shuke
Black Ice Skeptic
Give me a break.
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FBG'S TOP 100 PINK FLOYD SONGS - #01 - Comfortably Numb from The Wall (1979) (2 Viewers)
- Thread starter Anarchy99
- Start date
Give me a break.
plinko
Footballguy
T swiz is very prolific
zamboni
Footballguy
This board is a strange hobby
Anarchy99
Footballguy
Mookie had it as his #2 song. Which means 32 other people awarded it a total of 2 points. Not sure which is more surprising . . . that someone had it as their second favorite Floyd song, or that 32 people were mostly indifferent to it. Even though it was their first single, it's not really a song that has ever gotten a lot of air play. I think I've heard it on the radio once or twice in all this time. Not sure where the casual fan would have heard it . . . probably only on the Echoes compilation. Maybe it's just our group of rankers, but I can see Arnold Layne not being accessible enough to get more votes.
zamboni
Footballguy
Takes two to know.
Dr. Octopus
Footballguy
I know music is subjective - but from an objective perspective it's nearly impossible to list 54 albums better than Dark Side of the Moon.
Anarchy99
Footballguy
Leaving the music part out of this altogether, I know that hot takes get clicks. Not having DSOTM in the Top 50 albums of all time definitely qualifies as a hot take. I am sure that caused a stir and a buzz on their rankings . . . which they would not have gotten if they plopped DSOTM in their Top 5.
zamboni
Footballguy
It's Rolling Stone - nufced
Anarchy99
Footballguy
Random dump of PF related covers . . .
DG & Tom Jones - Purple Rain
DG & Seal - Hey Joe
DG & Paul McCartney - All Shook Up
DG & Paul McCartney - I Saw Her Standing There
DG & Pete Townshend - I Put A Spell On You
DG & Rod Stewart - In A Broken Dream
DG - Across The Universe
DG - Revolution
RW - Across The Universe
RW - Hello, I Love You
RW - Forever Young
RW - Knockin' On Heaven's Door
RW - The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down - Wide River To Cross - The Weight
RW & Sheryl Crow - Blowin' In The Wind
RW & Friends - Lean On Me
Stray Cats & Friends - Blue Suede Shoes
Rock Aid Armenia - Smoke On The Water
DG & Tom Jones - Purple Rain
DG & Seal - Hey Joe
DG & Paul McCartney - All Shook Up
DG & Paul McCartney - I Saw Her Standing There
DG & Pete Townshend - I Put A Spell On You
DG & Rod Stewart - In A Broken Dream
DG - Across The Universe
DG - Revolution
RW - Across The Universe
RW - Hello, I Love You
RW - Forever Young
RW - Knockin' On Heaven's Door
RW - The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down - Wide River To Cross - The Weight
RW & Sheryl Crow - Blowin' In The Wind
RW & Friends - Lean On Me
Stray Cats & Friends - Blue Suede Shoes
Rock Aid Armenia - Smoke On The Water
shuke
Black Ice Skeptic
Wow
Grace Under Pressure
Footballguy
On the Run may be the trippiest of the trippy from DSOTM. The laugh itself is worth a rank, IMO. Probably best enjoyed in the flow of the album. This is one of the songs that makes DSOTM a whole experience, again IMO.
zamboni
Footballguy
I hadn't seen that before - wow is right. Can tell the rough timeframe by David's hairstyle - that was back in 1992.
zamboni
Footballguy
Another one of my favorite Dave guest moments is one that gets posted around here from time to time:
Backing Kate Bush (who he helped discover) at the 1987 Secret Policeman's Third Ball
Backing Kate Bush (who he helped discover) at the 1987 Secret Policeman's Third Ball
Anarchy99
Footballguy
I have a tough time when it comes to DSOTM. I've always liked other albums better . . . and I like the live versions from Dark Side more than the album versions. Add in that for me it's been played to death, and I mostly have lost my attachment to the album. The only song I was always in "love with" (as opposed to "in like" with like all the other tracks) was Money. From Day 1, I have been fascinated with Money . . . no matter which version, who performed it, live or in studio, etc.
I have vivid memories of HS and college playing a PF mix tape I made and reading The Iliad, The Odessey, Lord of the Rings, and a bunch of other stuff with Floyd on in the background. I still remember which songs were playing during key passages of the books. (I took a ton of literature classes in school . . . I'm sure somehow that paid off in the long run in all my future pursuits. But I have yet to figure out how.)
Anarchy99
Footballguy
I was going to post a boatload of session work Dave has played on but wasn't sure if it would be worth the time. If people are up for it and will check out his lengthy catalogue of guest appearances, I will do it. But if no one is that interested, I'll save the time and do something else.
zamboni
Footballguy
Maybe after we're done with the countdown. I'm always up to hear more of Dave.
Rand al Thor
Footballguy
That's pretty funny because Money is the only song on the album that, depending on my mood, I sometimes skip.
jabarony
Footballguy
Same.
Dr. Octopus
Footballguy
It’s funny because I think that’s the weakest song on the album.
Anarchy99
Footballguy
#38-T - Is There Anybody Out There? from The Wall (1979)
Appeared On: 4 ballots (out of 33 . . . 12.1%)
Total Points: 49 points (out of 825 possible points . . . 5.9%)
Top Rankers: @Ghoti @BassNBrew @Grace Under Pressure @Just Win Baby
Highest Ranking: 5
Demo Part 1, Demo Part 2, Demo Part 3, Film Version
Live Performances:
PF: 31
RW: 226
Covers: Adrian Belew, Dioguardi Rosario, slow@rk, Scott Reeder, Motor Industries, TBL
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 Echoes. The noise was originally used as a sort of whale call for the deep-water-based Echoes, and is created by Gilmour using a backwards-wired Wah-Wah Pedal. At this point in the plot, the album's protagonist, Pink, is attempting to reach anybody outside of the wall he has built throughout the album. The repeated question "is there anybody out there?" suggests that no response is heard. Roger: "It's really just a mood piece." Although Roger Waters wrote the lyrical section of the track, David Gilmour has suggested that the instrumental second half was actually composed by Bob Ezrin and was uncredited.
DG: "There's a guy playing Spanish guitar. I could play it with a leather pick, but couldn't play it properly finger-style. Lee Ritenour played some rhythm guitar on Is There Anybody Out There?. I tried it with 10 different leather picks, and I just couldn’t pick it smoothly enough. I’m not masochistic and sometimes I get a guitar part out of here (points to his heart) that these things (fingers) won’t do!"
The classical guitar that is the basis for this song was played by session musician Joe DiBlasi. In several interviews, David Gilmour said that he tried to perform it, but was not happy with the results. DiBlasi told the story: "It was not recorded at the same time as the orchestra. I was called in to play the song, but when I got to the studio there was nothing written. What David Gilmour played was something completely different. I sat down with Bob Ezrin and Dave and we constructed the song. They told me what they had in mind and I would come up with an idea. We continued creating the entire song that way. Then I went in the recording booth and recorded the part. We did around 10 takes of the song to get the performance that Bob Ezrin wanted for the record. After my part was recorded, the song was sent to Michael Kamen, who wrote the orchestration to the guitar part. The orchestra was recorded after the guitar was recorded."
Gilmour played the instrumental solo onstage in the live versions of the song — not fingerstyle, but with a leather pick. His performance can be heard on the live album, Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live 1980-81. There are subtle differences between his performance and DiBlasi’s, especially the sharper attack of the strings towards the beginning of the solo. As there are no available demo versions with Gilmour on the solo , it was good to finally hear what he did with the piece. The classical guitar bridge was re-recorded again for the movie. For these sessions, guitarist Tim Renwick was brought in to perform the solo as “David couldn’t be bothered to redo it.”
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.
Vulture Ranking (out of 165 songs): 125
UCR Ranking (out of 167 songs): 108
Louder Ranking (out of 50 songs): 32
WMGK Ranking (out of 40 songs): 32
Ranker Ranking (out of 132 songs): 27
Billboard Ranking (out of 50 songs): 31
Vulture Ranking (125 out of 165 songs): A timekeeping song from The Wall, with an extended classical guitar segment. Pink’s behind the wall, asking for help. In the film it ends with the highly cinematic scene of Bob Geldof shaving his chest. Unsuspecting viewers wouldn’t know that this is a Syd Barrett reference: During the recording of Wish You Were Here, a strange man manifested himself in the control room at Abbey Road. He was portly and quiet, with his pants belted high over his stomach, his head and eyebrows shaved. It took a while before his crushed friends recognized their former band mate.
UCR Ranking (108 out of 167 songs): If there’s a great guitar part on a Pink Floyd track, you can almost always credit David Gilmour, but not this time. It’s session musician Joe DiBlasi who plays the prickly classical guitar that enhances Pink’s suffocating isolation behind his emotional wall.
Louder Ranking (32 out of 50 songs): A drop of pure atmosphere on The Wall’s original Side Three, Waters’ unsettling collage fused old TV Western dialogue, doomy synth, sirens and a repeated plea (“Is there anybody out there?”) that sounded like a hopeless transmission from the last survivor of some cataclysmic event. It was almost a relief when guest classical guitarist Joe DiBlasi punctured the claustrophobia with his Bond-goes-flamenco passages (“I could play it with a leather pick,” shrugged Gilmour, “but couldn’t play it properly fingerstyle”).
WMGK Ranking (32 out of 40 songs): A simple and devastating song. It starts out with Waters pleading, “Is there anybody out there?” over a synthesizer drone and sound effects. The second half of the song is a plaintive classical guitar piece backed by an orchestra. Five words, less than three minutes and it somehow perfectly describes loneliness.
Billboard Ranking (31 out of 50 songs): It could’ve very easily been plot filler, but exemplary production and some heart-rending arrangements make Is There Anybody Out There? one of the most stunning tracks on The Wall. The synths and sirens that swirl imposingly around Waters’ panicked exhortations of the track’s title — the song’s only lyrics — give it an incredibly evocative post-apocalyptic ambiance, and the plucked acoustics and weeping strings that follow end the song with totally unexpected sensitivity, making it a transition track more rewarding than the full song it leads into.
Lots more of The Wall to come . . . next up, a track with a secret message only decipherable when played backwards.
Appeared On: 4 ballots (out of 33 . . . 12.1%)
Total Points: 49 points (out of 825 possible points . . . 5.9%)
Top Rankers: @Ghoti @BassNBrew @Grace Under Pressure @Just Win Baby
Highest Ranking: 5
Demo Part 1, Demo Part 2, Demo Part 3, Film Version
Live Performances:
PF: 31
RW: 226
Covers: Adrian Belew, Dioguardi Rosario, slow@rk, Scott Reeder, Motor Industries, TBL
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 Echoes. The noise was originally used as a sort of whale call for the deep-water-based Echoes, and is created by Gilmour using a backwards-wired Wah-Wah Pedal. At this point in the plot, the album's protagonist, Pink, is attempting to reach anybody outside of the wall he has built throughout the album. The repeated question "is there anybody out there?" suggests that no response is heard. Roger: "It's really just a mood piece." Although Roger Waters wrote the lyrical section of the track, David Gilmour has suggested that the instrumental second half was actually composed by Bob Ezrin and was uncredited.
DG: "There's a guy playing Spanish guitar. I could play it with a leather pick, but couldn't play it properly finger-style. Lee Ritenour played some rhythm guitar on Is There Anybody Out There?. I tried it with 10 different leather picks, and I just couldn’t pick it smoothly enough. I’m not masochistic and sometimes I get a guitar part out of here (points to his heart) that these things (fingers) won’t do!"
The classical guitar that is the basis for this song was played by session musician Joe DiBlasi. In several interviews, David Gilmour said that he tried to perform it, but was not happy with the results. DiBlasi told the story: "It was not recorded at the same time as the orchestra. I was called in to play the song, but when I got to the studio there was nothing written. What David Gilmour played was something completely different. I sat down with Bob Ezrin and Dave and we constructed the song. They told me what they had in mind and I would come up with an idea. We continued creating the entire song that way. Then I went in the recording booth and recorded the part. We did around 10 takes of the song to get the performance that Bob Ezrin wanted for the record. After my part was recorded, the song was sent to Michael Kamen, who wrote the orchestration to the guitar part. The orchestra was recorded after the guitar was recorded."
Gilmour played the instrumental solo onstage in the live versions of the song — not fingerstyle, but with a leather pick. His performance can be heard on the live album, Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live 1980-81. There are subtle differences between his performance and DiBlasi’s, especially the sharper attack of the strings towards the beginning of the solo. As there are no available demo versions with Gilmour on the solo , it was good to finally hear what he did with the piece. The classical guitar bridge was re-recorded again for the movie. For these sessions, guitarist Tim Renwick was brought in to perform the solo as “David couldn’t be bothered to redo it.”
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.
Vulture Ranking (out of 165 songs): 125
UCR Ranking (out of 167 songs): 108
Louder Ranking (out of 50 songs): 32
WMGK Ranking (out of 40 songs): 32
Ranker Ranking (out of 132 songs): 27
Billboard Ranking (out of 50 songs): 31
Vulture Ranking (125 out of 165 songs): A timekeeping song from The Wall, with an extended classical guitar segment. Pink’s behind the wall, asking for help. In the film it ends with the highly cinematic scene of Bob Geldof shaving his chest. Unsuspecting viewers wouldn’t know that this is a Syd Barrett reference: During the recording of Wish You Were Here, a strange man manifested himself in the control room at Abbey Road. He was portly and quiet, with his pants belted high over his stomach, his head and eyebrows shaved. It took a while before his crushed friends recognized their former band mate.
UCR Ranking (108 out of 167 songs): If there’s a great guitar part on a Pink Floyd track, you can almost always credit David Gilmour, but not this time. It’s session musician Joe DiBlasi who plays the prickly classical guitar that enhances Pink’s suffocating isolation behind his emotional wall.
Louder Ranking (32 out of 50 songs): A drop of pure atmosphere on The Wall’s original Side Three, Waters’ unsettling collage fused old TV Western dialogue, doomy synth, sirens and a repeated plea (“Is there anybody out there?”) that sounded like a hopeless transmission from the last survivor of some cataclysmic event. It was almost a relief when guest classical guitarist Joe DiBlasi punctured the claustrophobia with his Bond-goes-flamenco passages (“I could play it with a leather pick,” shrugged Gilmour, “but couldn’t play it properly fingerstyle”).
WMGK Ranking (32 out of 40 songs): A simple and devastating song. It starts out with Waters pleading, “Is there anybody out there?” over a synthesizer drone and sound effects. The second half of the song is a plaintive classical guitar piece backed by an orchestra. Five words, less than three minutes and it somehow perfectly describes loneliness.
Billboard Ranking (31 out of 50 songs): It could’ve very easily been plot filler, but exemplary production and some heart-rending arrangements make Is There Anybody Out There? one of the most stunning tracks on The Wall. The synths and sirens that swirl imposingly around Waters’ panicked exhortations of the track’s title — the song’s only lyrics — give it an incredibly evocative post-apocalyptic ambiance, and the plucked acoustics and weeping strings that follow end the song with totally unexpected sensitivity, making it a transition track more rewarding than the full song it leads into.
Lots more of The Wall to come . . . next up, a track with a secret message only decipherable when played backwards.
Dan Lambskin
Footballguy
Yeah Money is a great song but I’m in that same overplayed camp
FatMax
Member
I know the song you speak of ... to me, this one should be paired with the song that comes after it. It seems like an into.
But, as we have been over a few times, the same argument can be made for several songs.
dkp993
Footballguy
Interested! My favorite all time guitarist
Pip's Invitation
Footballguy
Ominous tune that's a little hard for me to separate from the rest of the album. I don't think I even remembered that the classical guitar part went with this track.
Rand al Thor
Footballguy
RE: Is There Anybody Out There -
It seems so weird that as great of a guitarist as DG is, he couldn't play what is a relatively easy finger picking "classical" piece. I would say that's the most shocking thing I've learned in this whole thread.
It seems so weird that as great of a guitarist as DG is, he couldn't play what is a relatively easy finger picking "classical" piece. I would say that's the most shocking thing I've learned in this whole thread.
Tau837
Footballguy
As soon as I read the countdown post, this song just started playing in my head over and over. After a couple hours, I just put on my headphones and listened to it. The guitar is beautiful IMO. I would have never guessed it wasn't Gilmour. The story of how they came up with it is very interesting.
Anarchy99
Footballguy
#37 - Empty Spaces / What Shall We Do Now? from The Wall (1979)
Appeared On: 3 ballots (out of 33 . . . 12.1%)
Total Points: 51 points (out of 825 possible points . . . 6.2%)
Top Rankers: @Ghoti @Anarchy99 @Rand al Thor
Highest Ranking: 6
Empty Spaces (Part 1 Demo), Empty Spaces (Part 2 - What Shall We Do Now Demo), Empty Spaces (Album Version)
Empty Spaces - What Shall We Do Now - Young Lust (Live Version)
Empty Spaces- What Shall We Do Now (RW & Bryan Adams)
Live Performances:
PF: 31
RW: 225
Covers: Robby Krieger, Astra, Domkraft, Mushroomhead, Which One's Pink?, Rebel Reactor, Stoneburner, Mean Eithers, Thot, Brandon Matuja, Random Monsters
Through the first 29 ballots (of 33), this song had 0 points . . . yet it ended up at #37 (after getting 6th, 10th, and 11th place votes).
The beginning of Empty Spaces has Roger saying (backwards): "Congratulations, you have just discovered the secret message. Please send your answer to Old Pink, care of the Funny Farm, Chalfont. followed by the voice of engineer James Guthrie over an intercom, shouting out "Roger! Carolyne's on the phone!" (Roger Waters' wife at the time). It is believed that this backward message is a comical reference to former lead singer/guitarist Syd Barrett. Roger Waters congratulates you for finding this message, and jokes that you can send your answer to Syd (the 'Old Pink'), who lives somewhere in Chalfonte (the 'funny farm' in Chalfone). Before he can tell the location however, he gets interrupted by James Guthrie who says Carolyne (Waters' wife) is on the phone.
The song was removed due to time constraints, at such a late stage that it was still listed on the album lyric sheet, which had already gone to the printer. This unfortunately makes the narrative of 'Pink' slightly unclear. The song was meant to represent the time of questioning as Pink sets off into the world, and wonders what to do in it. Empty Spaces was originally intended simply as a reprise of What Shall We Do Now? at the end of the second side (between Don't Leave Me Now and Another Brick in the Wall part 3, as per the lyric sheet), as it echoes the first four lines of the original song.
Roger: "Now that's the track that's not on the album. It was quite nice!" That side was too long and we realized as we were mastering the thing that side two was just too long and we had to get rid of something. And ‘Empty Spaces’ and another cut that used to be on there called ‘What Shall We Do Now’ are the same tune. So ‘Empty Spaces’ was a reiteration, musically, of that tune towards that end of the side and so we just axed ‘What Shall We Do Now’, though it makes less sense. But we’ve left the lyrics on the back because they help tell the story.” However, What Shall We Do Now? did make it into the Wall film in its proper place.
This is the song written and recorded for the album but cut due to time constraints (see also the The Wall album entry). This is the original version of the song, only slightly remixed to fit in with the adjacent sound bites of the film.
In the original concept of the album, this song was a representation of a young adult Pink questioning what to do with his life. However, its positioning in the film and the phone call sound bite just preceding it gives it a new context for the film. Having discovered his wife's infidelity, Pink seems to be desperately casting about mentally, wondering what he should do to distract himself. However, Gerald Scarfe's superb animation for this song helps to relate it to its larger context as social commentary, and it seems relatively unimportant in Pink's story. Roger Waters, at the time of the album's release, commented on the meaning of the song and what its message was.
Roger: "It's just about the ways that one protects oneself from one's isolation by becoming obsessed with other people's ideas. Whether the idea is that it's good to drive... have a powerful car, you know, or whether you're obsessed with the idea of being a vegetarian... adopting somebody else's criteria for yourself, without considering them from a position of really being yourself. On this level the story is extremely simplistic."
Vulture Ranking (out of 165 songs): 143
UCR Ranking (out of 167 songs): 137
Louder Ranking (out of 50 songs): NR
WMGK Ranking (out of 40 songs): 28
Ranker Ranking (out of 132 songs): 69
Billboard Ranking (out of 50 songs): NR
Vulture Ranking (143 out of 165 songs): Nice eerie instrumentalizing as the pressures start to close in on poor little Pink, but it’s really just there to set up Young Lust” — and give Roger Waters another publishing royalty. Here’s another bit of songwriter-royalties trivia, if you care: In crude terms, with The Wall, Waters almost certainly holds the record for the greatest songwriter windfall from one album in rock history. With a lot of short fragments like Empty Spaces, he had the equivalent of 24 solo songwriting credits on The Wall, which, with more than 30 million copies sold worldwide, is in the top-20-biggest-selling albums of all time. No other album close to that rarefied air has so many songwriting credits from one person. Again, given his stature, he should have been netting 3 cents per song, or about 75 cents in total, per record sold. Let’s say CBS had a cap on publishing points that took it down by 10 cents. (Foreign rates vary, of course, but he probably got more than that at least in Europe, where songwriters get 10 percent of the wholesale price.) Sixty-five cents times 30 million copies sold is pretty close to $20 million in gross songwriting royalties from just one album release. That’s probably equal to about what he made from being a member of the band, and he had royalty points as a producer in addition.
UCR Ranking (137 out of 167 songs): As Pink wonders how to fill the spaces in his “wall,” Waters had to put Empty Spaces in the place of a longer piece titled What Shall We Do Now? because of vinyl running time issues. The song maintains the former’s eerie, slow-motion surge.
WMGK Ranking (28 out of 40 songs): Considered along with Young Lust.
If you have amazing powers of observation, then you'll know what out next selection is.
Appeared On: 3 ballots (out of 33 . . . 12.1%)
Total Points: 51 points (out of 825 possible points . . . 6.2%)
Top Rankers: @Ghoti @Anarchy99 @Rand al Thor
Highest Ranking: 6
Empty Spaces (Part 1 Demo), Empty Spaces (Part 2 - What Shall We Do Now Demo), Empty Spaces (Album Version)
Empty Spaces - What Shall We Do Now - Young Lust (Live Version)
Empty Spaces- What Shall We Do Now (RW & Bryan Adams)
Live Performances:
PF: 31
RW: 225
Covers: Robby Krieger, Astra, Domkraft, Mushroomhead, Which One's Pink?, Rebel Reactor, Stoneburner, Mean Eithers, Thot, Brandon Matuja, Random Monsters
Through the first 29 ballots (of 33), this song had 0 points . . . yet it ended up at #37 (after getting 6th, 10th, and 11th place votes).
The beginning of Empty Spaces has Roger saying (backwards): "Congratulations, you have just discovered the secret message. Please send your answer to Old Pink, care of the Funny Farm, Chalfont. followed by the voice of engineer James Guthrie over an intercom, shouting out "Roger! Carolyne's on the phone!" (Roger Waters' wife at the time). It is believed that this backward message is a comical reference to former lead singer/guitarist Syd Barrett. Roger Waters congratulates you for finding this message, and jokes that you can send your answer to Syd (the 'Old Pink'), who lives somewhere in Chalfonte (the 'funny farm' in Chalfone). Before he can tell the location however, he gets interrupted by James Guthrie who says Carolyne (Waters' wife) is on the phone.
The song was removed due to time constraints, at such a late stage that it was still listed on the album lyric sheet, which had already gone to the printer. This unfortunately makes the narrative of 'Pink' slightly unclear. The song was meant to represent the time of questioning as Pink sets off into the world, and wonders what to do in it. Empty Spaces was originally intended simply as a reprise of What Shall We Do Now? at the end of the second side (between Don't Leave Me Now and Another Brick in the Wall part 3, as per the lyric sheet), as it echoes the first four lines of the original song.
Roger: "Now that's the track that's not on the album. It was quite nice!" That side was too long and we realized as we were mastering the thing that side two was just too long and we had to get rid of something. And ‘Empty Spaces’ and another cut that used to be on there called ‘What Shall We Do Now’ are the same tune. So ‘Empty Spaces’ was a reiteration, musically, of that tune towards that end of the side and so we just axed ‘What Shall We Do Now’, though it makes less sense. But we’ve left the lyrics on the back because they help tell the story.” However, What Shall We Do Now? did make it into the Wall film in its proper place.
This is the song written and recorded for the album but cut due to time constraints (see also the The Wall album entry). This is the original version of the song, only slightly remixed to fit in with the adjacent sound bites of the film.
In the original concept of the album, this song was a representation of a young adult Pink questioning what to do with his life. However, its positioning in the film and the phone call sound bite just preceding it gives it a new context for the film. Having discovered his wife's infidelity, Pink seems to be desperately casting about mentally, wondering what he should do to distract himself. However, Gerald Scarfe's superb animation for this song helps to relate it to its larger context as social commentary, and it seems relatively unimportant in Pink's story. Roger Waters, at the time of the album's release, commented on the meaning of the song and what its message was.
Roger: "It's just about the ways that one protects oneself from one's isolation by becoming obsessed with other people's ideas. Whether the idea is that it's good to drive... have a powerful car, you know, or whether you're obsessed with the idea of being a vegetarian... adopting somebody else's criteria for yourself, without considering them from a position of really being yourself. On this level the story is extremely simplistic."
Vulture Ranking (out of 165 songs): 143
UCR Ranking (out of 167 songs): 137
Louder Ranking (out of 50 songs): NR
WMGK Ranking (out of 40 songs): 28
Ranker Ranking (out of 132 songs): 69
Billboard Ranking (out of 50 songs): NR
Vulture Ranking (143 out of 165 songs): Nice eerie instrumentalizing as the pressures start to close in on poor little Pink, but it’s really just there to set up Young Lust” — and give Roger Waters another publishing royalty. Here’s another bit of songwriter-royalties trivia, if you care: In crude terms, with The Wall, Waters almost certainly holds the record for the greatest songwriter windfall from one album in rock history. With a lot of short fragments like Empty Spaces, he had the equivalent of 24 solo songwriting credits on The Wall, which, with more than 30 million copies sold worldwide, is in the top-20-biggest-selling albums of all time. No other album close to that rarefied air has so many songwriting credits from one person. Again, given his stature, he should have been netting 3 cents per song, or about 75 cents in total, per record sold. Let’s say CBS had a cap on publishing points that took it down by 10 cents. (Foreign rates vary, of course, but he probably got more than that at least in Europe, where songwriters get 10 percent of the wholesale price.) Sixty-five cents times 30 million copies sold is pretty close to $20 million in gross songwriting royalties from just one album release. That’s probably equal to about what he made from being a member of the band, and he had royalty points as a producer in addition.
UCR Ranking (137 out of 167 songs): As Pink wonders how to fill the spaces in his “wall,” Waters had to put Empty Spaces in the place of a longer piece titled What Shall We Do Now? because of vinyl running time issues. The song maintains the former’s eerie, slow-motion surge.
WMGK Ranking (28 out of 40 songs): Considered along with Young Lust.
If you have amazing powers of observation, then you'll know what out next selection is.
zamboni
Footballguy
Definitely seem to be hitting the wall now.
FatMax
Member
To me, this is just the into to Young Lust, much like Happiest Days of our Lives is to ABITW2.
Anarchy99
Footballguy
I made ES/WSWDN/YL into a single track in my collection. So clearly I agree.
zamboni
Footballguy
I have basically the whole album this way. With the exception of the obvious one.
FatMax
Member
It is obvious that you're a man of impeccable taste. Until I disagree, then you'll be a moron.
Anarchy99
Footballguy
We’ve already established you have groupies. So you can’t be all bad.
Anarchy99
Footballguy
I only voted for 3 of your Top 10 songs, so clearly my days as a genius with impeccable taste will be short lived.
FatMax
Member
I'd advise you to take advantage of the member benefits while you can. We just added a breakfast bar down by the bocce ball courts.
Ghoti
Footballguy
So this song brings up my Pink Floyd origin story.
Flashback to summer, 1980. I’m 8 years old. My parents are out and I have a babysitter. Back in yon olden days, the only avenue for listening to music in my house was the living room stereo. No boombox yet, no Walkman. This was before cassette tapes were ubiquitous, so choices were either the radio or vinyl.
My parents’ musical taste was, in a word, horrific. Think the BAD kind of folk (not Bob Dylan), gospel (not Johnny Cash), country (not Kenny Rodgers). We’re talking Statler Brothers garbage. I sure didn’t know much at 8 years of age, but I know I didn’t like that. And neither did my babysitter, because whenever she came over, she bought her own albums so she didn’t have to listen to my parents’ trash.
I’m in my bedroom down the hall from the living room, probably playing with Star Wars action figures, or scissors, or matches (it WAS the early 80’s). The babysitter was outside sunbathing (again, the 80’s… childcare was a whole different animal) and she would put her records on the stereo, crank it up, and listen through the open window. So, I'm alone in the house.
I suddenly hear something that chilled me to the bone:
IS THERE ANYBODY OUT THERE?
I freeze. WTF was THAT? On some level, I knew it was coming from the stereo, but this sure is a strange “song.”
IS THERE ANYBODY OUT THERE?
Eerie, even a little frightening. But intriguing.
IS THERE ANYBODY OUT THERE?
I go into the living room to check it out, and right about the time I stand in front of the stereo, the guitar solo kicks in. It’s relieving in a way, soothing after the strangeness I just heard. I’ll never forget picking up the album sleeve and looking it over, curious as hell. The rest of Side 3 of the album plays, culminating in “Comfortably Numb” and I was hooked.
So, yeah, I didn’t expect anyone else to rate this particular song as high as I did. But I love it… it’s the gateway to my favorite band. When I picked up the guitar as a teenager, the solo was one of the first ones that learned (although I do admit that, years later when I found out Gilmour didn’t write/play it, it was a bit of a blow – your heroes are always flawed).
Ghoti
Footballguy
I love, love, love the movie version of this song. The slow, ominous buildup followed by Waters' screaming out the remainder of the "bricks." In my mind, I can't separate it from Gerald Scarfe's animation. Such good stuff, I absolutely hate that it was cut from the album.
FatMax
Member
Bah. There's much worse country in that era than the Statler Brothers. Plus, who here hasn't spent a day smoking cigarettes and watching Captain Kangaroo?
Regardless, cool story. A different time, for sure.
Anarchy99
Footballguy
#36 - Nobody Home from The Wall (1979)
Appeared On: 10 ballots (out of 33 . . . 30.3%)
Total Points: 53 points (out of 825 possible points . . . 6.2%)
Top Rankers: @jabarony @ericttspikes @Just Win Baby @Desert_Power @Ghost Rider
Highest Ranking: 10
Film Version, Live Version - 1980, With Clapton - 1984, London -1987, Berlin - 1990, RW - The Wall Version
Live Performances:
PF: 31
RW: 300
Covers: Metric, Rick Wakeman, Mark Lanegan, Courtney Fairchild, Mummers, Cavedoll
Another song ranked in the Top 50 by all outside rankers. It's our first song ranked by 10 people.
Nobody Home was written late into the development of The Wall after an argument between the band and Roger. Dave said that the song "came along when we were well into recording the album and Roger had gone off in a sulk the night before and came in the next day with something fantastic." It was the final song recorded just before the album was completed. As such, there are no demos or early recordings of the song. Co-producer Bob Ezrin plays piano and David Gilmour played bass on the album version. Session player Peter Wood played the acoustic piano for the live version.
Roger Waters has stated that the line, "I got elastic bands keeping my shoes on," is a reference to Syd Barrett and how Syd's mental state had gotten so bad that he stopped lacing up his boots and would often just use elastic bands to keep them on. "The Gohills boots are Syd \, The Hendrix poem is sort of a Gestalt. Rick had one. Syd had one. Eric Clapton had one. It was sort of a thing at the time. The satin shirt is mine: 'The inevitable pinhole burns/All down the front of my favorite satin shirt.' I can see that shirt now, with all the pinhole burns from the burning hash. The coke thing - 'I've got a silver spoon on a chain' - is not about anyone in particular. The main anguish of the unanswered telephone is my experience - nobody home."
The line about the grand piano is apparently a reference to delicate Rick Wright, who (according to Roger) was too 'burnt out' at the time of the album to make more than a token showing. Other lines are simply references to many older rock stars in general (such as 'silver spoon' — Roger himself did not use cocaine).
Roger: "There are some good lines in here that harp back to the halcyon days of Syd Barrett, it's partly about all kinds of people I've known, but Syd was the only person I used to know who used elastic bands to keep his boots together, which is where that line comes from, in fact the 'obligatory Hendrix perm' you have to go back ten years before you understand what all that's about."
In the film, Pink sits once again in front of another of his seemingly endless supply of televisions, flicking channels aimlessly; but his thoughts are elsewhere. Retreating deep into the recesses of his mind, he imagines himself and the hotel's TV and lamp on a windswept landscape, highlighted by patches of barbed wire and crossed hammers. He then visualizes his younger self (Young Pink) wandering into war trenches which then, in a dream-like manner, lead into a sanatorium, where Young Pink finds older Pink, now a gibbering maniac.
When the band performed The Wall, the staged an elaborate show where a giant wall was built on stage, eventually concealing the band. During Nobody Home, part of the wall opened to reveal a replica of a hotel room, a striking visual.
Some people say that a guitar solo was written at some point for the track but was never performed by the band. It would have appeared after all of the verses and before the final two lines of the song. It is not known for certain if this solo was ever actually recorded for the album. If it were, it was most likely cut to shorten the running time of Side 3. A recording or a demo by Pink Floyd has never surfaced which casts some doubt over the accuracy of this claim.
Regardless, there really is a long version of the song out there. Nobody Home with the added guitar solo was performed regularly by Roger Waters and his bands in the 1980s and 90s.
Vulture Ranking (out of 165 songs): 29
UCR Ranking (out of 167 songs): 23
Louder Ranking (out of 50 songs): 47
WMGK Ranking (out of 40 songs): 12
Ranker Ranking (out of 132 songs): 39
Billboard Ranking (out of 50 songs): 44
Vulture Ranking (29 out of 165 songs): A strong, slightly overlooked Wall songs. Waters’s voice doesn’t do much for it, it’s lugubrious, and it overdoes the “fly to” echo. All that said, this is a fairly personal and knowing look at the ridiculous rock-star lifestyle, unsparing of both Rogers himself and what he’d been seeing over the previous dozen years, with what seems to be a TV droning in the background, a nice touch.
UCR Ranking (23 out of 167 songs): There are a lot of big elements on The Wall – larger-than-life characters, epic guitars, overblown orchestrations and screaming vocal performances. Which makes the quiet, sensitive song Nobody Home all the more valuable. Drawing on both his own feelings of rock-tour-alienation and what he witnessed of Syd Barrett’s mental break, Waters takes stock of all the meaningless stuff in Pink’s life and places them in vivid contrast to what’s missing. It’s a somber, but sweet piano ballad (that gets the strong urge to fly, down the stretch) that brings the rock opera back to a human scale. And it’s got a perfectly placed Gomer Pyle cameo.
Louder Ranking (47 out of 50 songs): Late in the Wall sessions, a fuming Waters penned this bruised piano ballad in a single evening, having risen to Gilmour’s challenge to write “something fantastic”. If the music was ripe with sorrow and solitude, the lyric was even more so, seemingly nodding to every rock star burn-out cliché in the book – and surely referencing the departed Barrett with its vision of a lost soul with “wild staring eyes” and “the obligatory Hendrix perm”.
WMGK Ranking (12 out of 40 songs): The last song written for The Wall, you could almost imagine a down-on-their-luck over-the-hill lounge singer crooning it. The singer has seen and done lots of great things, but he still can’t connect with the person who he loves. “Ooh, babe when I pick up the phone there's still nobody home.”
Billboard Ranking (44 out of 50 songs): A ballad of legitimate tenderness on The Wall‘s third side, essentially a more unhinged version of ELO’s Telephone Line, as the story’s rock star anti-hero goes stir crazy alone among his possessions and yearns over twinkling piano to dial up some kind of human connection. “I’ve got 13 channels of s–t on the TV to choose from,” Waters-as-Pink laments, reminding you just how long ago 1979 was.
We would have moved on to One Of My Turns . . . but that song is tied with our next entry, which I found one day, in a drawer of old photographs, hidden away.
Appeared On: 10 ballots (out of 33 . . . 30.3%)
Total Points: 53 points (out of 825 possible points . . . 6.2%)
Top Rankers: @jabarony @ericttspikes @Just Win Baby @Desert_Power @Ghost Rider
Highest Ranking: 10
Film Version, Live Version - 1980, With Clapton - 1984, London -1987, Berlin - 1990, RW - The Wall Version
Live Performances:
PF: 31
RW: 300
Covers: Metric, Rick Wakeman, Mark Lanegan, Courtney Fairchild, Mummers, Cavedoll
Another song ranked in the Top 50 by all outside rankers. It's our first song ranked by 10 people.
Nobody Home was written late into the development of The Wall after an argument between the band and Roger. Dave said that the song "came along when we were well into recording the album and Roger had gone off in a sulk the night before and came in the next day with something fantastic." It was the final song recorded just before the album was completed. As such, there are no demos or early recordings of the song. Co-producer Bob Ezrin plays piano and David Gilmour played bass on the album version. Session player Peter Wood played the acoustic piano for the live version.
Roger Waters has stated that the line, "I got elastic bands keeping my shoes on," is a reference to Syd Barrett and how Syd's mental state had gotten so bad that he stopped lacing up his boots and would often just use elastic bands to keep them on. "The Gohills boots are Syd \, The Hendrix poem is sort of a Gestalt. Rick had one. Syd had one. Eric Clapton had one. It was sort of a thing at the time. The satin shirt is mine: 'The inevitable pinhole burns/All down the front of my favorite satin shirt.' I can see that shirt now, with all the pinhole burns from the burning hash. The coke thing - 'I've got a silver spoon on a chain' - is not about anyone in particular. The main anguish of the unanswered telephone is my experience - nobody home."
The line about the grand piano is apparently a reference to delicate Rick Wright, who (according to Roger) was too 'burnt out' at the time of the album to make more than a token showing. Other lines are simply references to many older rock stars in general (such as 'silver spoon' — Roger himself did not use cocaine).
Roger: "There are some good lines in here that harp back to the halcyon days of Syd Barrett, it's partly about all kinds of people I've known, but Syd was the only person I used to know who used elastic bands to keep his boots together, which is where that line comes from, in fact the 'obligatory Hendrix perm' you have to go back ten years before you understand what all that's about."
In the film, Pink sits once again in front of another of his seemingly endless supply of televisions, flicking channels aimlessly; but his thoughts are elsewhere. Retreating deep into the recesses of his mind, he imagines himself and the hotel's TV and lamp on a windswept landscape, highlighted by patches of barbed wire and crossed hammers. He then visualizes his younger self (Young Pink) wandering into war trenches which then, in a dream-like manner, lead into a sanatorium, where Young Pink finds older Pink, now a gibbering maniac.
When the band performed The Wall, the staged an elaborate show where a giant wall was built on stage, eventually concealing the band. During Nobody Home, part of the wall opened to reveal a replica of a hotel room, a striking visual.
Some people say that a guitar solo was written at some point for the track but was never performed by the band. It would have appeared after all of the verses and before the final two lines of the song. It is not known for certain if this solo was ever actually recorded for the album. If it were, it was most likely cut to shorten the running time of Side 3. A recording or a demo by Pink Floyd has never surfaced which casts some doubt over the accuracy of this claim.
Regardless, there really is a long version of the song out there. Nobody Home with the added guitar solo was performed regularly by Roger Waters and his bands in the 1980s and 90s.
Vulture Ranking (out of 165 songs): 29
UCR Ranking (out of 167 songs): 23
Louder Ranking (out of 50 songs): 47
WMGK Ranking (out of 40 songs): 12
Ranker Ranking (out of 132 songs): 39
Billboard Ranking (out of 50 songs): 44
Vulture Ranking (29 out of 165 songs): A strong, slightly overlooked Wall songs. Waters’s voice doesn’t do much for it, it’s lugubrious, and it overdoes the “fly to” echo. All that said, this is a fairly personal and knowing look at the ridiculous rock-star lifestyle, unsparing of both Rogers himself and what he’d been seeing over the previous dozen years, with what seems to be a TV droning in the background, a nice touch.
UCR Ranking (23 out of 167 songs): There are a lot of big elements on The Wall – larger-than-life characters, epic guitars, overblown orchestrations and screaming vocal performances. Which makes the quiet, sensitive song Nobody Home all the more valuable. Drawing on both his own feelings of rock-tour-alienation and what he witnessed of Syd Barrett’s mental break, Waters takes stock of all the meaningless stuff in Pink’s life and places them in vivid contrast to what’s missing. It’s a somber, but sweet piano ballad (that gets the strong urge to fly, down the stretch) that brings the rock opera back to a human scale. And it’s got a perfectly placed Gomer Pyle cameo.
Louder Ranking (47 out of 50 songs): Late in the Wall sessions, a fuming Waters penned this bruised piano ballad in a single evening, having risen to Gilmour’s challenge to write “something fantastic”. If the music was ripe with sorrow and solitude, the lyric was even more so, seemingly nodding to every rock star burn-out cliché in the book – and surely referencing the departed Barrett with its vision of a lost soul with “wild staring eyes” and “the obligatory Hendrix perm”.
WMGK Ranking (12 out of 40 songs): The last song written for The Wall, you could almost imagine a down-on-their-luck over-the-hill lounge singer crooning it. The singer has seen and done lots of great things, but he still can’t connect with the person who he loves. “Ooh, babe when I pick up the phone there's still nobody home.”
Billboard Ranking (44 out of 50 songs): A ballad of legitimate tenderness on The Wall‘s third side, essentially a more unhinged version of ELO’s Telephone Line, as the story’s rock star anti-hero goes stir crazy alone among his possessions and yearns over twinkling piano to dial up some kind of human connection. “I’ve got 13 channels of s–t on the TV to choose from,” Waters-as-Pink laments, reminding you just how long ago 1979 was.
We would have moved on to One Of My Turns . . . but that song is tied with our next entry, which I found one day, in a drawer of old photographs, hidden away.
Galileo
Footballguy
Won't have much impact, but this was 23rd on my list...
ETA Nevermind...only top rankers listed. My bad.
jabarony
Footballguy
Too bad there's no demos on this one. I really dig this song.
I don't know if this song needed a guitar solo, but that nice Clapton link makes you wonder what may have been if they had chosen to lengthen the song.
FatMax
Member
22 on mine. Great song
Pip's Invitation
Footballguy
I've only seen the Wall movie once, so I mainly think of Empty Spaces as the intro to Young Lust. The FM stations I listened to in the '80s often played them together. The original version has some nice tension to it but also some Waters screeching. I don't particularly miss it on the album.
Decent piano ballad with a nice melody and excellent lyrics. Only for a few seconds does Waters' voice go where I would prefer it not to. Would be better if it had a real ending.
Bottomfeeder Sports
Footballguy
Of all the songs you'll list in this thread, this is the one most likely to be triggered such that it gets stuck in my head for days.
By triggered, I mean having some kind of news (good or bad or maybe just a joke) that I really want to share via an old-style conversation with someone that just isn't available. And when that happens this just gets stuck in my head.
zamboni
Footballguy
And a lot of people like to be badass by raising their voices to the "I got thirteen channels of **** on the T.V. to choose from" line.
BroncoFreak_2K3
sucker for Orange
RW hits back:
youtu.be
Pink Floyd's Roger Waters EXPLOSIVE Interview Sets Record Straight
You’ve read the lies, now hear THE TRUTHJoin the Future of Journalism ► https://www.patreon.com/DoubleDownNewsSupport DDN ► https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/we...
youtu.be
Anarchy99
Footballguy
#34-T - When The Tigers Broke Free from Single (1982)
Appeared On: 7 ballots (out of 33 . . . 21.2%)
Total Points: 55 points (out of 825 possible points . . . 6.7%)
Top Rankers: @Ghoti @Joe Schmo @BrutalPenguin @Dan Lambskin @Rand al Thor
Highest Ranking: 9
Film Version, Film Version (Part 2), Echoes Extended Version
Live Performances:
RW: 2 (2015)
Covers: Year Of The Cobra, Wall Live Orchestra, Low Red Land, RanestRane, Kill Everyone, Alek Novak, GabFreakyPie, Fiction 8
WTTBF was written for The Wall album, but unlike other tracks, this one was excluded because the band didn't think it fit with the rest of the album (ie, it wasn't eliminated because there wasn't room for it). It was recorded for film instead and was originally called Anzio, 1944 and its working title was When the Tigers Break Through (and at one point When the Tygers Broke Free). It was released as a single that stated it was from the album The Final Cut . . . but it wasn't added to that album for 22 years in a subsequent re-release. The underlying theme of the song is one of the primary catalysts for the character Pink's descent into isolation and insanity throughout the story of The Wall, especially in the film version. The Tigers referred to in the song are German tanks. The single was released to promote the film, in which the song appears broken into two parts. The song hit the Top 40 in the UK.
Roger: “In fact, there was some stuff in The Wall that was too personal as well… which showed up in the movie. There’s a song in the movie called When The Tigers Broke Free which is about my father being killed, which had been on the original Wall demo. It was part of the piece originally but which made them uncomfortable because it tied it down to specifically “this record is about Roger Waters” rather than Pink, which was a worry, reasonably enough, I suppose."
When the Tigers Broke Free is a faithful retelling of the exact circumstances in which Eric Fletcher Waters, a teacher of physical and religious education and a new father, perished in defense of his country at the battle for the bridgehead of Anzio, Italy in the Second World War. In this song, Roger Waters sings about finding a letter that "His Majesty signed with his own rubber stamp." Waters says that he was trying on his father's uniform when he found a condolence letter from George VI, which was indeed signed with a rubber stamp. He found the replica signature particularly disturbing, since his dad gave up his life for the country. He would have preferred an actual signature, even if it was simply on behalf of the King.
On 18 February 2014, 70 years to the day after his father was killed at Anzio,[7] 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 WWII. However, as the German expansion grew, Waters' father felt compelled to join the armed forces. Waters: "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."
Vulture Ranking (out of 165 songs): 45
UCR Ranking (out of 167 songs): 24
Louder Ranking (out of 50 songs): NR
WMGK Ranking (out of 40 songs): NR
Ranker Ranking (out of 132 songs): 74
Billboard Ranking (out of 50 songs): NR
Vulture Ranking (45 out of 165 songs): This is a funereal, slow march, a forceful tribute to how Waters’s father lost his life in the war. Not a subtle endeavor, but I’m not going to criticize it. Originally done for The Wall; while it did not make the album, it was used as the opening scene in the film, and was even reprised. Probably for space reasons it wasn’t on The Final Cut either, but was included on a 20th-anniversary CD rerelease of it.
UCR Ranking (24 out of 167 songs): Rejected by Pink Floyd’s members for inclusion on The Wall, allegedly because it was too personal, Waters’ solemn remembrance of his father’s death instead landed in the film version and, decades later, was inserted into re-releases of The Final Cut. This gradually crescendo-ing, starkly orchestral song succeeds precisely because it is personal. Roger recounts the tragic end of the Royal Fusiliers Company Z during World War II and, in so doing, makes the cost of war achingly human. His yelping voice may never have been put to better use that the tune’s closing verse, which boils over with anger as Waters declares, “And that’s how the high command took my daddy from me.”
I'm learning that all in all, it was all just bricks in the wall, as we head back to The Wall for our 6th song in a row from that project (and we are not even close to being done with that album).
Appeared On: 7 ballots (out of 33 . . . 21.2%)
Total Points: 55 points (out of 825 possible points . . . 6.7%)
Top Rankers: @Ghoti @Joe Schmo @BrutalPenguin @Dan Lambskin @Rand al Thor
Highest Ranking: 9
Film Version, Film Version (Part 2), Echoes Extended Version
Live Performances:
RW: 2 (2015)
Covers: Year Of The Cobra, Wall Live Orchestra, Low Red Land, RanestRane, Kill Everyone, Alek Novak, GabFreakyPie, Fiction 8
WTTBF was written for The Wall album, but unlike other tracks, this one was excluded because the band didn't think it fit with the rest of the album (ie, it wasn't eliminated because there wasn't room for it). It was recorded for film instead and was originally called Anzio, 1944 and its working title was When the Tigers Break Through (and at one point When the Tygers Broke Free). It was released as a single that stated it was from the album The Final Cut . . . but it wasn't added to that album for 22 years in a subsequent re-release. The underlying theme of the song is one of the primary catalysts for the character Pink's descent into isolation and insanity throughout the story of The Wall, especially in the film version. The Tigers referred to in the song are German tanks. The single was released to promote the film, in which the song appears broken into two parts. The song hit the Top 40 in the UK.
Roger: “In fact, there was some stuff in The Wall that was too personal as well… which showed up in the movie. There’s a song in the movie called When The Tigers Broke Free which is about my father being killed, which had been on the original Wall demo. It was part of the piece originally but which made them uncomfortable because it tied it down to specifically “this record is about Roger Waters” rather than Pink, which was a worry, reasonably enough, I suppose."
When the Tigers Broke Free is a faithful retelling of the exact circumstances in which Eric Fletcher Waters, a teacher of physical and religious education and a new father, perished in defense of his country at the battle for the bridgehead of Anzio, Italy in the Second World War. In this song, Roger Waters sings about finding a letter that "His Majesty signed with his own rubber stamp." Waters says that he was trying on his father's uniform when he found a condolence letter from George VI, which was indeed signed with a rubber stamp. He found the replica signature particularly disturbing, since his dad gave up his life for the country. He would have preferred an actual signature, even if it was simply on behalf of the King.
On 18 February 2014, 70 years to the day after his father was killed at Anzio,[7] 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 WWII. However, as the German expansion grew, Waters' father felt compelled to join the armed forces. Waters: "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."
Vulture Ranking (out of 165 songs): 45
UCR Ranking (out of 167 songs): 24
Louder Ranking (out of 50 songs): NR
WMGK Ranking (out of 40 songs): NR
Ranker Ranking (out of 132 songs): 74
Billboard Ranking (out of 50 songs): NR
Vulture Ranking (45 out of 165 songs): This is a funereal, slow march, a forceful tribute to how Waters’s father lost his life in the war. Not a subtle endeavor, but I’m not going to criticize it. Originally done for The Wall; while it did not make the album, it was used as the opening scene in the film, and was even reprised. Probably for space reasons it wasn’t on The Final Cut either, but was included on a 20th-anniversary CD rerelease of it.
UCR Ranking (24 out of 167 songs): Rejected by Pink Floyd’s members for inclusion on The Wall, allegedly because it was too personal, Waters’ solemn remembrance of his father’s death instead landed in the film version and, decades later, was inserted into re-releases of The Final Cut. This gradually crescendo-ing, starkly orchestral song succeeds precisely because it is personal. Roger recounts the tragic end of the Royal Fusiliers Company Z during World War II and, in so doing, makes the cost of war achingly human. His yelping voice may never have been put to better use that the tune’s closing verse, which boils over with anger as Waters declares, “And that’s how the high command took my daddy from me.”
I'm learning that all in all, it was all just bricks in the wall, as we head back to The Wall for our 6th song in a row from that project (and we are not even close to being done with that album).
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