#85-T - The Final Cut From The Final Cut (1983)
Appeared On: 1 ballot (out of 32 . . . 3.1%)orignally inteded
Total Points: 5 points (out of 800 possible points . . . 0.63%)
Top Ranker: @worrierking
Highest Ranking: 21
Live Performances:
PF: None
DG's PF: None
DG: None
RW: None
NM: None
Covers:
TNR,
Ruby Isle,
Fleesh,
Judson Mancebo,
Brit Floyd,
Silverfish,
Clean The Machine,
The Machine
By the summer of 1982 rolled around, the band was officially down to three members. The Wall tour was over, A Collection Of Great Dance songs had come and gone, and The Wall film had finally been released. Waters felt that there was enough material leftover from The Wall album and film to make another album. As already mentioned, Gilmour did not agree and thought assembling an album of rejected and passed over songs was not the way to go.
Tensions soon emerged, and while Waters and Gilmour initially worked together, playing the video game Donkey Kong in their spare time, they eventually chose to work separately. Engineer Andy Jackson worked with Waters on vocals; and sound engineer James Guthrie on guitars. They would occasionally meet to discuss the work that had been completed; while this method was not in itself unusual, Gilmour began to feel strained, sometimes barely maintaining his composure. On previous tours, the four members of the band each had RVs parked in a circle, with the entrances facing outward, and each arriving separately.
After months of poor relations, and following a final confrontation, Gilmour was removed from the credit list as producer, but was still paid production royalties.Waters later said that he was also under significant pressure and that early in production believed he would never record with Gilmour or Mason again. He may have threatened to release the album as a solo record, although Pink Floyd were contracted to EMI and such a move would have been unlikely. Mason kept himself distant, dealing with marital problems. In an August 1987 interview, Waters recalled The Final Cut as an "absolute misery to make", and that the band members were "fighting like cats and dogs". He said the experience forced them to accept that they had not worked together as a band since the WYWH album.
The album hit #1 on the UK album charts . . . something that DSOTM, Animals, The Wall, and AMLOR all were unable to accomplish. #SHOCKED.AT.THIS!!!
The song tells of a man's isolation, depression, sexual repression, and rejection. At the end of the song he attempts suicide but "never had the nerve to make the final cut". Additionally, the song is said to be told from its main character of Pink.
Written by Roger Waters originally to appear on Pink Floyd’s previous album The Wall
, this song, that was about Pink’s difficulty to connect with others through his wall, was reworked to apply more to Roger himself. The song describes what it’s like to alienate yourself from the world. Roger tells us about his young life, and how hard it was for him to socialize with humanity while he was behind his wall. The final part of the song tells us how he almost killed himself but never mustered to courage to act on it.
The Final Cut is one of several songs (along with The Hero's Return, The Fletcher Memorial Home, One Of The Few, and Your Possible Pasts) that had been previously rejected from The Wall album. The song is in the video version of the album The Final Cut Video EP (linked in the title above). The song made an appearance as the B-side of the Selections from the Final Cut radio promo single (with Your Possible Pasts on the A-side). It also appears in the film Strange Frame. To the best of my knowledge, the song has yet to be performed live.
Vulture Ranking (out of 165 songs): 156
Ultimate Classic Rock Ranking (out of 167 songs): 130
Louder Ranking (out of 50 songs): 39
WMGK Ranking (out of 40 songs): NR
Ranker Ranking (out of 132 songs): 55
Billboard Ranking (out of 50 songs): NR
Vulture Ranking (156 out of 165 songs): Like The Wall, The Final Cut tells a story. It is about the effects of the Falklands War, seen through the prism of the Second World War, which of course hurt the country deeply, and included the tragic death of Waters’s father. Here, we have a man returned from the previous war, becoming a schoolteacher, and watching the war cries begin for the Falklands. That conflict, forgotten now, started when the dictator running Argentina occupied some British-held islands in the South Atlantic, mostly to ramp up patriotic fervor on the home front. Margaret Thatcher dispatched some warships and the world watched for a week or so as they chugged their way down the globe. The absurd conflict that resulted included the senseless sinking of an Argentine ship, which cost more than 300 lives. To Waters, this represented an enormous betrayal on the part of the British government, whose rabble-rousing for the war overlooked the terrible cost of the last one. Anyway, that’s all fine. But this song is a puzzlement. It’s another hugely bombastic number, the album’s penultimate track. At this point in
The Final Cut, you deeply, deeply never want to hear Roger Waters’s voice again. His big, climactic line, “Or is it just a crazy dream,” delivered in a porcine squeal, is just this side of painful. But that’s not what makes this song inexcusable. For some reason I can’t comprehend, Waters inserts himself into the story; that’s the only way one can interpret this song’s key line, which, having no relevance to the rest of whatever story Waters was trying to tell, has the distinction of being the worst single lyric in the Pink Floyd oeuvre, and that includes the one about the albatross hanging motionless upon the air: “If I open my heart to you / And show you my weak side / What would you do? / Would you sell your story to Rolling Stone?” This from the guy who might never have even been quoted in the magazine over the real Pink Floyd’s existence. Hey, Rog: It’s a small sacrifice. Lie back and think of England.
UCR Ranking (130 out of 167 songs): On this Wall leftover, the Waters-led Pink Floyd retreads Comfortably Numb, only with a more irritating vocal from Waters, a less interesting guitar solo from Gilmour, and boatloads of more self-pity. Elsewhere on the album, Waters empathizes with veteran victims and excoriates power-hungry prime ministers, but here he’s worried that his wife is going to tell all to Rolling Stone magazine.
Louder Ranking (39 out of 50 songs): Cast into the ‘rubbish library’ during Wall sessions, the title track of the Floyd’s great 1983 breakup album was openly hated by Gilmour (“I said to Roger, ‘If these songs weren’t good enough for The Wall, why are they good enough now?’”). But heard today, The Final Cut stands as one of rock’s most beautiful suicide notes, Waters’ bereft vocal bristling the neck hair as the music unfolds like a lost cousin of Comfortably Numb. In later years, even Gilmour would come around, citing it as one of the album’s three decent songs.
Next up, one of several tracks that will appear from another movie soundtrack.
