Remember When Mommy Issues Popped up on a Pink Floyd Classic in 1979?

Songs about parents can go in any number of directions. Many musicians like to pay sweet tribute to their mother and/or father in song. But others might try to exorcise some demons if their parental relationships were somewhat strained. Roger Waters of Pink Floyd definitely went in the latter direction on the song “Mother”.

Although the song comes from the perspective of the main character in The Wall, all evidence points to the lyrics being Waters’ own feelings about his own mom.

Roiling Waters

Up until The Wall, Roger Waters often cloaked any autobiographical notions in his Pink Floyd lyrics behind the conceptual trappings of records like The Dark Side Of The Moon and Wish You Were Here. That all changed when it came time for Floyd’s final album of the 70s.

Waters dreamed up the concept for the double album after an incident where he spat on a fan who was leering at him during a concert. He wondered about the possibilities and implications of a band performing while walled off from their audience.

That idea seemed to exemplify a deeper societal malaise, that of people separating from each other instead of coming together. He used a character named Pink as his avatar of sorts within the album. But many of Pink’s biographical details could be tracked back to Waters’ own life, including the presence of an overbearing mother.

Another Brick

As Waters fleshed out the idea for The Wall, he focused on the concept of “bricks.” These bricks represented the life events that can cause a person to become psychologically and emotionally isolated. The song “Mother” represents one of those formative bricks.

In the song, Waters plays the role of Pink, asking his mother how he should proceed in his life. David Gilmour sings as the mother, offering what seems like comfort but actually turns out to be smothering affection that prevents Pink from truly being himself.

Does “Mother” Know Best?

In an interview with Mojo (per Songfacts), Waters confirmed that the song mostly dovetailed with his own life experiences:

“My mother was suffocating in her own way. She always had to be right about everything. I’m not blaming her. That’s who she was. I grew up with a single parent who could never hear anything I said, because nothing I said could possibly be as important as what she believed. My mother was to some extent a wall herself that I was banging my head against.”

The character of Pink’s mother later reappears at the end of The Wall. In the song “The Trial”, she comes to the defense of her son, offering to the judge that she’ll take him home to prevent him from the charges against him.

“Mother” might not make it onto any lists of the most heartwarming parental songs in rock history. But its honesty in depicting a less-than-ideal mother-son relationship is what makes it so subtly powerful.

(Photo by Koh Hasebe/Shinko Music/Getty Images)