The Fletcher Memorial Home
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| "The Final Cut" | ||
|---|---|---|
 |
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| Song by Pink Floyd | ||
| from the album The Final Cut | ||
| Released | March 21, 1983 (UK) April 2, 1983 (US) |
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| Recorded | July-December 1982 | |
| Genre | Progressive rock | |
| Length | ~4:12 | |
| Label | Harvest Records (UK) Capitol Records (US) |
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| Writer(s) | Roger Waters | |
| Producer(s) | Roger Waters, James Guthrie and Michael Kamen | |
| The Final Cut track listing | ||
| Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Desert (8) |
"The Final Cut" (9) |
Southampton Dock (10) |
"The Fletcher Memorial Home" is a song by Roger Waters, performed by Pink Floyd. The song appears on their 1983 album, The Final Cut. It is the eighth track on the album, and is arranged between "Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Desert" and "Southampton Dock". It was performed live by Roger Waters for the first time in 2006. The song is also featured on the Pink Floyd compilation Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd.
The song deals with Roger Waters' personal views on the Falklands War, mentioning many world leaders by name, including Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, suggesting that these "colonial wasters of life and limb" be segregated into a specially-founded retirement home. It labels all the world leaders as "overgrown infants" and "incurable tyrants", and suggests that they are incapable of understanding anything other than violence, or their own visages on a television screen.
Its concluding lyrics have the narrator collect all of the "tyrants" into the Home, and apply "the Final Solution", i.e. having them all gassed to death, presumably to keep them from causing any more chaos and death. This ties into the nihilistic themes of the album in its entirety, which concludes with a song describing nuclear armageddon as mankind's ultimate fate. As it is placed on the album, it is bracketed by songs that likewise deeply criticize the Falklands War. Roger perceived the conflict to sum up the betrayal of the British soldiers who fought and died in World War II, and that the lives of British and Argentine soldiers were being used as political pawns—for example, that Margaret Thatcher's decision to go to war was, in his eyes, designed to give her a much-needed boost in popularity. In the song he also briefly touches on communism and pre-meditated dictatorship by mentioning Joseph McCarthy "the ghost of McCarthy"
Fletcher in the name of the song is in honour and remembrance of Roger Waters' father, Eric Fletcher Waters, who died during the second World War in Anzio.
