My theory on why the Final Cut is not an enjoyable listen

[ZiggyZipgun]

"I’m bored with most of the stuff we’ve done. I’m bored with most of the stuff we play." - Roger Waters, 1970

And the next question was:

"Even the new stuff?"

"Well, there isn’t very much new stuff, is there, if you look at it? I’m not bored with doing “Atom Heart Mother” when we get the brass and choir together, because it’s so weird doing it."

...they only did this a handful of times, and it was chaotic, which is what he liked about it. It also lost a lot of money, and he would later turn that into an artform.

It is a fascinating and rare early interview that covers a lot of ground.

"Originally, you see, I wasn’t doing anything apart from being a student of architecture and spending money on buying bass guitars, but in terms of music I wasn’t doing anything at all. “See Emily Play” and “Arnold Layne” are Syd Barrett’s songs, right, and it wouldn’t matter who it was who played the bass of did this or that, it’s irrelevant. They’re very strong songs and you just do it. It’s nothing to do with music, playing that stuff, it has to do with writing songs, and that was Syd who wrote those songs. I don’t think we were doing anything then, if you see what I mean."

"I want to stop going out and playing the numbers. I personally would like to stop doing that now, today. I would like to be creating tapes, songs, material, writing, sketches of sets – whatever is necessary to put on a complete theatrical show in a theatre in London…sometime and see if the people dig it. They may not. They may come on and say, 'well, it’s alright, but it’s not rock and roll, innit?' They won’t do that, because they’re all terribly well spoken students, all our fans, so they tell me. But it’s quite possible that the whole thing could fail horribly. I don’t think it will. I have great faith in giving the audiences more than music. There is just so much more that you can do to make it a complete experience than watching four long-haired youths leaping up and down beating their banjos."

https://www.pinkfloydz.com/interviews/t ... aker-1970/

[space triangle]

For whatever validity there is to the notion of "oh, no, here we go...it's about his father and the war again," (to paraphrase Richard Wright,)

''My mother told me I said to her, at age three, 'I'm going to go to Italy and get my father in a tractor.' 'You've never seen quite so fierce a little boy as you were,' she told me. She tried to explain that I couldn't get my father in a tractor. Apparently I looked at her and narrowed my eyes and said 'In that case, I'm going in a double-decker bus,' and stomped off. Which is kind of funny, but it's very sad, as well."

Roger Waters in an interview in Rolling Stones Magazine, September 30, 2010, talking about his father who was killed in WWII.

[theaussiefloydian]

His argument was the music was being sacrificed at the expense of the theme and lyrics. I agree 100%.

So do I. Pink Floyd was at its peak when the music and the lyrics played into each other hand in hand. When you remove the intricate nature of one, the whole suffers. The Final Cut is a shining example of that to me.
And one could argue that it went a little too far the other way in the Gilmour-led era, and I could definitely see that argument, but I still find Division Bell and Momentary Lapse far more enjoyable listens than Final Cut because I have that musicality to grab onto (On Lapse, less so, but the Later Years remix has helped a lot in that respect.)

[Kerry King]

I still find Division Bell and Momentary Lapse far more enjoyable listens than Final Cut because I have that musicality to grab onto

Yet the engineering/production on Momentary Lapse reduces it all to a heap of digital frosting while tfc sounds so warm and real.

Waters hijacked the band. He insisted on being the lyricist which meant any Gilmour or Wright contribution would have to be filtered through Waters if it was going to turn into a song. Otherwise it would have to be an instrumental. Gilmour and Wright were certainly capable of offering up chord progressions if Waters was willing to add lyrics and maybe a vocal melody. It's not like they couldn't put two or three chords together. And Gilmour always improved any vocal melody Waters came up with. Listen to Waters singing back up on live versions of WYWH from 1977. It's dreadful. Waters hijacked pink floyd.

this band is my band
-Towers Of Faith

[theaussiefloydian]

Yet the engineering/production on Momentary Lapse reduces it all to a heap of digital frosting while tfc sounds so warm and real.

You're not wrong there. It's why I find the 2019 remix of Momentary Lapse a far more rewarding listen.

[space triangle]

Waters hijacked the band. He insisted on being the lyricist...

You are too hard. I remember a one of Roger interviews in which he talked about how he encouraged both David and Rick to write more songs /lyrics. In the time before the 'Dark Side Of The Moon' album. But, both David and Rick felt their lyrics was a quite weak(rubbish). And, they didn't felt ready to take a responsibility.

'Rick Wright: “My lyrics are really bad and they’re not saying anything that’s important. A couple of songs I haven’t minded being put out in terms of lyrics, like Summer '68.”

Rick Wright: ''I can't, like Elton John, for example, compose by lyrics. Elton has a great talent for that. Whatever you give him, including your questions, he composes in half an hour and makes a great song out of it''.

Rick Wright: ''I wrote the tune and sang only nonsense words. Then came Anthony Moore and dressed them with proper lyrics. - Wearing the Inside Out

[DarkSideFreak]

Rick Wright: ''I can't, like Elton John, for example, compose by lyrics. Elton has a great talent for that. Whatever you give him, including your questions, he composes in half an hour and makes a great song out of it''.

And there you have the conflict between Rick and Roger, in a nutshell. "Burning Bridges", "Breathe" and "Us and Them" were pretty much the only collaborations between them that worked, because Roger wrote the lyric (and vocal melody, I guess) on top of already existing Wright music.

[ZiggyZipgun]

Rick Wright: ''I wrote the tune and sang only nonsense words. Then came Anthony Moore and dressed them with proper lyrics. - Wearing the Inside Out

He was referring to using scat singing to come up with vocal melodies, which David also does, even for guitar solos. He wasn't saying that he'd written lyrics and that they were "nonsense" - he was just improvising wordless vocalizations to come up with a rhythm and melody that suited the range of his voice.

Roger, 1975: "...either the music comes first and the lyrics are added, or music and lyrics come together. Only once have the lyrics been written down first -- 'Wish You Were Here'. But this is unusual; it hasn't happened before."

[space triangle]

''In a 1972 interview Nick Mason used the song San Tropez as an example when explaining how the Floyd write songs: 'Dave maybe comes in with song ''A'' which he's recorded already at home. He's got guitars, possible drums and vocal on it. In the case of ''San Tropez'' Roger come in and the song was absoluteely complete. There was almost no arranging to do on it. It was just a matter of learning the chords..''

''For he other extreme Nick used ''Echoes'' as an example: 'We go into the studio with absolutely nothing and we sit around saying'' Look we're gonna write something''. From then on it's people giving ideas saying ''Look I've got this idea in my head'' and plying it. And from nothing you create a whole piece. ''Saucerrful Of Secrets' and 'Echoes' was two of those where we went in the studio saying ''Right let's do something'' with no preconceived ideas''.

[ZiggyZipgun]

''In the case of ''San Tropez'' Roger come in and the song was absoluteely complete. There was almost no arranging to do on it. It was just a matter of learning the chords..''

I'm not sure where you're going with this, because Roger obviously wrote some vocal melodies himself (though very few before The Wall). He worked them out alone, and usually for Dave's vocal range, not his (which is very limited).

Roger, 1975: "Sometimes I think, RIGHT!, and go and pick up a guitar and occasionally it works. Usually something just flashes into my mind and I think, well, I better write this down and then I go and pick up the guitar. Usually a word, a phrase, a thought, or an idea. Once you've got five words or a series of words that contain an idea... like 'come in here, dear boy' then from that point on it becomes quite easy - or at least to do one verse. What's difficult is writing another verse, then another. The first is easy.

"For example, 'Have a Cigar'. The verses, (tune and words) were all written before I ever played it to the others. Except the stuff before and after the vocal, that happened in the studio. The same with 'Welcome to the Machine' -- the verses were done, but the run up and out was in the studio."

Roger, 1992: "Dave and I never wrote together. I don't ever remember writing with Dave. Sometimes he'd bring in a chord sequence and I'd the make a song out of it. Or he'd bring a guitar riff in and I'd make a song out of it, like 'Wish You Were Here.' I love that riff, it's fantastic. But we never wrote together, ever. Never. And Dave was never interested in drama, ever. In my experience. He never showed any interest at all, "ever", in drama. Of any kind. Certainly not."

[space triangle]

Roger, 1992: "Dave and I never wrote together. I don't ever remember writing with Dave.

On this picture, they look like a duo who loved to write together.

[ZiggyZipgun]

On this picture, they look like a duo who loved to write together.

They were probably just rehearsing "Grandchester Meadows".

[Kerry King]

I remember a one of Roger interviews in which he talked about how he encouraged both David and Rick to write more songs /lyrics. In the time before the 'Dark Side Of The Moon' album. But, both David and Rick felt their lyrics was a quite weak(rubbish). And, they didn't felt ready to take a responsibility.

Explain Childhood's End and Stay.

[space triangle]

Explain Childhood's End and Stay.

What to explain, really?

Lyrics on the ''Stay' deals with the same topic as a few other of Ricks Pink Floyd songs - his meeting with a groupies, even though a lyrics was written by Roger.

'Childhood's End' has an ok lyric, but most of the text was inspired after Dave’s reading of the book Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke. I doubt that, without a book Dave would have been able to write that song.

[ZiggyZipgun]

I remember a one of Roger interviews in which he talked about how he encouraged both David and Rick to write more songs /lyrics. In the time before the 'Dark Side Of The Moon' album. But, both David and Rick felt their lyrics was a quite weak(rubbish). And, they didn't felt ready to take a responsibility.

Explain Childhood's End and Stay.

I think the interview you're referring to was in the past decade or so, and was mainly Roger once again defending himself against the claim that he somehow prevented the others from contributing. However, once Roger started to take himself more seriously as a writer, in late '71, he definitely wanted to handle it himself, exclusively. He was really annoyed how their previous songs were often misheard, misunderstood, and misinterpreted, hence Dark Side of the Moon being their first album to include the full lyrics on the sleeve, followed by "ALL LYRICS BY ROGER WATERS."

Lyrics on the 'Summer '68' deals with the same topic as a few other of Ricks Pink Floyd songs - his meeting with a groupies.

It is Rick's only song about meeting with a groupie.

'Childhood's End' has an ok lyric, but most of the text was inspired after Dave’s reading of the book Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke. I doubt that, without a book Dave would have been able to write that song.

Explain Amused to Death . Have you read Childhood's End? Can you point to any parallels other than the title? Syd's "Chapter 24" and Roger's "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun" both directly quoted Chinese poetry, while Roger's title was taken from the Michael Moorcock book Fireclown. The Piper at the Gates of Dawn is the name of a chapter in The Wind in the Willows.