Roger Waters Final Pink Floyd Album ‘The Final Cut’ Turns 40

‘The Final Cut’, the final Pink Floyd album to feature Roger Waters, turned 40 this week.

‘The Final Cut’ was released on 21 March, 1983. Waters left the band in 1985. It is also the only Floyd album to not include keyboard player Richard Wright, who left the band over a dispute with Waters but returned as soon as Roger left.

Pink Floyd’s previous album was ‘The Wall’. After the 1979 release of The Wall, Pink Floyd set to work to create a movie version of the album and started work on soundtrack music for the film.

‘The Final Cut’ was a difficult piece of work. Waters began to take a dictator role within the band, leading to Richard’s departure and both David Gilmour and Nick Mason lacked incentive to produce for the album. Gilmour took exception to Waters political leaning in the songs and was not happy when Waters pushed five unused ‘The Wall’ songs onto the album, “Your Possible Pasts”, “One of the Few”, “The Final Cut”, “The Fletcher Memorial Home”, and “The Hero’s Return”.

Waters sang all but one song on the record and wrote all of the songs. The result is basically a Waters solo record with David and Nick contributing.

1. The Post War Dream (3:02)
2. Your Possible Pasts (4:22)
3. One Of The Few (1:23)
4. When The Tigers Broke Free (3:13)
5. The Hero’s Return (2:56)
6. The Gunner’s Dream (5:07)
7. Paranoid Eyes (3:40)
8. Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Desert (1:19)
9. The Fletcher Memorial Home (4:11)
10. Southampton Dock (2:13)
11. The Final Cut (4:46)
12. Not Now John (5:01)
13. Two Suns In The Sunset (5:14)

Pink Floyd recorded two more albums after ‘The Final Cut’. ‘A Momentary Lapse of Reason’ was released in 1987 and the final Floyd album ‘The Division Bell’ was released in 1994.

One more album followed. ‘The Endless River’ in 2014 was made from mostly unused recordings from ‘The Division Bell’ and a pipe organ played by Richard Wright during a rehearsal for an Albert Hall concert in London in 1969.

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