Bring the Boys Back Home

Original song written and composed by Roger Waters

"Bring the Boys Back Home" is a song by the English rock band Pink Floyd released on their 1979 album, The Wall. The song was released as a B side on the single, "When the Tigers Broke Free".

The original Pink Floyd concerts of The Wall were so expensive that, ultimately, the band lost money staging them. They were also, at that time, the most elaborate stage productions a rock band had ever mounted. For these reasons, and others, it is understandable that the band chose to use the original recordings of Michael Kamen's orchestral arrangements, rather than hire and rehearse a live orchestra, for what was then considered a rock and roll concert. Recordings of the original sound effects (televisions, helicopters, various atmospheric effects) were also used (as were the specific echo effects in several songs, such as "Hey You" or "Stop"). With the use of click tracks, the musicians were able to play in sync with the recordings (with the additional result that they reproduced nearly every song at its precise original tempo). As "Bring the Boys Back Home" is performed by an orchestra, with a large number of drummers, and none of the typical rock and roll instruments, Roger Waters would simply sing along to a remix of the studio recording. This is demonstrated on Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live 1980–81, paying special attention to the ending, when the "live" Roger Waters drops out, and his recorded lead vocal remains, sustaining the last note with the unique wavering heard on the studio album. Ten years later, when Roger Waters—by then a solo artist—decided to stage a massive re production of The Wall at the site of the recently dismantled Berlin Wall, he had the personnel and the finances for a full scale arrangement (Particularly because it was understood to be a charity concert for the Memorial For Disaster Relief). Using the extended arrangement from the film, Waters sang (in his most strident, histrionic style) while backed by the Rundfunk Orchestra and Choir, band of the Combined Soviet Forces in Germany and the Red Army Chorus. When Waters resurrected the concept of The Wall for his 2010 2012 tour, The Wall Live, the song was again central to the show's political message. Throughout the song, the projections on the fully built wall slowly gave a 1953 quote from former U. S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower:

text=Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.

In the film, the song is sung by a large choir, without Waters' lead vocal. It is also expanded, with an extended vamp on the subdominant before repetition of the full four line lyric. "Bring the Boys Back Home" is about not letting war, or careers, overshadow family relationships or leave children neglected. This is symbolised in the film, in which the protagonist, Pink, is seen as a young boy at a train station. The station is filled with soldiers returning from war, their loved ones happy to greet them. But though he wanders around in vain, there is no one for Pink to embrace, as his father did not make it home alive. The happy crowd sings an exultant tune, "Bring the Boys Back Home", but the song ends abruptly on a minor chord as Pink suddenly realises he is alone. The crowd of reunited families then vanish. As the last notes die away, we see his embittered and alienated adulthood. Memories of events that drove Pink to isolation begin to recur in a loop: The teacher from "Another Brick in the Wall", the operator from "Young Lust", and the groupie from "One of My Turns", Pink's manager knocking and yelling out, "Time to go!" (to play a concert) and insane laughter are also mixed into the closing seconds, concluding with the ominous voice from "Is There Anybody Out There? ", reverberating slowly into silence, and segueing into "Comfortably Numb" as Pink’s manager bursts through the door finding Pink unconscious from an overdose.