The Powerful and Personal Pink Floyd Lyric That Slipped Between the Cracks

Songs that are intensely personal can sometimes feel insular. They might fail to resonate with listeners who haven’t lived through the experience. Roger Waters certainly ran that risk with the song “When The Tigers Broke Free”.

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Waters managed to render the song, which is based on his father’s death in World War II, as both a haunting history lesson and a profound antiwar protest. Sadly, “When The Tigers Broke Free” managed to fall between the cracks of the Pink Floyd catalog for many years.

Waters’ Recollections

Roger Waters wrote “When The Tigers Broke Free” with the intent of including it on The Wall, Pink Floyd’s 1979 double album. The seed for that album came from Waters’ disillusionment with the rock music experience. But it eventually encompassed many aspects of his autobiography.

Pink, the album’s protagonist, has a father who died in World War II. Roger Waters’ own father, Eric, suffered a similar fate. He perished in the Battle of Anzio in 1944. “When The Tigers Broke Free” recounts those tragic events. It also details Waters, as a boy, finding out about his father’s exploits.

In the end, Pink Floyd decided not to include the song on The Wall, at least in terms of the album. “When The Tigers Broke Free” did appear in the film of the movie, and Pink Floyd released it as a single in 1982. But it never showed up on an official Floyd album release around the time when it was recorded.

The song was eventually included in reissues of The Final Cut, the 1983 Pink Floyd album that dug even deeper into Waters’ anti-war sentiments. It’s too bad that this song was so difficult to track down for a few decades, because it’s a powerful, moving piece of work.

Behind the Lyrics of “When The Tigers Broke Free”

Waters does something quite special with the lyrics to “When The Tigers Broke Free”. On the one hand, he squeezes in all the details, so that the listener knows what’s happening. But he also manages to make a subtle commentary on his father’s death. He honors Eric Waters’ sacrifice. But he also hints at the cost of war that reverberates far beyond which side wins the battle.

Waters suggests that the officers make decisions that don’t take into account the threat to their soldiers. The elder Waters’ commander wants to fall back to protect his men, but “the generals” insist they stay put. “And the Anzio bridgehead/Was held for the price/Of a few hundred ordinary lives,” Waters sings in woeful tones.

The scene then shifts to young Roger discovering the honors that his father won, bestowed upon him by “kind old King George.” Even decades later, the moment sticks with him. “And my eyes grow damp/To remember His Majesty / Signed with his own rubber stamp,” Waters sings. You can hear his lips curl into a sneer as he sings that last line.

In the final verse, we’re pulled into the midst of the battlefield. Waters’ voice rises an octave to meet the desperation of the moment. “And no one survived / From the Royal Fusiliers Company Z,” he bellows. His final words are those of a child, suggesting how his father’s death stunted him: “And that’s how the High Command / Took my Daddy from me.”

By the time Pink Floyd released this song, Roger Waters had assumed almost complete creative control of their output. That situation was untenable, and Waters soon was on his own as a solo act. “When The Tigers Broke Free” was a kind of test run for that situation, as he sang a song about his family’s tragic history that also made a larger point about war’s devastation.

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