If ever you believed that the rock star lifestyle was a nonstop barrage of good times, you need only listen to the music of Pink Floyd to disavow you of that notion. Most of their music finds its characters, even when they’re thinly veiled versions of Floyd’s members, in various states of dismay or torment.
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On “One of My Turns,” a visit from a groupie and the trashing of a hotel room, two activities that many would consider emblematic of the cool life of a musician, are rendered in quite harrowing fashion. It all makes sense when you remember the song was found on The Wall, where our hero Pink has a pretty rough time of it all throughout that double album.
As it “Turns” Out
The Wall, released by Pink Floyd in 1979, originated when Roger Waters, the band’s chief lyricist and conceptualist, started to sense a psychic barrier developing that separated him from his audience. Why not imagine a physical manifestation of that as well?
The story Waters concocted from that germ of an idea became much more involved and touched on all the societal ills that can cause a person to retreat from his surroundings. The main character, Pink, is damaged by different factors throughout his life, to the point he completely loses his sense of identity.
While Waters developed parts of this character from his imagination, it’s fair to say on the whole, Pink could be considered an amalgam of the songwriter himself and Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd’s onetime lead singer who suffered from mental problems and drug addiction. “One of My Turns” certainly seems to edge closer to the Barrett part of the equation, recalling his volatile behavior.
The song takes place after Pink, distraught by the realization his marriage is crumbling, attempts to take solace from the company of a female fan. But he instead snaps, smashing a hotel room to pieces and frightening the girl away. (In the song itself, the destruction is only hinted at. It’s made much more clear in visual representations, such as the stage show or movie of The Wall.)
Reviewing the Lyrics of “One of My Turns”
“One of My Turns” opens with a combination of the groupie’s vapid observations and unsubtle come-ons (Wanna take a bath?) and sounds from the television Pink is watching in a catatonic state. When he first speaks, it’s with Waters singing a dejected mumble, accompanied only by some sad synthesizers chords: Day after day, the love turns grey / Like the skin of a dying man.
He continues in this vein, seeming to address his ex-wife more than this girl right in front of him: But I have grown older, and you have grown colder / And nothing is very much fun anymore. Waters’ description of Pink’s oncoming numbness is downright chilling: I feel cold as a razor blade, tight as a tourniquet / Dry as a funeral drum. It all sounds like a drug overdose waiting to happen.
When Pink finally snaps out of it and directly addresses the groupie, the music shifts into a rocking stance, and Waters’ voice rises to a demented bellow. Beckoning the girl to get his guitar (and pointedly calling it an axe to signify the damage he’s about to do), he addresses his sudden shift in mood: Don’t look so frightened, this is just a passing phase / One of my bad days.
Things get frightening when he asks her, Would you like to learn to fly? / Would you like to see me try? So out of it is he that he can’t understand, in the wake of his violent outburst and threats of suicide, why she’s shrinking from him: Why are you running away?
At this point, Pink has shifted again, thinking back to his wife and how he needs her now more than ever (as evidenced in the next song, “Don’t Leave Me Now”). But that’s only after “One of My Turns” locates the scary humanity behind some rock star stereotypes.
Photo by Pete Still/Redferns
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