5 January 1980 - Pink Floyd - Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2)

United Kingdom
Written by Roger Waters
Produced by Bob Ezrin, David Gilmour,  James Guthrie, Roger Waters
Highest Position: 1
Label: Harvest
Formats available: 7" in company sleeve, 7" in picture sleeve

 
Just how depressed was the British public in Christmas 1979?  Usually in the 1970s you got a heart-warming festive treat performed by Slade or Mud as the Yuletide chart champion.  But, with that tired decade on its last legs, British record-buyers just about summoned the energy to buy en masse the most depressing Christmas number one ever.

It was also a curious release, given that the Cambridge progressive rock band had steadfastly refused to release any singles at all during the previous years of the decade.  And what they released was hardly obvious commercial fare.  The song really only makes sense in the context of The Wall, a sprawling double album about a rock star whose sense of alienation grows so powerful it turns him into a deeply unpleasant character who eventually has to learn to re-connect with the world.  It is partly autobiographical, as Waters was reflecting on how fame had turned him into someone he wouldn't really want to meet.  The song is a direct reflection on his own unhappy schooldays, and forms part of a trilogy within the album.  It features moody, downbeat instrumentation as the band plods through a not at all dynamic mid-paced arrangement, and a chorus line that's barely there at all.  Meanwhile, a discordant cockneyed accented children's choir joins in with the second verse and chorus to sinister effect.  The song then ends on David Gilmour's tasteful guitar soloing towards the fade.

The band do not appear in the video, which features the choir plus some brilliant animated artwork from Gerald Scarfe (the marching hammers segment is a superb image of totalitarianism, and has frequently been parodied).

For all its lugubrious content, it remains a pretty powerful piece of moody art-rock, with a slightly incongruous disco beat.   I'm still surprised that it became so popular.  I suppose the anti-establishment mood of opening line "We don't need no education" fitted in well with the post-punk zeitgeist, but to me the line was lazy.  The problem isn't education (a good thing that opens the mind) but with school, which can be a deadening, hidebound institution.   I'd even argue that a school's obsession with rote learning and endless rule-following is actually anti-education.

For Pink Floyd, the album was the beginning of the end.  They made only one more album with Waters (the poorly-received The Final Cut) before being ejected from the band as a bitter feud had made working relationships impossible.  The band's new Gilmour-led line-up made a couple more albums.  Waters frequently returned to The Wall in his solo career, often staging lavish live shows filled with special guests.  This song has ultimately become his signature tune, it would appear.