| "The Happiest Days of Our Lives" | ||||||||||
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| Song by Pink Floyd from the album The Wall | ||||||||||
| Released | 30 November 1979 (UK), 8 December 1979 (US) | |||||||||
| Recorded | April–November, 1979 | |||||||||
| Genre | Progressive rock | |||||||||
| Length | 1:46 | |||||||||
| Label | Harvest Records (UK) Columbia Records (US)/Capitol Records (US) |
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| Writer | Waters | |||||||||
| Producer | Bob Ezrin, David Gilmour, James Guthrie and Roger Waters | |||||||||
| The Wall track listing | ||||||||||
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"The Happiest Days of Our Lives" is a song by Pink Floyd.[1] It appeared on The Wall album in 1979.[2]
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The song is approximately 1 minute, 46 seconds in length, beginning with 24 seconds of a helicopter sound effect; followed the schoolmaster shouting (in a helicopter) "You! Yes, You! Stand still, laddie!". Then the sound effects abruptly cut out for the lyrical portion. Throughout the most of the song, the lead instrument is the electric guitar with an added delay effect, and during the bridge to "Another Brick in the Wall, Part II", there are intense drums and backing vocals. Due to the smooth transition from this song to "Another Brick in the Wall, Part II", it might give the listener the impression that this song is part of "Another Brick".
On the album, "The Happiest Days of Our Lives" segues into "Another Brick in the Wall, Part II" with a loud, high-pitched scream by Roger Waters (this sound is later reprised on Run Like Hell). Because of this segue, many radio stations play one right after the other.
In the film based on the album, the sound at the beginning of the song is depicted as coming from a train entering a large tunnel, rather than a helicopter heard on the album. According to Gerald Scarfe, there was supposed to be a puppet of the teacher at the end of the tunnel in the film. Alan Parker made shots of it, but it didn't work out, so they used Alex McAvoy, who played the schoolteacher, to do the scene instead. Before the cut in the middle for the Schoolmaster to mock Pink, somewhat quiet hysterical laughter is heard, extremely similar to the Schoolmaster's voice.
As with the other songs on The Wall, "The Happiest Days of Our Lives" tells a portion of the story of Pink, the album's protagonist. Pink is sent to a school which is run by strict and often violent teachers who treat the pupils with contempt.
According to Waters, the lyrics were a reflection of his own negative experience in school. He described this in an interview with Tommy Vance of BBC Radio One.
| “ | Tommy Vance: "The Happiest Days of Our Lives' is, er, a complete condemnation, as I see it, as I've heard it in the album, of somebody's scholastic career."
Roger Waters: Um. My school life was very like that. Oh, it was awful, it was really terrible. When I hear people whining on now about bringing back Grammar schools it really makes me quite ill to listen to it. Because I went to a boys' Grammar school and although... I want to make it plain that some of the men who taught (it was a boys school) some of the men who taught there were very nice guys, you know I'm not... it's not meant to be a blanket condemnation of teachers everywhere, but the *bad* ones can really do people in—-and there were some at my school who were just incredibly bad and treated the children so badly, just putting them down, putting them down, you know, all the time. Never encouraging them to do things, not really trying to interest them in anything, just trying to keep them quiet and still, and crush them into the right shape, so that they would go to university and 'do well'." |
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—Roger Waters — Tommy Vance Show interview, 1979[3] |
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Pink and his two friends go down to a railway track to lay bullets on the rails and watch them explode under the passing train. Pink, putting himself up against the tunnel wall, sees that the train cars are packed with faceless people. The imagery here once again takes us to the Second World War, and the idea of cattle cars filled with Holocaust victims is undeniable. He sees his teacher at the other end of the tunnel yelling at him to stand still. In the next scene, which takes place in Pink's school, the teacher discovers Pink writing a poem, which contains lyrics from "Money", and, as punishment, ridicules Pink by reading his poem out loud to the entire class then slaps his hand with a ruler. The following scene shows the Schoolmaster in his own home, being forced to eat a piece of tough meat during dinner at his wife's silent command. To relieve himself of this frustration, the teacher spanks a child with a belt the next day. In the film, it seems the Schoolmaster is not so vicious as in the album, but nonetheless Pink views him in a negative way.
When Kate Bush tried to add a similar helicopter sound effect to the fadeout of her single "Experiment IV", her recording engineers were unable to duplicate the overwhelming sound, so she asked Roger Waters for the original tape, and he obliged as long as it was mentioned in the credits.
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