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

[FreeFour]

Ok here goes......Sonically, one of, if not, THE best sounding Pink Floyd Album

[ZiggyZipgun]

Yes, interesting that Gilmour sees the music/ lyric balance on DSOTM as flawed...

I think he was mainly disappointed with the music for "Brain Damage", which compared to all of the other songs is pretty weak, and he also felt that other parts could've been developed further. "I didn’t pull my weight when we were writing The Dark Side of the Moon. That wasn’t true when we were playing it live and recording, but I went through a bad patch. Roger worked all sorts of hours on the concept and the lyrics while the rest of us went home to enjoy our suppers. I still feel appreciative of that. He did a very good job." I think this is interesting because he'd written "Childhood's End" during that same period, and the live version had a long instrumental passage that may or may not have developed into "Shine On" (and "Empty Spaces"!).

Also, things like Mother, Hey You, Show Must Go On, Pigs on the Wing are great for Waters' take on The Band, CSN etc (I think part of the reason his increasing Americanised vocal style, right?)...

In a perfect world, Roger would've teamed up with The Band following Robbie Robertson's departure, just in time for The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking. They should've been The Bleeding Heart Band. Other than when they were on the same bill at the Fillmore West in 1970 (and Nick thought that they were "street people" that had somehow managed to get backstage), Roger only met them very briefly for Live in Berlin.

I think it's interesting, though, that when it came time for Gilmour and Wright to do solo albums, Wright at least gave his album a title which suggested a nautical theme that the instrumental song titles seem to suggest (I won't comment on the lyrics as I've heard nothing from this album,) while Gilmour released a disparate series of songs.

Christ, go listen to Wet Dream already! Broken China is a proper concept album, because he felt he could do better than the loose central theme of Division Bell, and it is much more complete than Radio KAOS or Amused to Death.

It's very significant that after KAOS's linear narrative fell apart in its final form, Roger abandoned that format - and I think that it's prevented him from following through with other ideas he's had since then. [/i]That, or the record company prevented him from following through with other ideas in that vein, which is quite possible since they did not support either of his tours in the '80s. Only The Wall, The Final Cut, and Pros and Cons have a narrative, and before that, only three albums had lyrics solely written by Roger. He himself has certainly sat around coming up with his own theories on why The Final Cut is not an enjoyable listen. The Wall was a massive success - over 30 million copies sold! - but The Final Cut still hasn't reached 3 million, and nothing he's released since then has even done half that well.

[Kerry King]

From Dark Side through Final Cut, there was always a unifying concept which seemed more important than the music;

Clearly a power struggle. Waters can't compete as a musician but he wants to maintain control of the band (this band is MY band) so he makes it about the lyrics. He figures he's good at lyrics. He's had his moments as a lyricist but very few of his songs stand alone without the production, arrangement, musicianship, visual spectacle to go along with them.

[raisemyrent]

The album is a drag. Sound effects that startle you awake. Roger knows it.
I’ve listened to it maybe twice. Top to bottom. It all melds together. My brain cells fired for the beautiful solo in the title track, or whatever, can’t tell the songs apart. And Nm not now John sounds different but a poor rehash in the end. Also the 5s or whatever in 2 suns woke some drummer cells up. Otherwise it’s one long song, just like the wall, as accurately described by Wright at the demo stage (same tempo same key same everything I think he said).
Funny. On the topic of sales. Though I know sales != quality, You could say that this album is SO bad that it could barely sell even though it came on right after what was a MASSIVE album and a legendary tour. And you got exactly what you’d think you want: more of the same. That’s how bad it is.

[azza200]

Last time i listened too it in full must be at least 6 years ago i listened too it everyday for a solid week but its so depressing i have not listened too it since then except Not Now John on Youtube a few times randomly

[space triangle]

Clearly a power struggle. Waters can't compete as a musician but he wants to maintain control of the band (this band is MY band) so he makes it about the lyrics. He figures he's good at lyrics. He's had his moments as a lyricist but very few of his songs stand alone without the production, arrangement, musicianship, visual spectacle to go along with them.

''When Syd left it was sink or swim,” he reflects, “David might have a different opinion on this, but a band can only survive if somebody is writing.”

- “We dreamt the dream,” Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters shares in a new interview with The Global Consortium for Sustainable Peace, “ 2020

[space triangle]

David Gilmour on DARK SIDE OF THE MOON/WISH YOU WERE HERE:

''DG: I remember bitching on myself at the time, after DARK SIDE OF THE MOON, about how I thought that musically some of the vehicles within it are a quite weak. It seems like a daft thing to say about an album that’s done that well really. But, I still think that the balance, moving back towards sort of more instrumental passages and some of those spacier things was a good thing to do. I like the balance of music to words on WISH YOU WERE HERE and I think we took a step back towards MEDDLE, if you like, and had a better balance of music to lyrics, and I think it’s…better – for me, better balanced than DARK SIDE OF THE MOON''.

[ZiggyZipgun]

You could say that this album is SO bad that it could barely sell even though it came on right after what was a MASSIVE album and a legendary tour. And you got exactly what you’d think you want: more of the same. That’s how bad it is.

That was my only point regarding sales figures: I don't think anyone else in the history of the music industry has seen such a staggering drop in sales from one album to the next. It's understandable that he gave up after Amused to Death, because he'd gone from reaching millions and millions of people immediately, to virtually no one - Amused to Death may have sold one million copies (unconfirmed), but it took nearly 30 years (maybe more). Even Wish You Were Here got bad reviews in the music press, but people were still buying it and going to their shows - sales figures were their only reliable source of feedback. It's how they maintained that freedom to do whatever they wanted, with zero input from the record company, going back to Atom Heart Mother - the sales said that the critics didn't know what the fuck they were talking about. So it was significant that The Final Cut only sold two million copies back then (meaning it has sold less than a million in the nearly 40 years since). It also disproves Roger's later claim that "If it said 'Pink Floyd' on it, you know, I'd sell ten million albums!"

But I think it comes down to why people listen to music in the first place. Whatever you're going through, whatever is going on in your head, you either want music that somehow fits that frame of mind, or something that can lift you out of that mood. When I was 14, one of my close friends was killed in a car accident. I listened to "Marooned" on repeat for probably two days straight and bawled my eyes out. Now, had there had been startling sound effects or anything else referencing some other time or place, even with the same exact piece of music, it would not have had the same emotional effect. The answer is never to go see what's going on in Roger Waters' head. Explosions, gunshots, cars whizzing past, people whispering about politicians or nuclear war - the fact that this doesn't even narrow down which album I'm talking about is pretty goddamn sad. He brilliantly brought theater to the album format, and effectively turned it into installation art. It might as well come with a literal brick attached, because it's not the type of music that you take with you or that plays in your head.

[scarecrow]

Yes, interesting that Gilmour sees the music/ lyric balance on DSOTM as flawed...

I think he was mainly disappointed with the music for "Brain Damage", which compared to all of the other songs is pretty weak, and he also felt that other parts could've been developed further.

Yeah, I can see that Gilmour's apparent slight regrets around his own contributions to DSOTM could put a slight damper on it for his own experience of listening to the record (if he ever does).

I probably don't have evidence via interviews etc, but would speculate that when he's talking about the lyric/ music balance it's also about musicians/ pop stars putting themselves on a pedestal delivering a 'message'. Maybe that's an unfair criticism of DSOTM, which to some degree stems from discrediting/ ridiculing of tacky end of 60s/70s countercultural gurus - Timothy Leary, new age, conspiracy theorists, eastern mysticism etc... advocating a simpler, humanist message. I wasn't around in 1973, but I think DSOTM paralleled the post-countercultural trends in USA and elsewhere - Hippies settling down, raising families etc?

I think DSOTM, WYWH, Animals, The Wall are all satisfying listens as a whole, they all have that circular thing, starting as they finish (most overtly maybe workmanlike on The Wall). I think of what Ron Geesin said about Roger Waters having a really good sense of time... when exactly each noise should happen on a record - rather than necessarily technical or rhythmic in conventional musical terms. I certainly credit Waters with having vision, taking a prominent role in assembling the records.

I think this may have even been the case on PATGOD. I recently read an in-depth piece on the recording of Piper - according to recording engineers Syd Barrett was typically disappearing from the studio often... was involved in having input as stuff was being mixed, but often Roger Waters, Norman Smith, perhaps Rick Wright shaping the record. My impression (again this is speculation really) is maybe Syd found the in-studio collaboration quite stressful. He was younger than the rest of them, he perhaps had a sound in his head of the songs, he apparently had brilliant control of his own instrument, sound palette (Julian Palacios' recent Syd Barrett techniques essay appendix to Dark Globe provides excellent analysis) but it's unclear how involved he was with the band arrangements on some of Piper. Stuff like Astronomy Domine seems likely not much altered from being a live staple, but something like the Scarecrow is brilliantly arranged, restrained then expansive in it's ending section.

By 1972 Roger Waters was clearly worn down by stupid stuff relating to the counterculture, revolution, space rock, stupid interview questions about Syd Barrett and some of the ideas on DSOTM seem a reaction against that. I suppose the record expresses a sadness at wasted potential, mental illness, drug damage but it's also something of a moral call, the opposite of 'Turn On Tune In Drop Out'. In this sense, it seems not far off Jordan Peterson's take on such things.

And the record is shaped, with Brain Damage building into this great crescendo to make for a compelling (albeit ambiguous perhaps) narrative arc. I think David Gilmour wouldn't necessarily see all this in these terms, so perhaps he's always felt slightly sceptical of the record doing that?

I like all this about DSOTM... you could say it's a somewhat 'easy' narrative arc, and The Wall more so. I'm on a tangent because I actually have hardly listened to TFC as a whole... I think you could say the shape of the record as a whole is less compelling?

I think each band member has their own perspective on their back catalogue, but when Waters presents a case against Wright's assessment of the record, it seems a rather pointless, straw man sort of argument? I see Waters' point that it's the lyrical ideas that make the record more compelling, I think that may be the case in that they 'chime' somehow but not necessarily that people enjoy the record because it's profound or intellectual (to be fair Waters has talked about the Breathe lyrics working because they're so banal and basic, in a way).

Anyway, rambling post... there does seem to have been a point, especially with making The Wall film where Waters aspired to be more of a Ken Loach, social realist intellectual, political commentator via artist? That's a fair ambition I suppose, I'm just not sure he could pull it off, so it was diminishing returns post 1979...

[ZiggyZipgun]

If one listened to what Gilmour and Waters have to say today about the 'Atom Heart Mother' album, for example, no one would ever think of listening to that album again.

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

[DarkSideFreak]

This reviewer also complained about the lack of drumming: https://donignacio.com/music/pinkfloydtracks.html#13

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,) I think that most of the complaint that Gilmour and Wright have about Waters' method of working is that it's always a concept album. From Dark Side through Final Cut, there was always a unifying concept which seemed more important than the music; or for which music could be sacrificed if it couldn't be made to serve the concept, with lyrics being paramount. Prior to Dark Side, any album was just a collection of songs that they'd all worked on. There was no overarching concept that had to be supported, so there was more "room" for musical contributions from anyone and everyone.

It's nothing I can find anything on in the public record (even on the internet,) but there was something I saw or read somewhere which had Gilmour's reaction to Water's insistence on making WYWH thematically cohesive as "another fucking concept album."

I agree with the general gist of that, but there are very different types of concept albums. WYWH and Animals have barely any musical coherence other than the sandwiching tool, which has been used on plenty of non-conceptual albums too. DSOTM, The Wall & TFC are structured totally differently, with a flow that basically unifies all the songs, and several reprises & interludes at key points (in fact, although it's far from a favourite, The Final Cut probably does this best of all - the whole operatic flow, as exemplified in the coda of "The Hero's Return" or "Southampton Dock" which set the stage for the following songs).

In the case of WYWH, turning it into a concept album did change its initial conception a lot, but the new songs written for it have no real musical connection to Shine On. Not even sonically do I hear much unifying. Animals is a slightly different beast because there were already two big songs left over that basically formed the lyrical concept around them. Coming up with said concept helped to give the whole thing cohesion, but even without it, and perhaps something else to fill the void still left between "Gotta Be Crazy" and "Raving & Drooling", the album probably wouldn't have turned out much differently, as much as the music is concerned.

The Wall & The Final Cut have more in common with DSOTM than its two successors, but the Dark Side concept was made up of leftovers from most band members and they came up with the concept pretty much as a group. Being presented with a pretty much finished story arc that David had to shoehorn some of his own contributions in (The Wall) resp. not really being asked to contribute anything (TFC) will inevitably lead to very different results.

AMLOR was the first Pink Floyd album since OBC that wasn't a concept album...and then with TDB, we're back at a concept album, though not a full-on narrative.

If TDB is a concept album, then AMLOR is too - over on APFFN (when it still existed) we went into the different levels of the lyrics on that one. Although it's not stated outright, pretty much every song fits together to create a narrative of, basically, nuclear holocaust (ironic considering that this was already something Roger was on about too).

David Gilmour on DARK SIDE OF THE MOON/WISH YOU WERE HERE:

''DG: I remember bitching on myself at the time, after DARK SIDE OF THE MOON, about how I thought that musically some of the vehicles within it are a quite weak. It seems like a daft thing to say about an album that’s done that well really. But, I still think that the balance, moving back towards sort of more instrumental passages and some of those spacier things was a good thing to do. I like the balance of music to words on WISH YOU WERE HERE and I think we took a step back towards MEDDLE, if you like, and had a better balance of music to lyrics, and I think it’s…better – for me, better balanced than DARK SIDE OF THE MOON''.

Well, this is one of the cases where I respectfully disagree with David. To me, DSOTM works brilliantly because of two things: 1) Brevity and 2) Vitality.

The songs on "Dark Side" have just the right length - this was honed on stage, of course, but so were parts of WYWH and Animals. But they never overstay their welcome; they make excellent use of typical attention spans. With WYWH, I find most of the songs filled with some padding - did WTTM really need to be seven minutes? It's barely got enough musical ideas for two or three, when you drill down to the composition itself.

Vitality - well that should be self-explanatory. DSOTM was a hungry, well-oiled live band playing with inspiration. On WYWH you can hear the absence inasmuch as the playing and singing sounds (mostly) distant and somewhat forced to me.

[penguinzzz]

If one listened to what Gilmour and Waters have to say today about the 'Atom Heart Mother' album, for example, no one would ever think of listening to that album again.

"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."

[Gslatner]

The agreement about the lack of music in this thread mimics things I’ve heard David Gilmour say. His argument was the music was being sacrificed at the expense of the theme and lyrics. I agree 100%. I think also though I do like some songs on the final cut I can’t relate to the theme. I didn’t grow up in the war or post war era so I just can’t get into it. I’m a Floyd fan so I own it on every format possible but it’s a once or twice a year listen for me max whereas I still listen to a lot of their songs multiple times a week.

[space triangle]

Kurt Loder from the Rolling Stone magazine rated 'The Final Cut' with a maximum of five stars in his album review. ''This may be art rock’s crowning masterpiece, but it is also something more'' - says Kurt.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/musi ... ut-248504/

[ZiggyZipgun]

Kurt Loder from the Rolling Stone magazine rated 'The Final Cut' with a maximum of five stars in his album review. ''This may be art rock’s crowning masterpiece, but it is also something more'' - says Kurt.

"By comparison, in almost every way, The Wall was only a warm-up."

"Whether this will be their last album as a group (the official word is no, but Wright is apparently gone for good, and even the faithful Nick Mason relinquishes his drum chair on one cut to session player Andy Newmark) is not as compelling a question as where Waters will go with what appears to be a new-found freedom. He plans to record a solo album for his next project, and one hopes that just the novelty of becoming a full-fledged human will be enough to keep him profitably occupied for many years to come."

And boy, was he disappointed!

The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking: "rock bottom one star"

"I can’t imagine that anyone will sit more than once through this strangely static, faintly hideous record, on which Waters’ customary bile is, for the first time, diluted with musical bilge." - says Kurt.

"The real knee-slapper here, though, is the music. Waters has assembled a band that features Eric Clapton on guitar and ace sax man David Sanborn, both of whom give impassioned performances (Clapton, in particular, hasn’t sounded so rawly protean in years). But the central musical focus throughout is Waters’ creepy vocal, which departs from a narrative hiss only long enough to enunciate the occasional contemptuous snarl – usually something about feckless women or bloody foreigners. And you could count the actual melodies here on Mickey Mouse’s fingers."

"The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking suggests several things. First, that the most important musical component of Pink Floyd is actually guitarist David Gilmour (whose latest solo album assumes new luster in comparison to this turkey). Second, that Waters should have a long session with his therapist before making any future public utterances about the human condition. And third, that even the most exalted English rock legend shouldn’t try to sell swill to a public that’s demonstrably less piggish than the pop star himself. Think Pink, Roger."