracks included on The Final Cut, "The Hero's Return" had – under its original title "Teacher, Teacher" – been previously rejected from The Wall. Guitarist David Gilmour was opposed to this recycling of songs.

Like many other tracks on The Final Cut, "The Hero's Return" featured anti-war lyrics. The lyrics of "The Hero's Return" are almost entirely rewritten from its "Teacher, Teacher" demo version.

Retitled as "The Hero's Return (Parts 1 and 2)" with an extra verse absent from The Final Cut version, the song was released as the B-side of "Not Now John", also from The Final Cut, in 1983. Despite not being released as an A-side to a single, "The Hero's Return" charted at #31 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart in America." - Wikipedia

5. "The Gunner's Dream" 5:07
We're privy to the thoughts of a bomber gunner as he plummets to his death in the war. Complete with sensual sax solo by Raphael Ravenscroft! Roger's desire to use the recording studio as his own personal psychiatrist's couch is either off-putting or endearing depending on your tolerance for his art. It's difficult to ascertain how he thought this would sell though. But I guess the PF name ensured that it did. This longest cut on side one, and with orchestration, of course.

Wikipedia: "This song was one of several to be considered for the band's "best of" album, Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd. The song tells the story and thoughts of an airman gunner as he falls to his death during a raid, dreaming of a safe world in the future, without war. It is one of the four songs on the video version of the album The Final Cut Video EP. In his lyrics, Waters references real-life events including the then very recent Hyde Park and Regent's Park bombings, and takes the refrain "some corner of a foreign field" from Rupert Brooke's poem "The Soldier."

Reception
In a retrospective review for The Final Cut, Rachel Mann of The Quietus described "The Gunner's Dream" as the album's centerpiece; the track "tenderly imagines the lost hopes and expectations of a bomber gunner shot down and falling to his death over Berlin." Mann believed Waters' voice is "beautifully matched to words whose understatement adds to the power."

6. "Paranoid Eyes" 3:40
He starts off talking again, and the samey-nature of these tunes is apparent. On all four sides of The Wall, there were at least one or two great songs to break up any monotony, but we've finally had a record side of a Pink Floyd LP where there are arguably no classic cuts. Of course, this doesn't mean the record is a failure by any means, but it does tell me it was time for Roger to fly the coup and start making music with side men because these tracks suffer from no David Gilmour contributions.

This was another one that was considered for the Echoes compilation, but eventually discarded. I can see why.

Image Image Image

7. "Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Desert" 1:19
Bombing sounds, strings, Roger pontificating on Margaret Thatcher and politics. We open side two with the shortest track on the album. A prelude to...

8. "The Fletcher Memorial Home" 4:11
Well, at least he's singing again, but in that whiny, self-pitying way he did on some of those Wall songs. But soon Roger reverts back to talking again. I guess he felt it easier than carrying a tune. Dave really should have been writing more at this time, but would Waters have allowed Gilmour songs on this LP? There's the first guitar solo in quite some time though, making this the first really substantial cut since "The Gunner's Dream" I guess.

"The song is also featured on the Pink Floyd compilations Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd and A Foot in the Door – The Best of Pink Floyd.

History
The song is about Waters' frustration with the leadership of the world since World War II, mentioning many world leaders by name (Ronald Reagan, Alexander Haig, Menachem Begin, Margaret Thatcher, Ian Paisley, Leonid Brezhnev, Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon), suggesting that these "colonial wasters of life and limb" be segregated into a specially-founded retirement home. It labels all the world leaders as "overgrown infants" and "incurable tyrants" and suggests they are incapable of understanding anything other than violence or their own faces on a television screen.

In its concluding lines, the narrator of the song gathers all of the "tyrants" inside the Fletcher Memorial Home and imagines applying "the Final Solution" to them.

Fletcher in the name of the song is in honour and remembrance of Roger Waters' father, Eric Fletcher Waters, who was killed during the Second World War at Anzio.

The Fletcher Memorial Home scenes in The Final Cut film were filmed at Forty Hall in Enfield.

Reception
In a review for The Final Cut, Patrick Schabe of PopMatters described "The Fletcher Memorial Home" as "majestic, but clunky". - Wiki

9. "Southampton Dock" 2:13
What the album is positively screaming for is another "Comfortably Numb," or "Run Like Hell." And we'll get something similar soon, but for now it's more of the same. I think Waters was emboldened by the success of The Wall, and thought more personal material could be sold as a commercial entity for a financially successful project, but lacked a collaborator like Bob Ezrin to mold it together, and couldn't be bothered with using Gilmour as a foil for these songs. And David probably didn't feel it was worth battling with Roger to have his (Dave's) ideas accepted. Or possibly Gilmour didn't like these cuts enough to bother with suggestions. Your guess is as good as mine.

Wiki: "In World War II, many soldiers departed from Southampton to fight against the Germans. In the eighties, Southampton was again used as a departure base, this time for the Falklands War. The song describes a woman who "bravely waves" the soldiers "Goodbye again".

The song includes a snippet of the theme from the track "It's Never Too Late", a song originally written and recorded for The Wall but was cut before the final band production demo of August 12, 1979. "It's Never Too Late" was later reworked and the melody was incorporated into the second section of "Southampton Dock".

Roger Waters repeatedly performed the song on his solo tours; a live recording (prefaced by "Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Desert", another song from The Final Cut) appears on his album In the Flesh – Live.

Reception
In a review for The Final Cut, Patrick Schabe of PopMatters described "Southampton Dock" as an example of where the album works best, and described the song's imagery as "subtle, poetic, and effective."

I don't feel it's where the album works best at all. Only Roger and Michael Kamen's piano and orchestration are present.

10. "The Final Cut" 4:46
This one is pretty good actually. It's just more Wall themes of a personal nature, and when it picks up there's even a "Comfortably Numb" feel to the chords, but we have to take what we can get with this album and I'm asserting this is one of the better cuts. Another Gilmour solo as well, and that's never a bad thing.

"Background
This song tells of a man's isolation, depression, sexual repression and rejection. At the end of the song he attempts suicide but "never had the nerve to make the final cut". The words "behind the wall" in the song are obscured by a shotgun blast. It is a reference to the Floyd's 1979 album, The Wall, and additionally the song may be told from its main character of Pink.

"The Final Cut" is one of four songs (along with "The Hero's Return", "One of the Few", and "Your Possible Pasts") used in The Final Cut that had been previously rejected from The Wall. This song is in the video version of the album The Final Cut Video EP. The song made an appearance as the B-side of the Selections From The Final Cut radio promo single (with "Your Possible Pasts" on the A-side.) It also appears in the film Strange Frame. - Wiki

11. "Not Now John" 5:01
Well, if you've been following my train of thought regarding Dave's much needed contributions to mostly Roger-directed projects for the band, then it will be no surprise that this is my favorite cut on the record. Very much Wall-sounding, but not fitting in with that album thematically, and with a Gilmour vocal as well! Surprised I never heard it much on the radio to be honest.

Wiki: "The track is the only one on the album featuring the lead vocals of David Gilmour, found in the verses, with Roger Waters singing the refrains and interludes, and was the only single released from the album (discounting "When the Tigers Broke Free", a non-album single retroactively added to the album in 2004). It reached No. 30 in the UK Singles Chart.

Meaning
The lyrics, written by Roger Waters, deal with war (particularly the Falklands War) and criticism of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, as well as general criticisms of the greed and corruption that Waters saw as dangers to society. It also shows the corruptible and fruitless labour of post-war America, Europe and Japan. The wording is such that it mainly tells of the changing of global trade and that a new leader is emerging in the consumer goods industry such as Japan.

Despite the political content of the album and the specific references in other songs to public figures of the time, the "John" of the title is not intended to refer to any particular person named John. It is being used in the British colloquial sense as a placeholder name, where "John" can be employed in the same way as "mate", "pal", "buddy", or "Guv" to refer to anyone to whom one is speaking, particularly if the speaker does not know their name. At the time, this usage of "John" as a general means of address to others would have been particularly associated with blue-collar workers, who were the people being most strongly affected by the changes to manufacturing and trade referred to in the song.

Music video
In the Final Cut video EP, the video for the song depicts a Japanese boy walking through a factory searching for a soldier. The child is confronted by factory workers playing cards and geisha girls before he falls to his death from a scaffold and is discovered by a World War II veteran (played by Alex McAvoy, who also played the schoolteacher in Pink Floyd — The Wall). The video was directed by Waters' then brother-in-law, Willie Christie.

Composition
It is the only track on the album not to feature exclusively Waters on lead vocals. Unlike the majority of other tracks on The Final Cut, "Not Now John" takes an upbeat, driving, tempo — and hard rock style — for much of its duration. Gilmour and Waters split vocals duties, similar to the song "Comfortably Numb" from The Wall, and they represent different "characters" or points of view — Gilmour is the self-serving ignorant layperson while Waters is the intellectual, responsible observer of the world's woes.

"Not Now John" is notable for being one of the few Pink Floyd tracks to feature strong profanity, as the word "fuck" occurs in the album version of the song seven times: six times as part of the phrase "fuck all that", and near the end of the song as "Where's the fucking bar, John?".

Single
"Not Now John" was released as a single on 3 May 1983. The words "fuck all that" were overdubbed as "stuff all that" by Gilmour, Waters, and the female backing singers, while the "Where's the bar?" lyric is sung in Italian, Greek and French, as the single fades out before the English iteration.

"The Hero's Return" was released as the B-side, featuring an additional verse not included on the album. A 12" single was released in the UK, featuring the two 7" tracks on side 1 and the album version of "Not Now John" on side 2. The single hit number 30 in the UK and number seven on the US Mainstream Rock Tracks chart.

Reception
In a review for The Final Cut on release, Kurt Loder of Rolling Stone described "Not Now John" as "one of the most ferocious performances Pink Floyd has ever put on record." In a retrospective review of The Final Cut, Rachel Mann of The Quietus described "Not Now John" as "fun, but musically crass and obvious," further saying "this is Surrey Blues rock as vapid as the views it seeks to satirize."

12. "Two Suns in the Sunset" 5:14
We end with another good one. Roger is actually singing, and there's a discernible melody with acoustic guitar. The lyrics are the usual Waters doom-laden profusion of apocalyptic imagery, but what else would one expect from his last contribution to Pink Floyd? I was a hell of a ride, and he was off for, well, not necessarily greener pastures, but let's say free to indulge his whims without fighting with the rest of the band in order to do it.

"Since there was no promotional tour for The Final Cut, and this album was entirely ignored by Gilmour, Wright and Mason during the tours for A Momentary Lapse of Reason and The Division Bell, "Two Suns in the Sunset" was never performed live by Pink Floyd. However, Roger Waters, as a solo artist, premiered the song almost 35 years after its release in a concert from the Us + Them Tour, held on 17 October 2018 at Itaipava Arena Fonte Nova in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil.

Lyrics and music
Partway through the song, the lyric "the sun is in the east, even though the day is done" refers to the glowing fireball of a nuclear explosion. The song was partly inspired by Andrzej Wajda's movie Ashes and Diamonds (Polish: Popiół i Diament).

Session drummer Andy Newmark plays drums on this song, as Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason felt unable to perform its complex time signature changes. The song begins and ends in 9/8 time, while the majority of the song is in 4/4 (or "common time"), and it is punctuated with added measures of 7/8 and 3/8. Adding to the complexity, the main theme of the rhythm guitar has chords changing emphatically in dotted eighth notes, so three eighth-note beats are divided equally in two. This is not unlike what "Mother", from the previous Pink Floyd album, The Wall, does, and on that song, Mason relinquished the drumming duties, in that case to Jeff Porcaro.

Reception
In a review for The Final Cut, Justin Gerber of Consequence of Sound described "Two Suns in the Sunset" as "the album's crowning achievement."

Toby Manning was less enthusiastic in his retrospective review, saying that this was the one song off The Final Cut where the musician Waters couldn't stay on the same level as the conceptualist Waters.

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Release and sales
The Final Cut was released in the UK on 21 March 1983 and in the US on 2 April. It reached number one in the UK, surpassing The Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall. It was less successful in America, peaking at number six on the Billboard album charts. Issued as a single, "Not Now John" reached the UK Top 30, with its chorus of "Fuck all that" bowdlerised to "Stuff all that".

With over 1,000,000 units shipped in the United States, the Recording Industry Association of America certified The Final Cut Platinum in May 1983. It was given double Platinum certification in 1997. However, The Final Cut was the lowest-selling Pink Floyd studio album in the United States and worldwide since Meddle. Gilmour claimed that this relative commercial failure supported his assertion that much of the material was weak. Waters responded that it was "ridiculous" to judge a record by its sales. He said that he had been approached by a woman in a shop whose father had also been killed in World War II and told him The Final Cut was "the most moving record she had ever heard". In 1983, Gilmour said The Final Cut was "very good but it's not personally how I would see a Pink Floyd record going".

The Final Cut was released on CD in 1983. A remastered and repackaged CD was issued by EMI in Europe and on Capitol Records in the US in 2004; this included an extra song, the previously released "When the Tigers Broke Free".In 2007, a remastered version was released as part of the Oh, by the Way boxed set, packaged in a miniature replica of the original gatefold LP sleeve.

Critical reception
The Final Cut received mixed reviews. Melody Maker deemed it "a milestone in the history of awfulness", and the NME's Richard Cook wrote: "Like the poor damned Tommies that haunt his mind, Roger Waters' writing has been blown to hell ... Waters stopped with The Wall, and The Final Cut isolates and juggles the identical themes of that elephantine concept with no fresh momentum to drive them." Robert Christgau wrote in The Village Voice: "it's a comfort to encounter antiwar rock that has the weight of years of self-pity behind it", and awarded the album a C+ grade.

More impressed, Rolling Stone's Kurt Loder viewed it as "essentially a Roger Waters solo album ... a superlative achievement on several levels". Dan Hedges of Record also approved, writing: "On paper it sounds hackneyed and contrived – the sort of thing that was worked into the ground by everyone from P. F. Sloan to Paul Kantner. In Pink Floyd's case, it still works, partially through the understatement and ingenuity of the music and the special effects ... but mostly through the care Waters has taken in plotting out the imagery of his bleak visions."

Aftermath and legacy
With no plans to tour the album, Waters and Gilmour instead turned to solo projects. Gilmour recorded and toured About Face in 1984, using it to express his feelings on a range of topics from the murder of musician John Lennon to his relationship with Waters, who also began to tour his new solo album, The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking. Mason released his second solo album, Profiles, in August 1985.

In 1985, faced with a potentially ruinous lawsuit from his record company and band members, Waters resigned. He believed that Pink Floyd was a "spent force". He applied to the High Court to prevent the Pink Floyd name from ever being used again. His lawyers discovered that the partnership had never been formally confirmed, and Waters returned to the High Court in an attempt to gain a veto over further use of the band's name. Gilmour's team responded by issuing a press release affirming that Pink Floyd would continue; he told a Sunday Times reporter that "Roger is a dog in the manger and I'm going to fight him".

Waters wrote to EMI and Columbia declaring his intention to leave the group, asking them to release him from his contractual obligations. With a legal case pending, he dispensed with manager Steve O'Rourke and employed Peter Rudge to manage his affairs. He later contributed to the soundtrack for When the Wind Blows and recorded a second solo album, Radio K.A.O.S.

Owing to the combination of Pink Floyd's partial breakup and Waters' dominance on the project, The Final Cut is sometimes viewed as a de facto Waters solo album. The personal quality assigned to the lyrics are related to Waters' struggle to reconcile his despair at the changing social face of Britain, and also the loss of his father during the Second World War. Gilmour's guitar solos on "Your Possible Pasts" and "The Fletcher Memorial Home" are, however, sometimes considered the equal of his best work on The Wall. More recent reviews of the album have weighed its importance alongside the band's breakup. Writing for AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine said "with its anger, emphasis on lyrics, and sonic textures, it's clear that it's the album that Waters intended it to be. And it's equally clear that Pink Floyd couldn't have continued in this direction." Stylus Magazine wrote: "It's about pursuing something greater even when you have all the money that you could ever want. And either failing or succeeding brilliantly. It's up to you to decide whether this record is a success or a failure, but I'd go with the former every time." Rachel Mann of The Quietus said "flawed though it is, The Final Cut remains a tremendous album" and "still has something fresh to say". Mike Diver of Drowned in Sound was less generous: "Rays of lights are few and far between, and even on paper the track titles – including 'The Gunner's Dream' and 'Paranoid Eyes' – suggest an arduous listen." - Wikipedia

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Re: Pink Floyd

Postby ConnyOlivetti » 26 Apr 2022, 19:44

Great write up as usual.
The Final Cut, well I like it, a lot.
For me, it is a masterpiece, and in some way better than the Wall.
The last Pink Floyd album I really cared for.
Don't play it often, but when I do, I enjoy it very much.
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Un enfant dans electronica!
Je suis!

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Re: Pink Floyd

Postby Mike Boom » 26 Apr 2022, 19:56

I can't listen to it, half the problem is everything is so damn slow and drawn out, everything drags at a funeral pace, and I really dislike Waters vocals, couple that with no really great songs, misses Richard Wrights keyboards, its a big nothing to me I'm afraid.

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Re: Pink Floyd

Postby Matt Wilson » 26 Apr 2022, 19:59

And there we have it. The last couple of reviews above illustrate perfectly the two ways most fans view this album.

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Re: Pink Floyd

Postby Hightea » 27 Apr 2022, 03:44

Matt Wilson wrote:Image
Animals 1977


Always loved Animals. Note they played Pigs on the Wing (Part One) on the radio here in NY.
I was at the Comfortably Numb show on 6/29/77 at the Spectrum. It's also the first time I ever scalped a ticket. There was no ticket to be had but my brother had tickets for his friends who were meeting him there. As the show started they still weren't there and with no cell phones he ended up giving me one and sold the other two. We entered as Sheep started perfect timing to just walk onto the floor and we ran up to the first few rows and found two seats around 10th row and no one ever came. Water's didn't play the encores, not that I remembered that, However, I stated for years that they were better at the MSG show I saw on 7/4/77. Another crazy story Waters was not happy with the crowd that night and firecrackers were being thrown around like popcorn. My friend got hit in the arm with one and one blew up near my ear.

Spectrum show:
https://www.inquirer.com/philly/entertainment/music/roger-waters-had-a-stomach-ache-at-the-spectrum-a-philadelphia-doctor-made-him-comfortably-numb-20170808.html

Pigs on Waters Tour in 2017

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Re: Pink Floyd

Postby Matt Wilson » 27 Apr 2022, 05:39

Yeah, that's the same show that's on the Us + Them blu.

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Re: Pink Floyd

Postby robertff » 27 Apr 2022, 16:26

Image


A1. Astronomy Domine 4:10
A2. See Emily Play 2:47
A3. The Happiest Days Of Our Lives 1:38
A4. Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2) 4:01
A5. Marooned 2:02
A6. The Great Gig In The Sky 4:40

B1. Echoes 16:30
B2. Hey You 4:39

C1. Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun 5:20
C2. Money 6:29
C3. Keep Talking 5:57

D1. Sheep 9:46
D2. Sorrow 8:45

E1. Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts 1-7) 17:32

F1. Time 6:48
F2. The Fletcher Memorial Home 4:07
F3. Comfortably Numb 6:53
F4. When The Tigers Broke Free 3:42

G1. One Of These Days 5:14
G2. Us And Them 7:51
G3. Learning To Fly 4:50
G4. Arnold Layne 2:52

H1. Wish You Were Here 5:21
H2. Jugband Blues 2:56
H3. High Hopes 6:59
H4. Bike 3:24



The most satisfying Floyd album? I think so.


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Re: Pink Floyd

Postby Matt Wilson » 27 Apr 2022, 16:47

It is what it is. There's edited versions of some of the songs, nothing from Atom Heart Mother, More, Ummagumma, or Obscured by Clouds, and they jumble up the chronology - but that doesn't really bother me. I do the same thing when making compilations sometimes.

I guess if you want a single-stop purchase to cover the band's career, Echoes is the way to go.

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Re: Pink Floyd

Postby robertff » 27 Apr 2022, 17:07

Matt Wilson wrote:It is what it is. There's edited versions of some of the songs, nothing from Atom Heart Mother, More, Ummagumma, or Obscured by Clouds, and they jumble up the chronology - but that doesn't really bother me. I do the same thing when making compilations sometimes.

I guess if you want a single-stop purchase to cover the band's career, Echoes is the way to go.



Shame they didn’t have something from More on it but I’m not bothered about anything missing from the other three you mentioned. It all segues pretty well together I think.


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Re: Pink Floyd

Postby mudshark » 27 Apr 2022, 18:35

Never even heard The Final Cut. Actually haven' t listened to anything after The Wall, an album I hate with a vengeance.
There's a big difference between kneeling down and bending over

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Re: Pink Floyd

Postby robertff » 27 Apr 2022, 18:56

mudshark wrote:Never even heard The Final Cut. Actually haven' t listened to anything after The Wall, an album I hate with a vengeance.




If you hate The Wall with a vengeance goodness only knows how much you would hate The Final Cut. :D



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Re: Pink Floyd

Postby Matt Wilson » 27 Apr 2022, 19:20

robertff wrote:
mudshark wrote:Never even heard The Final Cut. Actually haven' t listened to anything after The Wall, an album I hate with a vengeance.




If you hate The Wall with a vengeance goodness only knows how much you would hate The Final Cut. :D



.


Remember Conny said he likes The Final Cut more than The Wall.

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Re: Pink Floyd

Postby robertff » 27 Apr 2022, 19:43

Matt Wilson wrote:
robertff wrote:
mudshark wrote:Never even heard The Final Cut. Actually haven' t listened to anything after The Wall, an album I hate with a vengeance.




If you hate The Wall with a vengeance goodness only knows how much you would hate The Final Cut. :D



.


Remember Conny said he likes The Final Cut more than The Wall.



We all like what we like Matt, as C. keeps reminding us ‘remember what his grandmother and Frank said’. :D


.

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Re: Pink Floyd

Postby Quaco » 27 Apr 2022, 21:16

Matt Wilson wrote:
robertff wrote:
mudshark wrote:Never even heard The Final Cut. Actually haven' t listened to anything after The Wall, an album I hate with a vengeance.




If you hate The Wall with a vengeance goodness only knows how much you would hate The Final Cut. :D



.


Remember Conny said he likes The Final Cut more than The Wall.

Yeah, I can see that too. Part of what is (to some listeners) annoying about The Wall is it's all about a rich rock star complaining about the touring life, how alienating it all is. There's none of that in The Final Cut. There's no narrator or main character. It doesn't sound like a bombastic rock concert. It's the melancholy meditations on war stuff only, which after years and years, I've come to prefer too. That's what still resonates. It's more about Thatcher's England than WWII, and it's not really any less relevant today. There are still terrorists bombing innocent people, people who feel impotent and useless, politicians at dinner parties ruining the lives of their people...
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Re: Pink Floyd

Postby Matt Wilson » 28 Apr 2022, 00:09

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