The Final Cut (album)

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This article is about The Final Cut, the rock album. For the other uses, see the disambiguation page The Final Cut.

The Final Cut is a rock album by Pink Floyd recorded at several studios in the UK from July to December 1982.

Contents

1 Introduction 2 Track listing 2.1 On the original release 2.2 On the 2004 re-release 3 Personnel 4 Quotes 5 Singles 6 Charts 7 External link

Introduction

The LP was released in the UK on March 21, 1983 and then in the US on April 2. The Final Cut reached #1 on the UK album charts and #6 in the US. On May 23, 1983, The Final Cut went Gold and Platinum and then Double Platinum on January 31, 1997.

Originally scheduled as the film soundtrack for the band's movie The Wall, it evolved into a new concept album, railing against war, and subtitled A Requiem for the Post War Dream.

The album itself seems to be divided into two separate stories that transfer to each other:

• One seems to be Waters' view on world affairs at the moment (Tracks 1, 5, 7-9, 11, 12). Much of this was formed by the Falklands War, and condemns Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, and Menachem Begin, among others. He also espouses his views of his proper world, and ends the album with a nuclear holocaust he fears might happen.

• Also there is of short story of a WW II veteran's mental plight (Tracks 2-4, 6, 10), presumably because of being involved in the bombing of Dresden. The tracks then feature him dealing with memories of the war (Your Possible Pasts), taking out his problems on schoolchildren (One of the Few, The Hero's Return), lamenting his life (Paranoid Eyes), and coming close to killing himself (The Final Cut). The teacher is also mentioned in The Wall, viewed as "one of the bricks" by it's main character, Pink.

"Not Now John" was released as a single (with the chorus' "fuck all that" overdubbed as "stuff all that"), backed by an extended version of "The Hero's Return". There was also a video EP, with film accompaniment for four of the songs, directed by Waters' then brother-in-law.

In 1986, the album was released on CD. A digitally remastered CD was released in 1994. A remastered and repackaged CD was released on March 19, 2004 in Europe and May 4, 2004 in the U.S. to commemorate the album's 21st anniversary. The track "When the Tigers Broke Free", previously only available as a single, on the soundtrack to the movie version of The Wall or on Echoes, was added.

Track listing

On the original release

1. "The Post War Dream" - 3:02
2. "Your Possible Pasts" - 4:22
3. "One of the Few" - 1:23
4. "The Hero's Return" - 2:56
5. "The Gunner's Dream" - 5:07
6. "Paranoid Eyes" - 3:40
7. "Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Desert" - 1:19
8. "The Fletcher Memorial Home" - 4:11
9. "Southampton Dock" - 2:13
10. "The Final Cut" - 4:46
11. "Not Now John" - 5:01
12. "Two Suns in the Sunset" - 5:14

On the 2004 re-release

1. "The Post War Dream" - 3:00
2. "Your Possible Pasts" - 4:26
3. "One of the Few" - 1:11
4. "When the Tigers Broke Free" - 3:16
5. "The Hero's Return" - 2:43
6. "The Gunner's Dream" - 5:18
7. "Paranoid Eyes" - 3:41
8. "Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Desert" - 1:17
9. "The Fletcher Memorial Home" - 4:12
10. "Southampton Dock" - 2:10
11. "The Final Cut" - 4:45
12. "Not Now John" - 4:56
13. "Two Suns in the Sunset" - 5:23

All songs composed by Roger Waters.

Personnel

• David Gilmour - guitar and vocals
• Roger Waters - bass and vocals
• Nick Mason - drums
• Michael Kamen - piano harmonium
• Andy Brown - hammond organ
• Ray Cooper - percussion
• Andy Newmark - drums on "Two Suns..."
• Raphael Ravenscroft - tenor sax
• The National Philharmonic Orchestra conducted and arranged by Michael Kamen

Quotes

"The Final Cut was absolutely misery to make, although I listened to it of late and I rather like a lot of it. But I don't like my singing on it. You can hear the mad tension running through it all. If you're trying to express something and being prevented from doing it because you're so uptight...It was a horrible time. We were all fighting like cats and dogs. We were finally realising—or accepting, if you like—that there was no band. It was really being thrust upon us that we were not a band and had not been in accord for a long time. Not since 1975, when we made Wish You Were Here. Even then there were big disagreements about content and how to put the record together [...] It sold three million copies, which wasn't a lot for the Pink Floyd. And as a consequence, Dave Gilmour went on record as saying, "There you go: I knew he was doing it wrong all along." But it's absolutely ridiculous to judge a record solely on sales. If you're going to use sales as the sole criterion, it makes Grease a better record than Graceland."

—Roger Waters, June 1987, to Chris Salewicz

"Well, this has been my beef for years, I mean always has been one of my beefs about what we do is that the balance has to be maintained. I've said it hundreds of times, ad nauseam I've said it—it's the balance between the words and the music I think is a very important thing and that's what I think we lost very much on The Final Cut."

—David Gilmour, Australian Radio, February 1988

"The Final Cut was the lowest point in our Pink Floyd career for me personally. I started off trying to do my best on that record... I had tried to point out to Roger that some of the tracks he wanted to put on it were tracks we had rejected off The Wall album because we didn't like them y'know. Roger just thought I was interfering... he'd got to a sort of megalomaniac stage where he could not tolerate anyone else having any real say in what was going on. We did fight horribly throughout that whole period."

— David Gilmour recalls himself about the album during the early 1990's,

Singles

• "Not Now John(obscured version)"/"The Hero's Return(Parts I and II)" - Columbia 38-03905; released May 3, 1983

Charts

Album - Billboard (North America)

Year	Chart	Position
1983	Pop Albums	6

Singles

Year	Single	Chart	Position
1983	"Not Now John"	Mainstream Rock Tracks	3
1983	"Your Possible Pasts"	Mainstream Rock Tracks	8
1983	"The Hero's Return"	Mainstream Rock Tracks	31

External link

• Album info, lyrics and trivia (http://www.pinkfloyd-co.net/disco/tfc/tfc_album.html)Template:Pink Floyd

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