PINK FLOYD AND THEIR POLITICS

In 2010, Roger Waters gave permission to Blurred Vision, a Toronto-based rock band, led by two Iranian brothers, to produce ‘Another Brick in the Wall’ with a different set of lyrics tailored to protest the curbing of freedom in Iran, where rock music is banned. The band came up with the lyrics, “Hey, Ayatollah, leave those kids alone”, which rapidly hit around 250,000 views on YouTube. It was a fitting tribute to the original song by which has now become an anthem of protest against a failing school education system and to the band, whose art was rooted in the politics of their time.

The 1960s and 70s were a world of deep ferment and rapidly shifting sands. The post-war economic boom had ended. The Watergate scandal had left US politics rocked to the core, the Vietnam War drew to a close and the Middle East became more inflammatory than ever. Progressive and anti-establishment voices were stronger than ever, riding on the dying embers of 1968. Thatcherism was on the rise in Britain and “the 60s are over” became the popular slogan. Pink Floyd started off in the psychedelic music scene in around 1965. The band was then led by the charismatic and ever flamboyant Syd Barrett, accompanied by Roger Waters, Nick Mason on drums, and Richard Wright on the keys. They utilised greatly, the emerging mastery in light shows by syncing their experimental instrumental solos to create ambiences offering an authentic psychedelic trip experience. During the late years of the 1960s a flurry of drug related deaths rocked the image of psychedelic music. Nevertheless, Beatles did release, ‘Revolver’ in 1966, but psychedelic rock due to its encouragement of drug use acquired the skepticism of the conservative majority who were influential with the Nixon administration. Pink Floyd, thus made a slow shift to progressive rock, thereby equipping political commentary with equally liberating pieces of music. In 1967 Floyd released their first single, Arnold Layne. Pirate station BBC Radio London banned it from air due to its references to cross-dressing. This was not a band however, to shy away from controversy. The controversy provided them with much required publicity, and they rode high on it to produce their first album Piper at the Gates of Dawn, which immediately brought them international recognition. Shortly after this, Syd Barrett started showing visible signs of struggle with drug use and the band was compelled to part ways with him, making way for the legendary David Gilmour to fill the place.

In 1973 Pink Floyd released The Dark Side of the Moon. The album was promoted in two singles, Money and Us and Them. Money is a sarcastically worded critique of consumerism. It is like a sick laugh at the obsession with accumulating more and more wealth and the consequent alienation one experiences as he views people all around him as casting a jealous, evil eye towards his money. The line goes, “I’m alright Jack, keep your hands off my stash.” Us and Them tells the story of how “FORWARD! They cry from rear and the front rank died.” The theme of foot soldiers dying for the wars waged by powerful men, reappears in several of Floyd’s works. It is a reflection of the memory of Waters’ father dying at the Battle of Anzio during the Second World War. The album traces the desperate attempts of an individual to hold on to everything dear and how he ultimately has little control over time, which changes everything. In May 2020, Dark Side completed a record 950 weeks in the Billboard 200. A musical track on the album, Any Colour You Like reflects the absence of choice or rather the illusion of choice in contemporary society. Waters noted that the inspiration came from a crockery seller in his neighbourhood who used to ask the ladies to pick the plates of their choice by saying, “Take any colour you like, they’re all blue.” In 1977 Pink Floyd came out with Animals, a criminally underrated album considering its scathing delivery of political critique. Floyd took a leaf out of Orwell’s book with this one. They did not aim it at Stalinism, unlike ‘Animal Farm’. It was a strong word against the inequalities and limitations of the 20th century liberal democracies. Phil Rose, the author of Roger Waters and Pink Floyd: The Concept Albums, writes, “The album’s primary concern is to reveal the effects that technocratic capitalist relations have on the nature of human beings and the evident divisions that undemocratic structure of power create among us individuals.” The album video shows the ruling pigs, the collaborationist class of dogs and the herd of obedient sheep. The symbolism has a visible Orwellian influence. The flying pig on the backdrop of industrial chimneys has become a quintessential symbol of Pink Floyd’s politics. In the same year, Floyd toured the album by the name ‘Pink Floyd in the Flesh’. While they were performing at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium, a group of demanding audience irked Waters so much that he spat on them and stormed offstage. Nick Mason remarked that he felt “a wall between the band and the audience”.

On 30th November 1979, Pink Floyd’s 11th studio album, The Wall hit the charts. It chronicles the confusing stage the band itself was in through the journey of a boy called ‘Pink’ and his inability to form lasting emotional connections. Roger Waters said to BBC Radio that the album sent the message that, “If you isolate, you decay.” The album art of The Wall was hauntingly similar to Edvard Munch’s ‘Der Schrei’ (1893). Anca Margareta Bunca notes that a ‘scream’ is the absolute act of expression of frustration, desperation, and rage. The Wall is an album rooted in expressionism. ‘Pink’ is born during the last years of the Second World War which had adverse effects on Britain and costs Pink’s father his life. Pink is brought up by an overprotective mother obsessed with him. Pink lives a life of disorientation, fuelled by alienation, existential crises and a steady move towards schizophrenia causing him to build the wall separating him from the rest of the world which further fuels his schizophrenic tendencies. However, the album does not view insanity in isolation. It is filled with images of war, totalitarian danger and social frustrations which act as a genesis of tendencies towards insanity. The clincher in the album was the 2nd part of Another Brick in the Wall which rocketed the album to top of charts in UK, US, Norway, Portugal, West Germany, and South Africa. On 2nd May 1980, the apartheid government banned the song in South Africa. The song is a radical critique of the failing system of education which consists of ‘thought control’, ‘dark sarcasm in the classroom’ and excessive intervention by teachers.

Every experience of loss and alienation Pink has, adds another brick in the wall of alienation. The song Goodbye Blue Sky is a reference to a sky which is obscured by the presence of bomber planes. The song starts with a question, “Did you see the frightened ones? Did you hear the falling bombs?” and ends the first stanza with the provocative inquiry, “Did you ever wonder why we had to run for shelter, when the promise of a brave new world unfurled beneath a clear blue sky?”. The song is a recalling of the Blitz in England, but it is eerie how equally the first lines of the people of Japan who did not see the bomb coming. Pink’s attachment and dependence with regards to his mother is captured in the song Mother. The Trial is the culmination point of the album where Pink has to confront his delusions and put himself through the mental trial to tackle his looming insanity. In 1982, The Wall was turned into a movie directed by Alan Parker which heightened the use of symbolism. The ‘frightened ones’ are shown as four-legged anthropomorphic creatures wearing gas masks arguably claiming an imagery of being ‘bombed back to the stone age’ with a cautionary note against chemical warfare. The still images on the album art of The Wall were done by Gerald Scarfe. Scarfe shows the picture of marching hammers wrapped in Nazi colours.

Vesa Matti Sareneus has conducted an intriguing study of the public performances of The Wall by Pink Floyd and by Roger Waters and the changing imageries in them. The Wall was performed in three different ages with three different sets of imagery. The first shows in 1980–81 carried practically the same imagery and message as the album. In the 1990 Berlin shows there was a symbolic rendition and reference to the collapse of the Berlin Wall. By 2010–13, the imagery had transformed into a sharpened and more acute critique of exploitative institutions. In the 1980 and 1990 shows a Germanic eagle of war going through the dove of peace and ends with the British flag turning into bleeding crosses while the shows in the 2010s include bombers which drop crosses, David’s stars, crescent moons, the insignia of sickle and hammer, the dollar signs, the Mercedes sign and the shell company logo. Waters points out the violent contestations among ideologies and religions which make war with large corporations like Mercedes and the arms industry or the military-industrial complex. The star of David is a likely indication to the crimes of the Zionist regime of Israel. Waters has been a vocal advocate for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) movement against the Israeli establishment since its inception in 2006. The show’s use of these images invited multiple statements condemning Waters. On the tour, Waters dressed up in a parody of Nazi officers, deliberately stepping into the controversial reference to ‘Holocaust’ to describe similar methods of oppression by Israel’s Zionist regime. While on a tour to Israel in 2006, Waters painted the line, “We don’t need no thought control” on the Israeli-Palestinian security barrier in Bethlehem.

In 1983, in what appeared to be a critique of Thatcherism and a reflection of an anxiety regarding ever intensifying Cold War tensions, Pink Floyd released The Final Cut. Floyd’s ventures into political commentary did not stop with the departure of Roger Waters from the band. The Division Bell came out in March 1994. It was the band’s 14th album and the 2nd since Roger left, and the last production with Richard Wright. The song A Great Day for Freedom talks about “the day the wall came down” that is the day Berlin Wall collapsed. It contains a reference to the ‘Ship of Fools’, a classic Platonian allegory to a political system not relying on expert knowledge and hence failing. The regimes installed in the erstwhile Soviet states were hailed by capitalists as the harbinger of a democratic revolution turned out to be a nightmare of populist spontaneity. The unfounded claims of immediate and spontaneous change eventually led to ‘shock therapy’ which in simple words meant rapid, unregulated privatisation of the economy. The situation was worsened by the return of ugly nationalism and ethnic conflicts in the erstwhile Soviet states, particularly the East European and Balkan regions. Wars broke out over the drawing of borders and the instability allowed the US military-industrial complex a free pass to enter the region’s politics. Polly Samson and David Gilmour came up with the following lines to describe the situation:

“Now frontiers shift like desert sands

While nations wash their bloodied hands

Of loyalty, of history, in shades of gray.”

In 2005, for the first time in 24 years, Pink Floyd played together on stage in what would be the band’s last performance together as Richard Wright died in 2008. The performance was part of the ‘Live 8’ which was a series of benefit concerts in support of the ‘Global Call for Action’ against poverty. In 2016, the band, without Wright, reunited in support of ‘The Women’s Boat to Gaza’ a pro-Palestinian activist group, who work towards bringing attention to Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip.

David Gilmour and Polly Samson have remained vocal activists, fighting climate change. In 2015, they campaigned for the Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS), which rescued over 11,000 refugees over 2014–15. In June 2019, David Gilmour auctioned off 126 guitars and raised a whopping $21.5 billion for Client Earth, a non-profit environmental law group.

In February 2020, a video of Roger Waters reciting a translation of Amir Aziz’s Sab Yaad Rakha Jayega at a demonstration against the US-backed interventionist coup in Venezuela and anti-CAA protest. It is this foundation that pushed Pink Floyd not only to create their music at a time when the world was utterly confused about what it is but also made them deliver definitive statements, chronicling their times. It sometimes comes as a sigh of relief that not all people have failed you.