Pink Floyd - The Final Cut

[danielcaux]

I believe drafsack owns one of the few tour programs that were printed for The Final Cut Tour. It looked promising, too bad the band didn't do it in the end. But that's exactly how I imagine them doing it

or maybe just edit it down to fill one side of the album, and put Daves new songs, maybe with better lyrics, on side 2, along with Tigers and maybe whatever music Rick was actually wrote for Zee: Identity

That sounds like the 1983 sequel to ASOS instead of The Wall

For that scenario I think a better album for a team Floyd effort would have been Pros & Cons, since some songs on "About Face" also have that "American Rock and Roll" thing on them too, they would mix better with Roger's songs on P&C, like "Every Stranger's Eyes" and "The Pros and Cons", than with the TFC songs. "Murder" even begins with the same guitar motive of P&C, the "Working Class Hero" riff (it makes sense since it's about Lennon). With some tweaking in the lyrics and music I can see that song perfectly seguing after the P&C title song, which happens to reference Yoko Ono. There you have a nice connection ha ha. Perhaps "Near The End" and "Let's Get Metaphysical" would have also worked well with the P&C vibe, the others not so much. Some of them are way too 80s poppy, in a embarrassingly Lionel Richie way. The P&C vibe is more of a Brithish man going for a roots rock/heartland of America sound, like a more musically retarded Dire Straits.

And afterall in the begining Pros and Cons was going to be a Floyd album, back in 1979, so is not that far fetched, that after The Wall they would go:

Mason: OK, that tour left us broke, why don't we record the other demo Roger did and release it as the next studio album?
Gilmour: Alright, I have a few songs I have been working on that we can use too.
Waters: Well, that would give me more time to work with my "War is Bad" concept album solo masterpice I've been thinking about doing, so I'm OK with it.

And then Roger could have released The Final Cut in 1984 as a true solo album. An amazing one in his ouvre may I say.

[theEvermoreWalrus]

I love it, one of my top favourites Pink Floyd product. It just works so wonderful as a whole and I've been trying for the last year to put together all my love for this album in a sort of a review. But I just can't do it. In cotrary to what my favourites lyricists (including Roger) did, I can't express the way I feel about this album (or about anything I love so much) in words. I can't say why I like it so much. Of course, I could tell you a lot about how Roger's lyrics shine better than ever, about how Gilmour's solo strike so impeccably whenever you expect least or about how perfect is that sax solo at the end of the album, leaving you so nostalgic and pleased. But that's not it. Lots of Pink Floyd albums have those or another magic moments. So what makes it so better for me?Gee, I really don't know, but it's freakin' BEAUTIFUL! Listen to it with your headphones from beggining to finish and tell me it's not a wonderful listen. The moment when "The Gunner's Dream" fades into "Paranoid Eyes" with that cate moaning, those footsteps and then the heartbreaking piano comes in. Pure magic. Hell, I even love "Not Now John" with that crazy ending, with Roger shouting words in greek, italian and french. And the final section "The Final Cut" - "Not Now John" - "Two Suns In The Sunset" has got to be one of the most beatuiful and impeccable moments in music ever created. Does anybody else in here feel the way I do?

[thefinalcut]

theEvermoreWalrus, your avatar picture is gorgeous ! I had to say it loud.

[theEvermoreWalrus]

theEvermoreWalrus, your avatar picture is gorgeous ! I had to say it loud.

Thanks, mate. I like yours too, take care.

[nat]

I had a really hard time deciding how to vote here-- either 4 or 5. In the end, I went with 5. I had basically resolved to go with 4, because of the following:

The lack of creative input from the other members of the band. This comes through most strongly in the music. Musically, this album is far and away the.... sparsest Floyd has ever sounded. Even on The Wall, the input guys like Gilmour and yes, even Wright, had on writing and just shaping the musical audioscape made a huge difference. On TFC, Wright is gone completely and Gilmour has only one songwriting co-credit.

To see what I mean more clearly, you can look at an album like Animals. Animals is a good comparison piece because it also features an ensemble composed almost entirely by Waters, with only one track co-credited to Gilmour... like TFC. The difference is that on Animals, the guys were still working together as a band. Writing credit or not, Wright's influence can still be heard prominently on all the tracks save for Pigs on the Wing.

So the question becomes... is the lack of creative input from "the other guys" a bad thing? I guess it really depends on your point of view. I think the record COULD have been stronger had Wright been around to add his two cents, and the music certainly does feel less layered and less complex without him. On the other hand, it could be argued that this was the intention, given the subject matter on the album. I'm not sure I have an answer either way. We'll never know what might have been, but it can't be denied what we got in The Final Cut that exists today is some pretty damn strong material.

Which brings up my next point, what DOES the album offer? Well, it's got arguably THE strongest lyrical set on any Pink Floyd album, ever. It's got a large collection (not just one or two, but three or four... or more?) of some of Gilmour's best guitar solos on any Pink Floyd album, ever. It's got the third-strongest concept of all of PF's concept albums (after The Wall and Animals). From a body of work so diverse and complex, these are some pretty high points of praise.

Lots of people say TFC is nothing more than a Waters solo album, but I'd have to vehemently disagree. You wouldn't have all the soulful Gilmour solos and guitar antics on a Waters solo album. You'd have an overabundance of female backup singers, instead. For everyone that downplays Gilmour's role and creative input here, I submit to you that TFC would not be what it is without him. The Final Cut is the natural progression musically, lyrically, and conceptually from The Wall. He may not have been able to influence the musical direction of things as much as on The Wall and previous albums, but he was still able to "sneak" in his trademark chops, effectively saving TFC from solo-album obscurity.

So it all comes back to the question: How to rate TFC? I was all ready to rate the album a 4 for reasons stated above. But then, these polls are all about personal opinion, not technical merits. And because TFC means a lot to ME, as it stands solidly within my top 3 or 4 PF albums of all time, there's no criteria better earning of a 5.

Personal stand-out tracks:

Your Possible Pasts
The Hero's Return
The Fletcher Memorial Home
The Final Cut
Not Now John
Two Suns in the Sunset

(As an aside, possibly the biggest crime in the history of PF remastering was the non-inclusion of the full version of The Hero's Return.)

[danielcaux]

For everyone that downplays Gilmour's role and creative input here, I submit to you that TFC would not be what it is without him.

Yeah, but compared to a Waters-less Final Cut it wouldn't be THAT much different to the actual album.

By the way, whose the low backing voice that sounds like Peter Gabriel on The Hero's Return?

[nat]

For everyone that downplays Gilmour's role and creative input here, I submit to you that TFC would not be what it is without him.

Yeah, but compared to a Waters-less Final Cut it wouldn't be THAT much different to the actual album.

Oh yeah, don't get me wrong... TFC was Roger's baby. My only point is Gilmour's, uh, "touch" is definitely present.

By the way, whose the low backing voice that sounds like Peter Gabriel on The Hero's Return?

Not sure. I always assumed it was a double-tracked Roger vocal or perhaps Gilmour. Anyone know for sure?

[bigV]

There are a couple of guitar solos on tfc that are so obviously Gilmour. I doubt Waters wrote the music - I think it's Gilmour all the way.

The solo on "The Fletcher Memorial Home" in particular is a standout - one of Gilmour's best solos ever (and that's saying something).

V.

[Nicholas]

I quite like the war requiem feel of the whole concept. The Pretty Things SF Sorrow and Wizzard Brew had previously dipped their toe in the same melting pot but Roger Waters made it motion picture length. It puts me in mind of Rolf Harris' Two Little Boys and Jona Lewie's Stop The Cavalry. I'd love them to reissue it with the video collection

[olzen]

I'm thrilled to see that "The Final Cut" has a bit of a following here. I've never understood the hatred for this album. Is it because it's not "The Wall"? Beats me.

Anyway, it's not their best album, but there are some solid moments on it. I'm not really able to pinpoint a bad track on it. Maybe "Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Desert", but that's just a Holoponics excercice anyway. Roger's strained voice lends a lot of passion and urgency to the proceedings and while cranking out some beautiful solos was probably the last thing David wanted to do, he keeps doing just that here. Specifically, the solo in the title song is just spectacular and boasts some of Gilmour's saddest and most soulful playing ever. Was he channelling his own sorrow and rage over the band situation into his fingers there? Whatever he did, he'd never top that particular solo.

The worst thing I can say about this album is that the lyrical content obviously dates it more than a bit, and - especially as a foreigner - you have to study the Falklands War and Thatcher's reign quite a bit to fully get where Roger was coming from. Replace Thatcher and the Falklands War with Bush and the War on Terror and you've still got a concept album that aims at your gut and lands more than a few strong punches, though. I think it was Sean (mosespa) who remarked that were you to listen to this in the dark with headphones on, you'd likely be reduced to tears. I've never tried that myself, but the album does move me quite a bit. Even for Waters, the "Two Suns In the Sunset" is remarkably eerie and bleak.

"The Final Cut" gets 4/5. No doubt this is still a Pink Floyd album, and a good one at that. And even with Rick Wright replaced by Michael Kamen, who's little more than a skilled craftsman here, and Mason's characteristic playing having faded a lot, I still find this album a lot better than what followed.

[Duckboy]

Just upped my vote from 2 to 4. I used to really dislike this album but it isn't that bad.

[mosespa]

It's one of those albums that gets better the more you listen to it.

Top rank, for me.

[danielcaux]

I've never understood the hatred for this album. Is it because it's not "The Wall"? Beats me.

Nah, it's mostly because the music is boooooring and the lyrics are cringeworthy.

It's has a good concept though, a couple of nice Gilmour solos, two or three nice tunes from Roger, decent production, and ...that's about it.

But yeah, coming after such masterpieces as DSoTM, WYWH, Animals and The Wall sure made everything feel even more disapponitng.

[olzen]

It was bound to fall flat in the wake of those albums, no matter what they did. What they did was not flawless, but hell of a lot better than some of the other misses (at least in the eyes of their audience) in their discography. When people write how much they loathe "Not Now John" and how it's "the worst Floyd song of all time", I can't help but wonder if that means they like hog shit like, say, "A Spanish Piece" better...

[rememberaday]

Pathetic album. I rated it a 3, only because it's better than The Pro's and Consand Amused to Death. Almost as shitty as AMLOR.