PINK FLOYD – “Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2)”
The 1970s ends with one of its most explicitly anti-establishment hits – Roger Waters’ direct frontal attack on the school system. Education is thought control, the flower of youthful creativity ruthlessly crushed by frustrated men grinding kids through their sausage machine. If we don’t watch out this will end up in a fascist state where we’re all ruled by robot hammers. Grinding conformity is represented by the dark pulse of a disco bassline, which wells into the unfettered individuality of a big old Dave Gilmour guitar solo – hurrah!
“Another Brick” may be as subtle as one, but the massed choir of kids singing “We don’t need no thought control” has a creepy power, with the music’s ponderousness actually helping the song build its sour, thick atmosphere, guitars skritching uneasily around the lumbering bottom end. I have an apostate’s dislike of 70s-onwards Pink Floyd – for six months or so at 14 I thought they were profound and hugely important, on one occasion shunning a party in order to listen carefully through The Wall and extract still deeper meanings from it. My distaste for them ever since has been amplified by embarrassment – though I do honestly think they’re rubbish, Waters’ immense bitterness and misanthropy colouring and curdling their work beyond my ability to enjoy it.
But this is a rare and partial exception – Waters’ championing of the individual may not have extended to the contributions of his bandmates, but thanks to them (and the kids) “Another Brick” does a job. The one it set out to do? I don’t know – when you mix individualism and misanthropy you can easily end up with nihilism, and there’s a cackling viciousness to the kids’ voices to remind us that life without teacher might end up scarier than Waters imagines.
5
DJP – Can I use my dying breath to add to the chorus requesting that you don’t fuck off? Popular can’t be doing with losing two of its most fervent protagonists at the same time. At least my departure has been well minuted in advance.
Also I know you’re just TWITCHING to let us all have your thoughts on Floyd, even though it may take a peerage to bring you back into Cabinet.
Awwww, c’mon, Marcello! Be a pal!
HIC!
I love this song, it is so dark and brooding. The rest of The Wall is SHITE, though.
On Pink Floyd generally, The Wall album is rubbish (as noted above), as is everything that followed it, I’ve never heard Animals, am kind of indifferent to Dark Side of the Moon (it could do without the “Woahhhhh Bodyform!”* vocals), but I like all of the rest that I’ve heard. The early stuff is great, but Wish You Were Here is great too.
For more incisive analysis of this sort you know where to go.
*does this reference still have purchase with today’s young people?
Re #23. I was trying to say that I find ‘Another Brick In The Wall’ as a single the type of thing which humourless people think of as being playful, rather than Gilmour’s toothgrindingly dreary and leaden solo on it. I think that there’s an element of novelty to the success of this song in that there aren’t a lot of other Pink Floyd songs which you can compare it too, but that people who really respond to this single are the sort of pop consumers who would generally shun and decry any single that evoked novelty.
(I generally respond best to the keyboards on post-Syd Pink Floyd – the one thing which I really like is ‘On The Run’ but the combination of Gilmour and Waters makes me want to listen to something else instead – especially on anything after Wish You Were Here)
ABITW followed me around for a while. In a mad example of trendy teacherdom, it was chosen as my house’s entry in a lower schools choir competition in 1985! Such was the ire that this decision aroused that their equipment was sabotaged and they finished a resounding last in the contest. And then in 1991, I saw a childrens’ theatre group from Tashkent incorporate it into a performance at a festival of Youth Theatre in the Ukraine… The inclusion of something so familiar was incongrous.
I think of the Syd era as a different group, but have always been fond of the More soundtrack which no one has mentioned yet. After all the recent eulogies to Rick Wright I thought I better check the credits on my favourite songs – they’re all written, on his own, by arch-grouch Waters. Green Is The Colour and Cymbaline in particular are perfect English pastorals, the last glow of summer sunsets; woodwind, Peanuts-esque jazz piano and drunken organ are combined with the lightest of touches. “Apprehension creeping like a tube train up your spine” is one of my favourite lines from anyone, too.
Ten years on, the lightness is entirely gone. I’ve always taken this at face value as a piece of base doggerel, I’d be intrigued to know exactly how many posters think its ironic. I’d guess the dead-disco production and bluntness of the lyric are ironic in as much as Waters wanted to prove they could have a hit single any time they wanted to (wasn’t this their first UK single of the 70s?). By sticking out something so trite and reaching number one, ABITW must have really backed up his misanthropic worldview.
Rosie may have the stats on this, but I believe Islington Green is/was the sink school of sink schools, bottom of the national league tables. A few years back I had to walk past it every day and there were always fresh flowers outside for a kid who’d been killed in a fight at the school gates. I’d guess Pink Floyd only chose it because it was the nearest comprehensive to Britannia Row studios, but it does make the song seem nastily prophetic.
Re 23: songs that show a “fear and contempt for sex”? Gosh, that would explain Waters’ ill humour. I think I’ll stick with his bucolic period.
Ringing out the old decade at number one internationally were a bunch of more genial songs. America, rather aptly, had Rupert Holmes’ Escape (which everybody was desperate to do, as I recall). In Germany it was Maybe by Thom Pace, a 72/73-sounding folksy piece that was the the theme from The Life And Times Of Grizzly Adams. Holland went with Earth & Fire’s Weekend, Norway belatedly put We Don’t Talk Anymore at the top which I’d say is a fine bridge to the new decade.
ppl here have (rightly) forgotten the Eric Prydz re-mix/re-imagining (?) of the Wall (last year? year before that?)
there is a lot of irony in this but i don’t think it’s in the execution, any imagined sarcastic appropriation/villifying of disco, or about proving they could have a hit single any time they wanted. the bluntness/idiocy of the lyrics suit the character/story of the wall at this point and are clearly deliberate. I don’t think anyone would imagine that RW actually believes education is bad (do they?), and putting the defiant and vernacular double-negative in the mouths of children is simple (brilliant) pop-hook sloganeering.
as a bright 10 yr old i didn’t understand the sentiment (to be honest, i was never a sulky teenager or misunderstood student either. ah well.) but i liked this song a lot. the video was confusing but mesmerising. Later in life i would play the album a lot too. It’s still very effective in places, even though the chainsaw subtlety of the story is irritating, the imagery used is well martialed. It reminds me of Watchmen in its formal over-cleverness. I’ve consciously tried to like other Floyd, but very little of it got through, and i really disliked the stuff that came out post Wall.
One more thing: MOTHERFUCKER! I well recall going to a Carter USM gig (yeah yeah) when I was (briefly) a teacher (yeah yeah). I had been spotted by some of my pupils, and so before the (boo) encores i pissed off to the back of the crowd to hear their cover of BITW. (Nom nom, Ruby Trax.) it’s a bit shit to be honest (surprised?), but the added MOTHERFUCKER shout in a crowd singalong is apt in that it’s the same frustrated and pointless idiotic defiance of a child going ‘i am saying a swear very loudly!’
I couldn’t remember if the Prydz version got to #1 or not Alang! (Only no.2, nearly two years ago now) It ditched the guitar solo obv, but it was missing half the hook for some reason and so never really lifted off into the bosh stratosphere. Kudos to Prydz for actually getting Floyd to agree to the sample though – apparently it was nearly as stone-blood-wringing as when Madge rang up ABBA that time.
Re 31: Hmmm. But if you extract the opening line of the verse, every other line is typical Roger Waters territory. And he roars “Hey, teacher!” intensely because, whether you like Floyd or not, he’s passionate about his strange beliefs.
So maybe “we don’t need no education” is a gag; the thought police stuff isn’t ironic.
i’d give that as likely enough.
there was another ‘noes! educator peril’ song released the previous year, that was well known in our house. harry chapin’s “flowers are red”. oh yes
A few random unconnected thoughts on ABITWP2-
1-its something of a tragedy that The Pink Floyd’s 2 biggest selling and most iconic albums – “The Wall” and “Dark Side” are also, IMO their two worst LPs released by the Waters/Wright/Gilmour/Mason line-up(ok apart from Ummagumma, perhaps). Overblown and self-important, with little or none of the humour, imagination or spirit of adventure of their best work, its no suprise so many people hate them if they think these albums are a sound represenation of the Floyd at their best..
2-Does anyone hav any background info on why the group broke their long-held “no singles” rule for ABITWP2- its certainly a commercial track but no more than previous tracks like “Money”, “Crazy Diamond” etc which if released on 45(albiet in edited form!) would have surely enjoyed similar chart success- what was it about ABITWP2 that caused them to overturn their “singles are for kids” ruling- its as if Zeppelin had released “All My Love” on 7′ the same year..
3- Perhaps the whole “No education” standpoint is meant to be simply that of the character of Pink, the narrator of the “Wall” album rather than specifically that of Waters himself?(Doesnt make it sound any less trite or childish though, particullarly when taken out of context as a standalone single..)
4 Although i know it’ll hold absolutely no sway with him whatsoever i’d just like to say to Marcello i hope u reconsider and come back soon- the Pink Floyd are a hugely important band to me too but given Tom’s usual tastes i’d have been more shocked if he’d came out as a big fan of their work! As such i’d love to read an equally erudite writer such as yourself putting forward the opposing “pro” argument on the Floyds work (and while i’m at it i’ll just add i hope Waldo hangs around a while longer too…)
I was a fairly obsessive Floyd fan up the age of 16 (I have their autographs, from the 74 tour Mike refers to above, though somehow missed shy Rick Wright) but lost interest around WYWH. Good title song, nice to see Roy Harper get a cameo but the whole album was based around a song already played to death on bootleg and the subject was far more interesting than the song. At the time, I saw this as a novelty hit but I still bought it cheap when it left the charts and, while training to be a teacher, twenty odd years ago, naively played it to a bunch of 13 year olds. Chaos, needless to say, ensued. ‘Comfortably Numb’ is, presumably, the last great Floyd song, and I first heard their version at Live8 too. Now, anybody for a thread about the overlooked greatness of ‘Atom Heart Mother’ and Ron Geesin’s influence on the Floyd?
Just a quick note to say that the first number one of the 80s might not be up for a day or two – I have a big backlog of other writing to sort out – but I will get the 79 poll up tomorrow so there’ll be something to look at.
Just to share something with y’all… a few years later I had a friend who had spent some time at the peace camp at Greenham Common, and she told me the wimmin there had their own take on ABITW:
“I ain’t got no education…
I ain’t got no thought control…
US Air Force Base Commander…
Is my one important role…
HEY! BRITAIN! Leave the Cruise alone!”
(I might have imagined that last line or been inspired by the Barron Knights’ version, but the rest is kosher.)
“Christmas Turkey – You can stuff it!”
Maybe the last of the Barron Knights’ contemporaneous ones?
The last Barron Knights single I can remember: “Buffalo Bill’s Last Scratch”, which grafted Keith Harris & Orville onto Malcolm McLaren & the World’s Famous Supreme Team…
.. which neither of whom got to number one, so won’t trouble Popular folk.
ok, let’s go off on a tangent..
I remember penning a “Smith’s version of Orville’s song” which went something like….
(Imagine Heaven knows I’m backing…)
I wish I could fly right up to the sky but I can’t
I ought to pretend my sadness will end but I shant..
(chorus a bit like William it was..)
Orrrrville, nothing you do or say
could change the way
I feel about you..
Orrrville, who is your very best Friennnnnn
nn-oooooh-wooooooh-wooooohhhhhhhh
(sudden clang of an end chord a’la William, again)
nnnnd!
Hmm.. top tune pop pickers?
NEW DJ PUNCTUM POPULAR POSTING POLICY
It has taken a LOT of persuading for me to continue posting here after the unpleasant, stressful Friday that I experienced on this board.
To be precise I am only resuming posting here because my wife Lena has asked me to do so. She is 100% of the reason why I am doing so and as far as I’m concerned I’m writing things for her to read rather than anybody else.
I have not read any of the subsequent comments since my last post, nor do I wish to do so, since it would be a source of major stress to have to dig out the few nuggets of high-level debate and comment from within the undoubted morass of pseudo-lectures and unearned finger wagging on the part of the dysfunctional people who have made both reading and contributing to Popular barely tolerable.
Instead my contributions to Popular will in future be confined to direct commentary on the record/artist under examination. I will not engage in any exchanges with any other posters except for those likely to yield the high level of debate which is the reason why I came here in the first place. Nitpicking gliberal inadequates, “friends” who occupy a supposed high moral ground or pointless topic diverters will howl into a void. Genuine information, ideas and insights will happily be exchanged. Agenda-free oneupmanship point scoring will not.
Without further ado, then, here is what I have to say on “Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2).”
The first impression on looking through these number ones of the 1970s would be that they left no impression, unlike the salad days of the sixties about which we’re repeatedly told; but then look again upon those ‘67-‘69 number ones and, if you didn’t know substantially better, you’d shrug your shoulders ruefully and question any or all of the fuss. I began the seventies as a reasonably enthusiastic primary school toddler who couldn’t stop going on about his holiday in France and Italy the previous summer, and ended it as a deeply worried fifteen-year-old, rejected in love, with the imminent prospect of all the support systems I had hitherto taken for granted – parents, school, friends – disappearing or taken away, and that I could no longer crib my way through life and would have to make my own sense of it; by then it had already long been clear that my notion of “sense” was radically divorced from anyone else’s, but since this was ascribed to the Child Prodigy free pass, no deeper delving was encouraged.
So maybe it’s appropriate that, where the sixties ended with a tale of childhood bonding which proved permanent and inviolable, even by the ravages of war and fatal reflection, the seventies should end with a clap of black thunder over the factory warren of schools. But that is only part of the story; for the second impression on scanning these dozen or so years of chart-topping singles is one of a black hole of absence. Were we really supposed to believe that culture was shaped by an unruly and unstable procession of unfunny novelty singles, hapless television talent show contestants and keep-the-Woolworths-peace harmless MoR trinkets, that it could so easily and dramatically be punctumised by the transient explosions of glam, soul, disco and punk?
Did anyone see Frank Cottrell Boyce’s God On Trial drama on BBC2 recently? If you did not, I urge you to seek it out on iPlayer (if the BBC have been wise enough to archive it online). Not that I wish to compare Roger Waters’ schooldays with a heated debate on the part of Auschwitz inmates as to whether or not God had abandoned the Jewish people and broken his troth with them, in the face of the death camps, since that is a comparison which perhaps only Waters would risk making, even if his own source of pain – the death of his father in WWII – is another, if substantially lesser, side of the same immense coin.
You notice Antony Sher immediately, of course; he wouldn’t be there were it to be presumed that he was not to be noticed. You see him firstly as a Rabbi, fervently and largely silently praying, as head of a new intake of inmates. For the first 70 minutes of the 90 minutes of this drama, he is silent. You see him being taken to the camp barber and having his hair and beard roughly shorn; and then in camp uniform, cropped and cut, glaring intently and somewhat suspiciously at the debate as it proceeds. He says nothing, but we cannot say that he is not there. And sure enough, the last ten minutes are set aside for his final, crowning outburst, a magnificent and shattering setpiece of hurting damnation. It is as if the whole of the preceding seventy minutes had been mere preparation for his summary.
On a clearly lesser level, Sher’s performance is comparable to the impact that Pink Floyd having the last number one of the seventies had, the most dramatic and least expected of all chart comebacks, and a far more shocking one than Rolf Harris’. Only Zeppelin really rival the Floyd for the title of seventies singles chart white elephant; their absence was deliberate, perhaps even a huge reprimand to the singles chart for (in some eyes) running out of ambition and scope. The money was to be made in albums and tours; singles weren’t really necessary, commercially or otherwise, at least not in Britain – perhaps the Floyd took one look at the 1973 of Judge Dread and Millican and Nesbitt and concluded that there was no place for them there at all. Or you were like the Who or Yes or ELP, who occasionally tossed out singles, though these were palpably of low priority – did anyone salivate in anticipation of the release of “Squeeze Box” or “Wondrous Stories”?
But then the Floyd weren’t really thinking in terms of pop, that aspect having been mostly sidetracked following the exit of Syd. Apart from a quickly-withdrawn, wonderful third single, Barrett’s “Apples And Oranges,” “Another Brick In The Wall” was the first Pink Floyd single release in Britain since “See Emily Play.” They must have known the reproach which their absence from the Top 40 represented; by the end of 1979, Dark Side Of The Moon was well into its sixth year of life on both the British and American album charts. And where stood Pink Floyd if they could not be big? A work like Dark Side could only be viable as an extended Grand Gesture – three years after punk was supposed to have wiped them out, even if many, including myself, could argue that they anticipated and practically invented much of what was great about punk and especially post-punk – there they stood, imperturbable; but then, is that last adjective applicable to the blackened thrashing of 1977’s Animals, a record as punk rock in attitude and application as anything else from that year, or The Wall, a huge, never-grander gesture of a double album where, following on from the hushed homilies of Dark Side, we see Roger Waters detonating the same moods of dislocation, dissatisfaction at the Modern World, and deliberate encasing of souls from the mass of humanity, in ways which were meant to enrage rather than soothe.
I have to state at this juncture that as far as I am concerned Pink Floyd have a permanent NO CRITICAL TRESPASSING sign fixed on their gate; those of us who grew up on Soft Machine and Roy Harper and Carla Bley, who know the history, who know the marvels which Dark Side Of The Moon in particular enabled, what it summed up and what it promised, can never turn against it, much as the band’s post-1983 work causes incrementally increasing sighs of impatience.
Some had problems working out how The Wall fit into 1979, disregarding Thatcher’s victory. Had not Gary Numan and Joy Division begun to express alienation (“Me, I Disconnect From You,” “She’s Lost Control”) in a far more succinct and expressionist way than Waters was managing? But I bought the album, loved it, memorised it, saw the stage show at Earl’s Court the following summer, despite the Mod Revival and 2-Tone and post-punk in general – and when you’re sixteen and you feel out of step with practically the whole of the rest of the world, the notion of a group, an artist, progressively screening themselves away from their audience seemed attractive and hugely understandable. The gasp and the subsequent long silence after Waters inserted the last brick, upon singing “Goodbye Cruel World” – I was there on the second night – are things I have yet to dismiss from my mind.
Now of course I see all the joins, but I still haven’t got rid of and will never get rid of The Wall, with its antiquated rants against The System – but there’s the question of why such rants should be considered “antiquated.” And also the far greater questions of: why was “Another Brick In The Wall Part 2″ released as a single, complete with Gerald Scarfe-directed video (since child labour laws prevented the Islington Green School Children’s Choir from appearing on TOTP, which was recorded in the evening) and how it managed to become not only 1979’s Christmas number one, but also the last number one of the decade?
Perhaps EMI may have insisted on some minimal promotion; after all, Animals had sold comparatively indifferently. But it was undoubtedly a stunning gesture for the last number one of that decade – effectively, the last word – to come so thunderously from such a major group who had made such a point of saying next to nothing in that context since 1967. To hear the dolorous, doomladen baritone of Waters sinisterly intoning “We don’t need no education” – spot the steamroller irony – was a genuine shock; it sounded like a bolt of damnation from the gods; no rueful Rolf shaking his head here. And then there’s the children’s choir with its unveiled threats of “Hey, teacher, leave us kids alone!” – the most startling use of a children’s choir in rock since Reed’s “The Kids.” In the video they are shot in half-light, in a darkened enclosure; they appear feral.
And yet…and yet and yet it is POP, it is history – I’ll leave it to Lena to join some important dots there – and it is direly danceable; Bob Ezrin had “Stayin’ Alive” in mind when he mixed the track for 45 release (and those scratching their heads looking for a connection have forgotten about Odessa). Eventually, the song gives way to perhaps the least ironic guitar solo on any pop record – and there are reasons why Gilmour’s solo has to be there, see above – and, on the album version, the song leads directly into the Scots-accented Waters we hadn’t heard since Ummagumma (or Music From The Body if you knew your Ron Geesin) hysterically screaming at his intake “How can you have any pudding if ye don’t eat yir MEAT?” But then, think of the heavily underscored subtext which ploughs through everything from Dark Side onwards, up to and undoubtedly including The Wall; at the end it all comes back to Syd, Syd, Syd, the Syd who by the end of 1979 had already long since retreated to Cambridge and the basement of his mother’s house, the Syd who could have wreaked his own revolution in the ‘70s had he been so inclined – and then, finally, we think of Alan Parker’s film of The Wall, with a mute Geldof playing Waters playing Barrett, staring blankly at the television screen – do electric friends talk anymore? – and perhaps we can then understand, not only why “I Don’t Like Mondays” is so bombastic and jejeune an essay in comparison with “Another Brick,” but also why the real Geldof reacted differently to what he saw on his TV screen a couple of years later, and therefore the necessarily more pragmatic approach and response which the eighties would be largely compelled to adopt…wherever that left the music. Or I could leave it with the infinitely happier postscript that the song subsequently became an unlikely anthem for the freedom fighters of South Africa. Yes, let’s leave it like that.
Booo…..
booing your own lyrics mark? not a good sign!
You want a good sign? Hmmf: (looks on googleimgs…)
“It has taken a LOT of persuading for me to continue posting here after the unpleasant, stressful Friday that I experienced on this board.
To be precise I am only resuming posting here because my wife Lena has asked me to do so. She is 100% of the reason why I am doing so and as far as I’m concerned I’m writing things for her to read rather than anybody else.
I have not read any of the subsequent comments since my last post, nor do I wish to do so, since it would be a source of major stress to have to dig out the few nuggets of high-level debate and comment from within the undoubted morass of pseudo-lectures and unearned finger wagging on the part of the dysfunctional people who have made both reading and contributing to Popular barely tolerable.
Instead my contributions to Popular will in future be confined to direct commentary on the record/artist under examination. I will not engage in any exchanges with any other posters except for those likely to yield the high level of debate which is the reason why I came here in the first place. Nitpicking gliberal inadequates, “friends” who occupy a supposed high moral ground or pointless topic diverters will howl into a void. Genuine information, ideas and insights will happily be exchanged. Agenda-free oneupmanship point scoring will not.”
Sorry Marcello, it’s not up to you any more. As far as I’m concerned this hysterical grandstanding marks the end of your comments on my blog. I’ve let you derail threads with your tantrums often enough, to the point where you’re making my doing this less fun. When that happens it’s time to call a halt. I’ve had enough of you, you’ve clearly had enough of the community, time to part ways.
I can’t ban you without us re-shaping the whole comments infrastructure and making it harder for everyone to post. But replies to this, and future posts from you, will be deleted.
(In fact, I’m closing this comments thread for a while. Other posters wanting to discuss this should email me.)
(Thread now re-opened! Sorry, meant to do this when I put BiP up but I kept forgetting)
Apart from a quickly-withdrawn, wonderful third single, Barrett’s “Apples And Oranges,” “Another Brick In The Wall” was the first Pink Floyd single release in Britain since “See Emily Play.”
Well, there was “Point me at the sky”, the only post syd single before “ABITW”, it got nowhere, and all those big important bands whos messages were far too important to have to compete against ooh, Showaddywaddy, or the Bay City Rollers, or all that, opted to go for No Singles, No daytime airplay, and isolationism.
Led Zeppelin had a no singles policy because Peter Grant reasoned people would happily fork out for the whole album to hear Whole Lotta Love and Stairway To Heaven. Gotta have money in the bank, Frank!
At least Free, Jethro Tull, and Genesis countered this trend, which made K-Tel/Ronco/Arcade comps all the more fun.
Outside the UK, though, the heavy worthies had singles released (Floyd’s Money, countless Zep), presumably against their will.
yes also released singles now and then — “going for the one”, the clue is in the name!
mike oldfield made a special point of writing songs precisely for singles release, that weren’t gathered on LP till much later
i think this claim has become a but of an-overgeneralised anti-prog calumny actually: a lot of prog ideology , so-called, is really actually just the inadvertent photonegative of the positions being taken by the younger-sibling movement jostling for prog’s position of “seriousness in rock” (punks said and did this because prog “didn’t” — but there was never a “prog partyline”)
(indeed you could probably still start arguments on eg ilx by claiming that PF or zep ARE prog!)
The new Record Collector has a nicely timed Floyd singles feature. Give Birth To A Smile from The Body was a 45 in the Phillipines. Never heard it, but I’m guessing it didn’t press the same radio-friendly buttons as ABITW. Or even Apples And Oranges.
I once heard, but have no confirmation, that there was no album pressing plant in the Phillipines so some verrry odd singles got released.
As for Prog albums/singles debate, it was an album genre whereas Punk was def a singles genre. No? I’ve got a “45″ of Roundabout by Yes which plays at 33 and can only be heard if it’s cranked up to 11 – doesn’t work.
Led Zeppelin are the only Underground (is that a catch-all that includes Prog?) group who can be confirmed as not releasing singles for ideological (ie money making, mystique building) reasons. Unless anyone knows different?
an admittedly quick skim thru the progrography reveals that the Usual Suspects — inc. zep!! — all released singles from time to time (Crimson probbly with the least alacrity)…
… EXCEPT GONG!
Well, “Opium For The People” was a single, so that sort-of counts. There was also “Ooby Scooby Doomsday”, which was recorded for single release (with the express aim of having a Top 40 hit… AS IF) but never issued.
there’s an interesting article by a sometime contributer about tha floyd here:
http://thequietus.com/articles/01084-careful-with-that-axe-pink-floyd-reappraised
..he does’nt think much about the wall mind you..
Golly. What a thread.
What can I add? Bob Ezrin was brought in to stop Waters and Gilmour killing each other, or at the very least to mediate and help the less-musically articulate bass player realise his vision. Every interview with Roger Waters I’ve ever read has given the impression that he knows nothing whatsoever about other popular music and isn’t particularly interested – he likes words, he likes ideas and concepts, he likes making an impression. Gilmour has proved subsequently that he has a weakness for the technology and overproduction. Bob Ezrin thus got his leeway, and amongst other things took the fairly rudimentary ‘Wall’ theme and suggested one of the versions of it on the album (there are three, plus other snatches of the theme) is played to a straight disco beat. The childrens’ choir didn’t come from the band – it was recorded and played to them later, spliced in as the second verse. The double album was cocking expensive, so the promotion of a single would help with this.
So no great design. Nothing worth great analysis; no hidden agenda. A great pop song, like many of the others featured in this series.
The guitar solo, for me, is fantastic. It’s beautifully played and has this incredibly light touch. And what makes it is the chords underneath, anchored by that bass that doesn’t move an inch.
I guess I’ve always thought ‘The Wall’ is the Pink Floyd album for people who don’t like Pink Floyd. Certainly I thought and still think that about Comfortably Numb (a song I still quite like) – now THAT’S a teeth-clenching solo. Dark Side of the Moon is a fantastic record, although it’s not fashionable at the moment. Whether people like them or not, they’ve always been a terrifically interesting band.
Ironic that this was the number one going into the 80s the decade when public school lefties such as Waters (the Tony Benn of rock music) were to become deeply unfashionable and disliked.
looki agree whit you abut the it is an attack to the studing sistemBUT IS TRUE THE SISTEM NEEDS TO CHANGE BECAUSE IN THAT TIME THE TEACHERS AND THEY KEEP BEEN SO RUDE WHIT THE KIDS so you need to understand that fucker and to the closed minds like you can take wrong the message of the music ok
fuck you
This is what happens when the teachers leave them kids alone :(
Speaking as a fan of Pink Floyd, I felt I had to comment. I was 13 when this reached the top of the charts. I couldn’t have been happier to see my favourite group at the top. However, this particular track off The Wall was the weakest track. Yes, it had resonance with school-age kids like myself, although it failed to knock School’s Out off it’s school disco perch for it’s morose dead disco feel. Imagine dancing to Staying Alive (constantly popular at our school disco nights) then hearing Mason’s flat beat cut in followed by Roger Waters vocal. Way to kill the mood Mr DJ! This was when I realised why my Beloved Floyd were an album band. This was bedroom disco then, laying on my bed, tapping my foot against my headboard, secretly raging against the injustices of my school day. I wanted to love this single, but even in my bedroom, this felt like going through the motions. I was infinitely more satisfied with the album as a whole and even then much more inclined to spin Wish You Were Here or Dark Side Of The Moon and escape to that place inside my head where nothing at all mattered. If anything, I longed for a fearsome teacher at my school that resembled that eye-popping hammerhead from the video. None of my teachers inspired anything more than disdain. Would my school experience be different if any of my teachers yelled “YOU…YES YOU!! STAND STILL LADDIE!!!” in my direction?
After giving this track another listen, I feel this represents the beginning of Pink Floyd’s downhill journey. The following albums lacked the magnitude of their pe-Wall output (Ummagumma aside). I prefer a period from the mid-sixties to the mid-seventies, where their creative force was all pervading. A new release from Pink Floyd was an event in my house, as both my parents were fans as well. I know you’re supposed to rebel against your parents’ taste in music, but that moment would come much, much later. ABITWP2 was accepted for what it was, a part of The Last Great Concept Album of The Seventies. And so it remains.
Good comment -I was 14 when this came out and although I bought “The Wall” at the time have gradually realised that for me “Wish You Were Here” was the last classic and I haven’t really liked anything I’ve heard by them since (to be honest I havent heard much stuff after “The Wall”). And I find “Animals” so execrable that it marks a nice neat dividing line between the peereless stuff from 1967-75 and the rest.
PS I even like “Ummagumma” even the live stuff and I don’t usually like live albums at all.
For fans of the band or the album, here’s a live performance from 1980 – including some songs left off the album.
http://www.bigozine2.com/archive/ARrarities08/ARpfnassau.html
I’ve become quite taken with ‘Comfortably Numb’ – particularly the live version with Bowie at the Albert Hall (which, with it’s awesome guitar solos juxtaposed with images of middle-aged geezers (like myself) striking poses, I find quite affecting). I keep meaning to listen to the album as in an age where much pop seems focus-grouped to death it seems like a refreshing contrast to hear something that is characterised by ‘immense bitterness and misanthropy’.
@ 58 pink floyd lover
So the system needs to change because, apparently according to your all-but-indecipherable rant, the teachers were rude to you. I’ll grant you, the ‘system’ isn’t perfect but it cannot be blamed for the failure of hypocritical, entitled illiterates like you.
Pink Floyd fans (and others) may want to follow this track-by-track journey through their history:
http://yeeshkul.tumblr.com/
Somehow the combination of war memorial and educational protest seems entirely appropriate:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/dec/12/charlie-gilmour-arrest-student-protests
This was a big record for 9 year old me, but I usually only experienced it as part of The Wall (er, like a brick?) which is my favourite Floyd album probably because I inhaled it so completely at that impressionable age throughout 1980, (ironically it was these rusty dinosaurs who primed me for my fave punk acts which I would soon discover) – can’t say I’ve played the 7” much over the years though it is the only way to hear the opening pre-vocal intro section.
In fact the instrumental intro and outro are by far more enjoyable than what lies between, the shouty children’s chorus being somewhat unwelcome. Still, it’s the only number one that’s a part of a trilogy of the same song, (isn’t it?) and I saw the singer in Scissor Sisters speaking of its influence on TV once and he gave it its full title i.e. ABITW PART TWO (displaying a level of retentiveness to which I could relate but never consider.)
ABITW is also an early example of the hit single represented/recalled by the non-performance, artist-free music video (unlike, say, Buggles, funnily enough). This is not necessarily a good thing.
There was a backlash of sorts I remember re: the lyrics, when Madness released Baggy Trousers they were on an anti-ABITW buzz in some interviews (Smash Hits?) a la teachers and kids all in the same boat..etc.
I’d give it a seven for guitar solo and (non) groove.