It seems slightly ironic that at a time when the Falklands debate rages once more between the U.K. and Argentinian Governments, an album that uses the conflict between the two countries as a focus for an anti-war message should be celebrating its 30th anniversary. It is almost with bitterness and a shaking of heads that Pink Floyd’s 1983 album The Final Cut should still resonate across the many thousands of miles between Buenos Aires and London. Even after the Falkland Islanders have had the unprecedented and historic vote in the last few weeks on where they see their future, the echoes of a conflict that was born in the spring of 1982 but had its genesis over a period of a couple of hundred years, still rages and the thoughts of the people caught between two ideologically opposed governments might in the end not matter.
For what should be seen as arguably a critical Roger Waters solo album, The Final Cut may have been the ultimate finish to the finest Progressive Rock band from the U.K., within the next couple of years the name Pink Floyd was to bandied about as piece of territory, a musical land grab fought over, not with guns and ammunition, instead the harsh world of lawyers and fallouts between former friends. Of Course Pink Floyd would continue in a slightly different form but the major lyric writer of the previous decade would be gone.
The themes of the album sit comfortably with the group’s previous offering, the exceptional The Wall, the monster that still keeps giving…and taking with equal measure. It sits so well that in theory it is almost the postscript to The Wall, a Wall part two. There are still the thoughts of alienation, a collective madness that weaves its way through the previous decade but this concept album also took the images of war, especially that of the Second World War in which Roger Waters lost his father, to a new height. If The Wall was the burned out rock star destroying himself with guilt and loss, then The Final Cut could be seen as the musician, Pink, seeking answers but only finding that the war he thought he left behind in 1945 still haunts him as he witnesses the U.K. and Argentina fighting over land.
The album opens with the sound of a radio being retuned as the person in the car switches through news items relating to the cold war nuclear threat, new power stations and the replacement ship for the Atlantic Conveyor that had been lost during the conflict. The driver of the car lingers on this news for a moment longer than the rest of the news items he has zipped through and the listener realises that it is with resigned reluctance that he goes through the dials once more as he learns the replacement will be built in Japan, a motif the lyrics hark back to later in the album on the song Not Now John when Roger talks of other countries the British have to compete with in industry, an ill-informed attack by the man on the street on world economics.
The Final Cut has had mixed reviews since its release but with 30 years of hindsight to go on, whilst it may not be amongst the top five albums that the band recorded, it certainly doesn’t deserve the derision that has been aimed at it. Whilst it deserves to be thought of as Roger album, for all the content and production the man put into it, the themes that are so very dear to Mr. Waters, it still has a resonance that is unmistakable. It touches the heart of what Pink Floyd were about after Syd Barrett left the band, the ability and conviction to not only tell a story as they did time and time again in The Wall, Animals, Wish You Were Here for example but to also go against the grain of popular thought at the time. The utter contempt that Roger holds for those he sees as war-mongers is refreshing even now.
There are some incredible lyrical moments throughout the album that had they been on any other recording may have been lauded for their insight and poetical thought. From the 16 line poem of The Post War Dream with its ignorance of other nations and their habits to Your Possible Pasts with the line, “by the cold and religious we were taken in hand, shown how to feel good and told to feel bad…” This allusion to 19th century colonialism and those that were sent out of Britain armed with a bible and soldiers behind them with a gun to spread the word of Christianity and the British way could be seen in these two lines and the thought of do as we say or we take your country and its God’s will is frighteningly clear. To those bought up in the intimidating world of any religious intolerance, the thought that you are shown something that makes you happy or innocently pleased but told that it is a bad thing such as sex, the thoughts of being dirty and that God hates you would have also dug deep into any rational argument.
The first half of the album flows well and has some great highs, however it is the second half where the music fills the void and gives a more visual instruction on listing to the album. Over the wonderful string section which is reminiscent of a chamber orchestra playing in venues of Cairo or Tunis Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Desert takes a swipe at those using war and jingoism as a way to boost morale in their own country. Roger uses the images of the then Russian leader Brezhnev, the Israeli Prime Minister Begin and the U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as people willing to sacrifice soldiers in battle. This imagery continues into perhaps the album’s finest song The Fletcher Memorial Home.
The track starts with the idea that those in charge of whichever Government throughout the world are nothing more than children who shouldn’t be allowed access to the type of office they seek. Roger sings, “Take all your overgrown infants away somewhere and build them a home…” The telling words here are overgrown infants, the insinuation that they are nothing more than mere children, squabbling over a toy that will end up broken as they continue to fight. Overgrown suggests something out of control and in need of cutting back, perhaps a suggestion that there are too many, even now 30 years later, that seek office in a way to assert their will over others. Like weeds they require constant pruning. When added to the word infants it just adds the idea of a young terror, a small child ruling the roost over its adult parents. In the medieval world at least Kings went into battle with their soldiers to protect the crown, those that are elected in today’s modern society are seemingly content to sabre rattle but they won’t be the ones pulling the sword out on the field of battle.
Perhaps it is fitting that the final notes on the album to be heard are the mournful sounds of Dick Parry’s saxophone. The man who had supplied some iconic moments to the group dynamic with the incredible passion he bought to the recordings of Dark Side of the Moon would get the final say. As The Final Cut’s last song, Two Suns In The Sunset, fades out, the thought that no long term member of the band should be the one to draw a veil over the long and proud history of the Progressive Kings is taken into consideration and Dick Parry’s perfect notes say, so listeners thought; a final goodbye.
Ian D. Hall