Pink Floyd - The Final Cut

[theaussiefloydian]

I always felt a lot of the follow-up album was a reaction to this one, making several big, long tracks with huge sounds to sharply differ from the quieter, more desperate tone of this record.

That's actually probably what happened, although a lot of AMLoR's big 80s sound seemed to have more to do with Gilmour experimenting with those sounds and then being told to turn it into a Pink Floyd album.

Tigers should have been the first track to make it easy to skip.

Now I agree with you in one respect, but on the other hand I feel like doing that would ruin the bookend effect that the car radio has in "The Post War Dream" and "Two Suns in the Sunset". I really just wish they hadn't bothered adding "Tigers" at all - the album functioned much better without it in my opinion.

[KingQueenKnave]

Ehhhhhhhhhh I dunno.

Some moments, I love The Final Cut. I love the emotion behind it, a few of the songs, the message, and the need for it in 1983 in the midst of the Falklands War and Cold War tension. Some moments, I absolutely hate it. I hate the vocals, the maudlin strings, the over-reliance on current affairs, and the self-righteousness of it all. Not even The Wall had that.

Although I have since outlived my Waters-Ruined-Everything phase in my Pink Floyd fandom, as evidenced by my own love for The Wall, I can't help but feel that the album could have benefited from more input by the rest of the band. That said, Gilmour reportedly didn't seem to care that much for it, so...

Also the vocals on some of these cuts are unbearable. It goes from quiet to screeching like a cat, especially on the title track and The Post War Dream.

[ZiggyZipgun]

It blows my mind that Roger released "When the Tigers Broke Free"/"Bring the Boys Back Home" as a single in 1982. I understand that he was promoting the film, and that those songs sum up a lot of the subject matter for him, but what the hell. I think whatever they followed that up with, whether Rick and Roger stuck around longer, or maybe they went straight from The Wall and did Pros and Cons and KAOS as Floyd albums - whatever would/could have followed their military ensemble/marching band/torch song single would have suffered from it, commercially. Unfortunately, The Final Cut was more of the same, for the most part. I consider it the black sheep because while there are weaker albums, those were still logical steps in their development. Even the sound of AMLOR seems more in line with where they would have headed if not for the stark production of The Wall; after hearing KAOS, I'm absolutely fine with four of the songs being co-written by outside lyricists.

And again, I do really like The Final Cut, even if it is their WTF moment.

[ZiggyZipgun]

It occurred to me today, while listening to John Lennon, that the chords and the time changes of the rhythm guitar riff (if you can call it that) of "Two Suns in the Sunset" is just the Mama don't gooooooooo! refrain in "Mother" - from John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, which Roger loved and took many cues from, and was his main reference for wanting a very sparse and "dry" (minimal reverb) sound on Dark Side (which was thankfully overruled by...everyone involved).

[Keith Jordan]

It would seen old Roger loves a bit of pop music. The Pink Floyd likes The Beatles that much, that they have the string section from Ticket to Ride on the end of Dark Side of the Moon. Spacey!

[ZiggyZipgun]

It would seen old Roger loves a bit of pop music. The Pink Floyd likes The Beatles that much, that they have the string section from Ticket to Ride on the end of Dark Side of the Moon. Spacey!

Well, an orchestral cover of "Ticket to Ride" that happened to be on a radio when they interviewed the doorman. There is no string section on The Beatles' version.

[Keith Jordan]

Well, an orchestral cover of "Ticket to Ride" that happened to be on a radio when they interviewed the doorman. There is no string section on The Beatles' version.

I must have mis-remembered. I thought there was a string section on Ticket to Ride and it was emphasised in the mix for the Beatles One remix album?

[ZiggyZipgun]

Well, an orchestral cover of "Ticket to Ride" that happened to be on a radio when they interviewed the doorman. There is no string section on The Beatles' version.

I must have mis-remembered. I thought there was a string section on Ticket to Ride and it was emphasised in the mix for the Beatles One remix album?

George Martin has probably released a version with strings at some point, but this is what can actually be heard on most (but not all) releases of Dark Side:

https://youtu.be/Nwrb8hFDKqU

[K2+]

4. This is not an album I listen to often, and I think of it more as Roger's first solo album (with contributions from Nick and David), than an actual PF album.
The music is hit or miss for me, but I do think the lyrics are some of Roger's best. The sound quality is great as well. I should revisit it soon, and give it a proper "headphone listen".


edit: I changed my vote from a 3 to a 4.
I've been listening to it lately, and it really has some great songs on it. It's just too depressing for me to listen to regularly.

[The endless river]

I real like this album ever song is full of a emotion especially the final cut people don’t like it because Roger was being a tyrant he was but this was a great river album better then David’s a momentary lapse of reason

[Wolfpack]

Being 13 years old, 1986/1987, I was just getting to know Pink Floyd thanks to a grandnephew copying them on compact cassette for me. 'The Piper at the Gates of Dawn' and 'A Saucerful of Secrets' ('A Nice Pair'), 'The Dark Side of the Moon', 'The Final Cut'...
Those were among the first I heard, without really knowing who the members were. Getting to know psychedelic, imaginative music. Getting lost in a audio theatre. It felt like a revolution in my head. Music as drugs! Never been the same since...

Listening 'The Final Cut' on my Walkman, inside my parents's yaught while sailing. Over the waves going up and down, which is a fairground attraction on its own. Combined with the for me underrated Holophonics surround sound simulation, the album felt very personal to me. As if it was really speaking to me.
Somehow, I heard 'The Final Cut' before 'The Wall'. The chronology was a happy mess.

What did I know about Pink Floyd members. And why should I care?
I'm perfectly fine with this album being Waters's 'The Madcap Laughs'/'Barrett' (Syd Barrett) or 'Berlin' (Lou Reed).
Now knowing the background stories and rumours, I think Gilmour can't escape from delivering his very best work on this album!

After questionable actual contributions to 'The Wall' , Wright is absent on this album.
Whoever is his substitute, as once Gilmour replacing Barrett, I think there's very beautiful keyboard work.

Wright became the new Barrett, when it came to being druggy and unreliable.
No one of Pink Floyd is to blame for that. And, as if it was some karma, Wright got replaced like Barrett got replaced.
Waters, Gilmour and Mason agreed that Wright became unreliable. Like they once, including Wright, agreed about Barrett being unreliable.

Wishing Wright would be on this album is like wishing Barrett would have remained a member.
Is Waters really to blame for being too ambitious for members who get lost in themselves, unable to just turn up and work?

Pink Floyd without Barrett. Pink Floyd without Wright...
I guess a Waters-Gilmour-Mason reunion would make most Pink Floyd fans gasp and spontaneously combust.

Is 'The Final Cut' a Waters solo album? Should I really care?
If it is, it's his very best to me.

Could 'Music From the Body' (1970) be a Pink Floyd album?
And does it really matter?

BTW. Forget the horrible, later album release with an edited 'When the Tigers Broke Free' forced into the tracklist.
What a way to include a bonus track!

[ZiggyZipgun]

Could 'Music From the Body' (1970) be a Pink Floyd album?
And does it really matter?

It absolutely could, and should have been. I really wish they'd collaborated with Ron Geesin more.

BTW. Forget the horrible, later album release with an edited 'When the Tigers Broke Free' forced into the tracklist.
What a way to include a bonus track!

Agreed - it's an important part of The Wall, but not the teacher's storyline (or anything else) that is explored on The Final Cut. It fits nicely between "Mother" and "Goodbye Blue Sky". Had it been written/recorded prior to the tour, it would've worked perfectly in the first half and saved them the trouble of filling time with "The Last Few Bricks".

[twcc]

...
BTW. Forget the horrible, later album release with an edited 'When the Tigers Broke Free' forced into the tracklist.
What a way to include a bonus track!

Given the note on the picture sleeve of the 'Tigers' 7-inch single, the question is surely why was it removed from the initial release?
.

wttbf001.jpg

[ZiggyZipgun]

Given the note on the picture sleeve of the 'Tigers' single, the question is surely why was it removed from the initial release?
.
wttbf001.jpg

That was when it was still just supposed to be the soundtrack to the film version of The Wall. Roger stated that it might include a few new songs to expand the narrative, and he may have just been referring to the five that were left off The Wall - but he was then distracted/inspired by the Falkland Islands conflict and started writing about that instead. After fitting all of that together, with Holophonics and all, squeezing one more song on there would've cut into the audio quality. I've always felt that "Two Suns in the Sunset" is about five minutes too long anyway, but that's just me.

[mosespa]

I feel like I've recounted all of this elsewhere on the forum, but that's never stopped me before. *shrug*

I first saw the film of The Wall in November of '82. It was a one-time, midnight showing on a school night (a Wednesday, as I recall,) and my Grandparents (who raised me,) let me skip school the next day.

To say that it had an impact on my sixth-grade brain would be an understatement. Every frame of that film burned into my brain. I was able to recall every image almost flawlessly (as I was able to confirm when I finally found a VHS copy of the film that I could watch repeatedly,) with only the song order being a point of contention, as it didn't follow the album perfectly; of course, some new songs and a couple (notably "Hey You" and "Empty Spaces") having been left out.

I remember making my poor Grandfather (who took me, Grandma having decided to sit this one out,) wait until the credits were over before I got up to leave. I saw the notice in the credits that a soundtrack album was available and even at 12, I found that odd since it followed the album closely enough that I couldn't see what a soundtrack album would bring...unless it was going to consist of the film versions (I noticed the extension to "In The Flesh?," the complete rearrangement of "Mother" and that some of the tracks had undergone a remix, though still seemed to be the original performances (okay, maybe not "Brick 3." I believe that was a re-recording, as well.)

Not long afterwards, I found a copy of the single for "When The Tigers Broke Free" at the music store in the local mall. I noticed that it was "taken from" the album "The Final Cut." Not quite sure what all of that was about, I just took it to mean that the soundtrack album for the movie was being given a different name in order to avoid people accidentally buying the wrong version of the album. When I had finally played the record enough that it started sounding well-played, I tacked the gatefold sleeve with pictures from the film to my bedroom wall.

By the summer of '83, I had heard a Pink Floyd radio program which seemed to suggest that the band was over with, but I was seeing a video for "Not Now John" on Cinemax and wondered what all of this meant. Going into my local Sears, I saw that the Pink Floyd bin contained a copy of this "Final Cut" album and I was rather surprised to not only NOT see "When The Tigers Broke Free" in the tracklisting, but that I also didn't recognize a single song title, nor did any of the titles suggest anything that was new to the film.

It would be some time (and the thorough, repeated re-reading of Karl Dallas' "Bricks In The Wall,") before everything was pieced together for me and I finally picked up a cassette copy of "The Final Cut," probably on a speech team trip.

Giving it a listen, I rather liked "The Heros Return" and "Not Now John," (which had started getting a small amount of airplay on the local rock radio station back in the day,) but found the rest of the album very much like listening to an old man give a speech at the start of some event that I couldn't wait for the speech to end so that the event could start. Like many American teenagers, I already owned "The Wall" (2 copies, actually) and DSOTM (also 2 copies,) and was well familiar with the concept of songs segueing into each other...but with this album, I really had difficulty determining which song I was listening to without the lyric sheet to tell me.

Taking the album as evidence that even Pink Floyd could screw up from time to time, I accepted that SOME album had to be my least favorite of theirs and this one would do for the time being, as I hadn't yet acquired all of their albums.

As more time passed, I went through an "Amadeus" phase and started giving Classical Music more due than I had been. Remembering that "The Final Cut" was sub-titled "A Requiem For The Post-War Dream," I decided to throw it another listen, but this time, as a "Classical" piece that just happened to have some electric guitars and drums in spots.

I started getting it. Like many, I had first gone into the album with the presumption that it was a sequel to The Wall...that it had something to do with Pink, after the fact. I figured that Alex McAvoy was still portraying The Schoolmaster in the video for "Not Now John" to tie it all back to The Wall.

As a well-worn saying goes, this was in the days before the intertube. There was no way to immediately find out any piece of information with any degree of certitude of its veracity. You'd read something in a book or magazine article, then some weeks or even months later, you'd see something in a different book or magazine which disagreed with what you'd already read. Some VJ on MTV would say something wildly inaccurate or at least get some piece of the overall info quite wrong (according to other sources, by this time, the Dallas book was pretty much a holy scripture to me,) and forget about the guy on the radio; you couldn't even trust him to get the artist and title of the song you were listening to correct.

When AMLOR and Radio KAOS dropped and the Great Floydian War had begun, you couldn't even be sure that Waters and GIlmour weren't misrepresenting stuff. After all, they were each accusing the other of that very thing.

I tried to like AMLOR, but the more I listened to it, the more it sounded like an extension of "About Face" more than anything "officially" Floydian. It seemed to me like it was a Pink Floyd album I would dream about, but in one of those dreams where nothing really makes sense; a dream of a non-cohesive Pink Floyd album where songs about sex sat next to songs about war and songs about planes and old movies; nothing that an awake me would consider a "real" Pink Floyd album.

While that gave AMLOR it's own "ethereal" feel, it (and KAOS) demonstrated to me that I much preferred the Waters style of songwriting to the Gilmour style and I went back to "The Final Cut" yet again. This time with full focus.

It had suddenly become one of my favorite Pink Floyd albums.