Another Brick In The Wall #3

Click here if you haven't read Part 1 or Part 2.

And now, we continue on our journey with Mr. Pink Floyd. We last him while he was at school, and now he has declared that he doesn't "need [any] arms around me." Though we hears smashing at the beginning of "Another Brick In the Wall Pt. 3", he continues to build his wall.

Pink's Mum

Next, we find Pink conversing with his mother. In "Mother," Pink expresses his fears and asks many questions to his mum and instead of comforting him, she says that "Mama's gonna make all your nightmares come true." In this song, we find that his mother is very controlling and overbearing and she wants him to stay by her side even when he grows up and gets married. Mother encourages Pink to build his wall and says "Of course Mother's gonna help build the wall." In the end, Pink asks "Mother, did it need to be so high?" So is Pink questioning the necessity of the Wall or does he just feel overprotected?  [Fun Fact #1: Nick Mason had a tough time with the time signatures that he turned the drumming duties over to a studio drummer.]

We hear a skylark singing and a child takes our attention away from Pink and his mother by saying "Look, Mummy, there's an aeroplane in the sky." The lyrics describe a memory of the Blitz, the bombing of the UK during World War II. However, in Roger Waters' recent tour, he uses the song as a metaphorical cultural bombing and plays animated videos of corporate logos and religious symbols being dropped from planes.

Pink's wife, portrayed as a Praying Mantis since she seems to feed off of him, a trait of female Mantises.

But Pink is on the move (we can infer this from the airport announcement we hear at the beginning of "Empty Spaces") to America for his big Rock 'n' Roll Tour. This tune has Pink wondering how he should finish building his wall while his marriage is suffering due to his physical distance while on tour and the incomplete wall. But the Wall isn't completed until "Young Lust." Technically, the word "wall" doesn't finish until the bluesy, raunchy song "Young Lust" starts. 


Thus, Pink has found the way to work on the wall: cheating on his wife while on tour. He asks if a "dirty woman" would help "make [him] feel like a real man" since his wife is so cold. The real twist to this song is the ending when Pink calls home collect via telephone operator and a man at his residence picks up the phone and hangs up twice, implying that Pink's wife is cheating on him too. [Fun Fact #2: The collect call recording was done by co-producer James Guthrie while working on the album in LA. He phoned his neighbor in London, pretended that he had caught his wife cheating, and the studio recorded the surprised operator's reaction.]

To hear about how Pink deals with this revelation, look for Part 4, coming soon!