Pink Floyd
The Final Cut
(Columbia/Capitol, 1983)

And now, it’s time for another edition of Point/Counterpoint, the online rock ‘n’ roll game that invites you, the reader, to play along at home. This week’s installment is brought to you by the good people at Fletcher Memorial Home, who would like to remind you that death—while tragic—is just another fact of life. And so, without any further adieu, Crawdaddy! is proud to present Point/Counterpoint:

Today’s topic: Pink Floyd’s The Final Cut (original US release date: April 2, 1983).

Point: When Roger Waters originally proposed taking the leftover tracks from The Wall, which Pink Floyd originally intended to release under the name Spare Bricks, and incorporating them into a full-blown LP, David Gilmour openly questioned how a collection of songs that weren’t good enough the first time around could possibly form the foundation of a full-length Pink Floyd record now.
Counterpoint: Waters felt he could recast the emotion of those songs, using his own father’s death as the inspiration for a record about the atrocities of war, the difficulty of adjusting to life after serving on the field of battle, and the hypocrisy of a ruling class that doesn’t learn from its own mistakes.

Point:The Final Cut is the only Pink Floyd record on which one member (Roger Waters) is given sole songwriting credit.
Counterpoint: Waters had effectively shut himself off from the rest of the band by that point. The egomaniacal behavior that began with the banishing of Rick Wright continued throughout the recording of The Final Cut and eventually led to the breakdown of Pink Floyd as we know it.

Point: David Gilmour once said, “The Final Cut was the low point in our Pink Floyd career, for me, personally.”
Counterpoint: Roger Waters once said, “The Final Cut was absolutely misery to make, although I’ve listened to it of late and I rather like it a lot.”

Point: Roger Waters claims that you can hear “mad tension” running throughout The Final Cut.
Counterpoint: Mad tension is often the basis for great art.

Point:The Final Cut only sold about three million copies.
Counterpoint:The Final Cut sold about three million copies.

Point:The Final Cut peaked at #1 on the British charts.
Counterpoint:The Final Cut only reached #6 on the US charts.

Point:The Final Cut is a bloated record that attempts to force 10 pounds (and 40 years) worth of heartache and despair into a five-pound sack.
Counterpoint:The Final Cut has so many things happening beneath the surface that you can listen to it 100 times or more and still pick up on elements you hadn’t heard before.

Point: David Gilmour felt that specific references to Margaret Thatcher, Brezhnev, Begin, and Reagan (among others) caused The Final Cut to lack a certain timeless quality that was an intentional trademark of records like Animals, Dark Side, and The Wall.
Counterpoint:The Final Cut is just as relevant today as it was 25 years ago. One man’s Margaret Thatcher is another man’s George Bush. One nation’s Falkland Islands is another nation’s war in Iraq. One generation’s postwar dream is another generation’s “Mission Accomplished;” one generation’s mistake is still the next generation’s burden. And as faceless soldiers continue to die like dogs on the field of battle, it’s worth remembering that each of them were fathers and daughters, brothers and sons, that in the space between the heavens and the corner of some foreign field, every one of them had a dream.

Point:The Final Cut is droll and depressing, sorely lacking the type of sly wit and candor that served to balance records like Animals, Dark Side, and The Wall.
Counterpoint: Any record that ends with the phrase, “Tomorrow will be cloudy with scattered showers spreading from the east… with an expected high of 4,000 degrees Celsius,” cannot be considered humorless.

Point: The members of Pink Floyd were in such horrible disarray after The Final Cut that they didn’t even tour in support of the record.
Counterpoint: Some things are better left in their place.

Point: It was Roger Waters who once said that everything after Dark Side of the Moon was like “10 years of hanging on to the married name and not having the courage to get divorced, to let go; 10 years of bloody hell.”
Counterpoint: It was also Roger Waters who said, “We were all equal in the end.”

(Just a friendly reminder that we welcome both parallel and opposing points—and counterpoints—of view in the comments section below.)

Watch: Pink Floyd, “The Final Cut” [at youtube.com]

Tags: Pink Floyd, The Final Cut, Roger Waters

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