Don’t judge the 1983 Pink Floyd album The Final Cut based on the bad blood brewing between the band members during its creation. Listen again to its music, and you might be surprised how potent and moving several of the tracks are.
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“The Gunner’s Dream” makes its case as a classic that can hold up well with anything from the band’s catalog. It’s a song where Roger Waters delivers an anti-war story that’s both personal and universal.
A “Dream” Realized
Pink Floyd’s original idea for how to follow up the massive multimedia undertaking that was The Wall was to create an album containing some leftover songs from the project, to be titled Spare Bricks. But as Roger Waters dug deeper into the material, something else began to percolate.
Waters wanted to explore the anti-war themes that had only been a small part of The Wall on a much more thorough level. Great Britain’s involvement in the Falklands War helped push him in that direction. Soon, Waters was knee-deep in composing The Final Cut.
Unfortunately, by this time, Pink Floyd was a band in name only. Neither guitarist David Gilmour nor drummer Nick Mason had much input at all into the material on the record. Instead, they merely acted as instrumentalists in the service of Waters’ vision. Soon, Waters would be out of the band, and Gilmour would pick up the pieces to lead a new version of Pink Floyd in the second half of the decade.
None of that prevented The Final Cut from being a strong record, even if it was more solo Waters than proper Pink Floyd. “The Gunner’s Dream” features stirring music, with Michael Kamen’s score and Raphael Ravenscroft’s saxophone the defining elements. Waters articulates his theme via his main character’s sad undoing.
Exploring the Lyrics of “The Gunner’s Dream”
“The Gunner’s Dream” tells the story of a soldier who’s been forced to eject from his airplane. While he drifts downward, he reflects on the life that he’s spent. And he also takes the time to muse on the folly of war, depicting an idyllic reverie of how the world should be.
At first, Waters concentrates on the gunner’s funeral, which he envisions in his slow float down to his final resting place. A family member receives his message from above. “And as the teardrops rise to meet the comfort of the band,” Waters sings. “You take her frail hand/And hold on to the dream.”
That’s when Waters starts to explain the dream. The incidents he mentions about remote-controlled bombs were inspired by the then-recent IRA bombings in England. Beyond that, the gunner concentrates on what should be foregone truths: “Where you can speak out loud about your hopes and fears,” “You can relax on both sides of the tracks,” and “No one kills the children anymore.”
In the closing moments, the gunner recedes, and a new narrator takes his place, one who can’t bear the thought that the reverie will perish with him. “Night after night,” Waters yelps. “Going round and round my brain/His dream is driving me insane.” We find out the Gunner dies “in the corner of some foreign field.”
But the narrator refuses to let his example go for naught. “We cannot just write off this final scene,” he sings. “Take heed of the dream.” “The Gunner’s Dream” may not come true in time for the hero. But Roger Waters makes clear his fervent hope that those listening might take up the mantle and someday make it happen.
Photo by MAURICIO DUENAS CASTANEDA/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
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