Recorded July–December 1982 | Length 4:12 | |
Published Pink Floyd Music Publishers Ltd Released 21 March 1983 (UK)
2 April 1983 (US) Genre Progressive rock, symphonic rock, hard rock Label Harvest Records (UK)
Capitol Records (US) | ||
"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". The song is also featured on the Pink Floyd compilations Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd and A Foot in the Door – The Best of Pink Floyd.
Contents
History
The song is about Waters' frustration with the leadership of the world since World War II, mentioning many world leaders by name (Ronald Reagan, Alexander Haig, Menachem Begin, Margaret Thatcher, Ian Paisley, Leonid Brezhnev, Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon), 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.
In its concluding lines, the narrator of the song gathers all of the "tyrants" inside the Fletcher Memorial Home and imagines applying "the Final Solution" to them.
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 at Anzio. Fletcher was the maiden name of Eric Waters' mother.
In The Final Cut Video EP the Fletcher Memorial Home scenes are filmed at Forty Hall in Enfield.
Personnel
with: