Pink Floyd All the Songs
Page 56
One Of My Turns
Roger Waters / 3:38
Musicians
David Gilmour: electric lead guitar
Rick Wright: piano
Roger Waters: vocals, bass
Nick Mason: drums, tambourine
Bob Ezrin: organ, Prophet-5
Lee Ritenour: electric rhythm guitar
Trudy Young: groupie’s voice
Recorded
Britannia Row, Islington, London: September 1978–March 1979
Super Bear Studios, Berre-les-Alpes, Alpes-Maritimes (France): April–July 1979
Studio Miraval, Domaine de Miraval, Le Val, Var (France): April–July 1979
Cherokee Recording Studios, Los Angeles: September 6–8, 1979
Producers Workshop, Hollywood: September 12–November 1, 1979
Nimbus 9’s Soundstage Studios: August 1979 (?)
Technical Team
Producers: Bob Ezrin, David Gilmour, Roger Waters
Co-producer: James Guthrie
Sound Engineers: James Guthrie, Nick Griffiths, Patrice Quef, Brian Christian, Rick Hart, Michael McCarty, and Robert “Ringo” Hrycyna (at Nimbus 9)
Genesis
As its title suggests, this song tells of one of Pink’s existential crises. Pink invites a groupie he has met at the after-party back to his hotel room and learns his wife is unfaithful. While the young woman goes into raptures at the luxuriousness of the room, which, she says, is bigger than our apartment, Pink collapses in an armchair in front of the television. The woman’s attempts to attract his attention and seduce him come to nothing. The rock star’s eyes are riveted to the screen, and he is lost in his own dark thoughts as he watches a war movie that stirs up memories of his father. Pink’s mind turns to his sorrows both past and present: his father’s premature death, his unfaithful wife… Sadness. Humiliation. Despair. Day after day, love turns grey like the skin of a dying man, sings Waters/Pink. All of a sudden, Pink is seized by a fit of madness and completely loses it in front of the alarmed groupie. I feel cold as a razor blade, declares the enraged narrator before setting about trashing his hotel room, throwing the television set through the window (“classic” rock-star-on-tour behavior!), and even smashing up all his guitars (the ultimate symbol of his desperation). In terms of both words and music, this is a caustic song. It testifies to a deterioration in Pink’s mental state and to a simultaneous intensification of his feelings of guilt. It is difficult not to be reminded of Syd Barrett’s decline a few years before… another gaping wound for Roger Waters.
Looking beyond the hero of The Wall, the song also offers a horrifying insight into the violent relationships in which some couples find themselves—often as a result of immaturity or frustration: “If you skip back from there,” explains Roger Waters to Tommy Vance, “my theory is that they do that because they’ve never really been able to become themselves and there is a lot of pressure on people to get married, at least when they’re in their late twenties, not earlier. I think a lot of people shouldn’t really get married until they are strong enough in themselves to be themselves.”126
Production
“One of My Turns” opens with the sounds of a telephone dial tone and a door opening and shutting, followed by an E emanating from a Prophet-5 and the voice of a groupie. The voice belongs to the Canadian actress Trudy Young, who was directed and recorded by Bob Ezrin at Nimbus 9’s Soundstage Studios in Toronto, Canada, and who, it has to be said, gives a memorable performance, undeniably one of the highlights of The Wall: Oh my God! What a fabulous room! Are all these your guitars? This place is bigger than our apartment! Uh, can I get a drink of water? You want some, huh? Oh, wow, look at this tub! You wanna take a bath? What are you watching? Hello? Are you feeling okay? Such was the attention to detail that different degrees of reverb were even created in the studio: nonexistent in the bedroom, short in the kitchen, and longer in the bathroom! During the monologue, a television can be heard in the background, while Bob Ezrin continues to play the Prophet-5, picking out more or less dissonant harmonies. The atmosphere is one of heartbreaking emptiness and loneliness. This passage is followed by Roger Waters in one of his best vocal performances. His tone is resigned and anguished. During this section, he is accompanied starkly by Bob Ezrin on the Prophet-5. Introduced by a reverse effect, the group then launches all together into a lively rock sequence. Here, Waters pushes his voice to the breaking point, lending it a simultaneously powerful and fragile air. He gives a fantastic performance that really breathes life into his character. Also playing bass, Waters is supported by Nick Mason on drums (and tambourine), Bob Ezrin on the Prophet-5 and Hammond organ (during the guitar solo), and Rick Wright on acoustic piano. This time there are two guitarists. The talented and highly jazz-oriented Lee Ritenour contributes rhythm guitar, playing with distortion and wah-wah. Ritenour tells a very nice anecdote about this recording. As a session guitarist at the time, he used to turn up at whatever studio he was working at with an enormous case containing fifteen or so guitars of every kind. Keen to impress Pink Floyd, he arrived for the session with all his equipment as well as a pedal board and a rack of effects, confident of causing a stir. “So, I walk in the door of the studio and Gilmour must have had 75 guitars lined up,” explains Ritenour. “The most vintage, best guitars I’ve ever seen, all sitting on stands around the studio along with an equal amount of amps and everything else you can imagine. Needless to say, my system didn’t look quite as impressive after that! [Laughs]”131 Throughout the sequence, various sound effects can be heard—for example shattering dishes and the noise of traffic on a freeway—all recorded by Nick Griffiths in London. Gilmour contributes a guitar solo on his “Black Strat.” In actual fact, he recorded two answering parts on opposite sides of the stereo field. The song ends with Waters desperately emitting a kind of pained and poignant wail. A masterpiece.
The war movie being watched by Pink on television is The Dam Busters, directed by Michael Anderson (general release 1955). Yet another symbol, if we identify dam with wall…
For Pink Floyd Addicts
The trashing of a hotel room is “classic” rock star behavior. Roy Harper, who joined Pink Floyd in the first half of their Knebworth gig on July 5, 1975, also lost it and committed this sin when he realized a few minutes before going onstage that his costume had disappeared.
Don’t Leave Me Now
Roger Waters / 4:17
Musicians
David Gilmour: vocals, vocal harmonies, breathing, electric rhythm and lead guitar, bass
Rick Wright: piano, organ, organ pedal board, Prophet-5 (?)
Roger Waters: vocals, VCS3, rhythm guitar (?)
Nick Mason: drums
Recorded
Britannia Row, Islington, London: September 1978–March 1979
Super Bear Studios, Berre-les-Alpes, Alpes-Maritimes (France): April–July 1979
Studio Miraval, Domaine de Miraval, Le Val, Var (France): April–July 1979
Cherokee Recording Studios, Los Angeles: September 6–8, 1979
Producers Workshop, Hollywood: September 12–November 1, 1979
Technical Team
Producers: Bob Ezrin, David Gilmour, Roger Waters
Co-producer: James Guthrie
Sound Engineers: James Guthrie, Nick Griffiths, Patrice Quef, Brian Christian, Rick Hart
Genesis
Roger Waters explains the sentiments that led him to write “Don’t Leave Me Now”: “Well a lot of men and women do get involved with each other for lots of wrong reasons and they do get aggressive towards each other and do each other a lot of damage.”126 And he adds: “But yes it is a very depressing song. I love it! I really love it.”126 Within the context of the Wall storyline, has the time for regrets and repentance finally come for Pink? Despite his shortcomings, he seems to love his wife deeply, and does not want her to leave him. The rock star’s voice is virtually at the breaking point, presumably as a way of conveying his sincerity. He even tries to play the guilt card:
How could you go when you know how I need you? Is this one last attempt to convince her? If it is, the stratagem can only fail, because his demons and paranoia immediately resurface. He needs her, sings Pink/Waters, To beat to a pulp on a Saturday night. This is an example of verbal violence—preceding physical violence—that the rock star is becoming less and less capable of holding back now that there are no more obstacles in the way of his insanity. “Don’t Leave Me Now” was released in the United States and Europe (but not the United Kingdom) as the B-side of “Run Like Hell” in April 1980.
Production
There are few differences between Waters’s demo of this song and the album version. It has lost none of its power; in fact, this has been intensified by the group. “Don’t Leave Me Now” is one of The Wall’s gems, a song of extraordinary emotional power, underlining Roger Waters’s exceptional talent. It opens with low notes on the piano, sustained bass played on a Hammond B-3 pedal board, the mournful sound of a VCS3 (or a Prophet-5?), organ chords, and a rhythm guitar (Waters?) with impressive, hypnotic delay. The atmosphere is lugubrious and stress inducing, dragging the listener down into a very somber world. The resolutely depressing atmosphere is intensified by some disturbing breathing for which David Gilmour was responsible. After a few bars, Waters enters with the lead vocal, pushing his voice to extremes as he tests the limits of his vocal capacities, and in doing so creates a sense of intense vulnerability. Waters offers up his soul; he is suffering for his art. There is no cheating here; he puts his feelings into song without a shred of modesty, a little like Jacques Brel, who wrote “Ne Me Quitte Pas” in 1959. Naturally the two approaches differ: Brel’s has a more poetic vision of life, while Waters’s is bleaker and more paranoid. It is also possible to discern the influence of John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, the album Waters admired for the way in which the artist lays bare his emotions.
In the third verse (from 2:20), Gilmour’s breathing grows heavier, more intense, and more invasive. Waters’s performance becomes unbearably agonizing before tailing off in a final, heartrending wail. Rick Wright announces the last section of the song with furious glissandi on his B-3, launching the musicians into a rockier sequence, with Mason picking up his sticks again to work his Ludwig, and Gilmour taking over the lead vocal. Gilmour also plays a stereo rhythm guitar part, most likely through his Yamaha rotary speakers, a distorted rhythm part in support of the drums, and a lead part that underlines his sung melody.
“Don’t Leave Me Now” eventually closes with a return to the background television noises (from 4:00) as Pink compulsively changes channels, before ending on a dreadful cry of rage.
Pink Floyd is by no means alone in naming a song “Don’t Leave Me Now.” To mention a couple of the better-known examples, Elvis Presley pleads “Don’t Leave Me Now” to a tune by Aaron Schroeder and Benjamin Weisman in the 1957 movie Jailhouse Rock, and in 1982 Supertramp had a hit with a song of the same name (credited to Roger Hodgson) taken from their album Famous Last Words…
Another Brick In The Wall (Part 3)
Roger Waters / 1:15
Musicians
David Gilmour: electric rhythm and lead guitar, vocal harmonies (?)
Rick Wright: Prophet-5
Roger Waters: vocals, vocal harmonies, bass, electric rhythm guitar
Nick Mason: drums
Recorded
Britannia Row, Islington, London: September 1978–March 1979
Super Bear Studios, Berre-les-Alpes, Alpes-Maritimes (France): April–July 1979
Studio Miraval, Domaine de Miraval, Le Val, Var (France): April–July 1979
Producers Workshop, Hollywood: September 12–November 1, 1979
Technical Team
Producers: Bob Ezrin, David Gilmour, Roger Waters
Co-producer: James Guthrie
Sound Engineers: James Guthrie, Nick Griffiths, Patrice Quef, Brian Christian, Rick Hart
Genesis
In the third and final installment of the “Wall” triptych, Pink’s schizophrenia reaches a new stage. The wall he believes will protect him from other people and enable him to live at ease within his inner world is almost finished. He comes straight to the point, expressing his desire for solitude, which involves contempt for, and the rejection of, those he has shared his life with hitherto: his wife, his manager, and perhaps even his mother: I don’t need no arms around me/I don’t need no drugs to calm me… No, don’t think I’ll need anything at all… and the killer line, sounding like an ode to isolation and his only response to the world he has grown to detest: All in all, you were all just bricks in the wall. He could not be more direct. Pink is “convincing himself really that his isolation is a desirable thing, that’s all,”126 Roger Waters would reveal in his interview with Tommy Vance in 1979. “That’s the moment of catharsis.”36 Again according to Waters, this self-persuasion involves rejecting all that the world offers in terms of ways of easing the pain of existence, in other words pharmaceutical or recreational drugs (in fact the working title of the song was “Drugs”), but also empathetic human relationships. For Pink, the consumption of narcotics has only widened the gulf between him and the rest of the world, while the loving arms that have embraced him, whether the overprotective arms of a mother or the sensual arms of a wife, have proved suffocating in the case of the first and treacherous in that of the second. Arms that either imprison or deceive!
Pink is aware of the harm the world can inflict on human beings. He has seen the “writing on the wall.” This expression signifying an omen of impending doom or misfortune goes all the way back to the Old Testament book of Daniel, in which an otherworldly inscription portending the fall of Babylon appears to King Belshazzar. Could Waters be relating the expression to himself in this instance? By the end of the song, Pink has completed his self-immurement with the addition of the last brick.
Production
The early versions of this song were appreciably different from the album version—in the first part of the song at least. Early on, Waters was singing in almost folk-rock mode in a gentle voice with vocal harmonies and no drums. On the album, the intro takes the form of an exploding television that follows on from the cry of rage emitted by Waters/Pink at the end of “Don’t Leave Me Now.” In fact there is a total of six explosions, the last of which launches the group into a muscular version of “Another Brick in the Wall.” Mason is on drums, marking each beat of the bar on the bass drum, Waters is on the bass guitar and singing lead vocal—this time very tensely and aggressively, and Gilmour plays palm mute on his now clear-toned “Black Strat.” He also contributes further guitar parts with Big Muff distortion and strongly colored by the Electric Mistress. At the end of the fourth line, Rick Wright comes in on the Prophet-5 doubled by a guitar played, this time, by Waters in a rhythmic loop with very prominent delay. In the refrain, Waters multitracks his voice, with Gilmour possibly coming to his aid as well.
The exploding television required a considerable amount of preparation before it could be recorded. First of all, Phil Taylor was given the task of procuring an enormous set from a Los Angeles store. He also took the sensible precaution of bringing back two smaller sets so that James Guthrie could set his sound levels. Once they were positioned in the Producers Workshop parking lot, Guthrie used a pair of shotgun mics connected to limiters, and Brian Christian was chosen to smash the television set with a sledgehammer wrapped in a T-shirt to dampen the blow. It worked perfectly, and the results were used numerous times on the album!
For Pink Floyd Addicts
Originally, Roger Waters’s opening line was I don’t need your drugs to bring me down, down, down. He was asked to change the words by Bob Ezrin, probably because of the overexplicit reference to illegal substances…
Goodbye Cruel World
Roger Waters / 1:17
Musicians
Rick Wright: Prophet-5
Roger Waters: vocals, bass
Recorded
Britannia Row, Islington, London: September 1978–Mar
ch 1979
Super Bear Studios, Berre-les-Alpes, Alpes-Maritimes (France): April–July 1979
Studio Miraval, Domaine de Miraval, Le Val, Var (France): April–July 1979
Producers Workshop, Hollywood: September 12–November 1, 1979
Technical Team
Producers: Bob Ezrin, David Gilmour, Roger Waters
Co-producer: James Guthrie
Sound Engineers: James Guthrie, Nick Griffiths, Patrice Quef, Brian Christian, Rick Hart
Genesis
The second side of the vinyl edition of The Wall ends with this short song (in the CD versions, it concludes the first of the two discs). The final farewells addressed by the rock star to the real world in “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 3)” are confirmed here: Goodbye cruel world, I’m leaving you today. Is Pink planning to do the unthinkable? No! “Goodbye Cruel World” is not a suicide note, it is the rock star bricking himself up within his own space, behind the wall he has just finished constructing. “That’s him going catatonic if you like,” explains Roger Waters to Tommy Vance, “that’s final and he’s going back and he’s just curling up and he’s not going to move. That’s it, he’s had enough, that’s the end.”126 And this is exactly what we see in Alan Parker’s movie: Pink in his hotel room, a cigarette between his fingers, his eyes glazed over, lost in his own unfathomable thoughts. End of the second act! However, behind Pink, once again, is Waters, and he has been building his wall, metaphorically speaking, since the Second World War, since the childhood from which his father was absent.