Inside Out (34 page)

A number of other studios were used for specific overdubs, including Olympic, RAK, Eel Pie, and Roger and David’s own home
studios, both of which were now equipped to professional levels. Roger’s studio name, the Billiard Room, indicated the contents
augmenting the 24-track recorder…

Part of this was a desire to avoid returning to Britannia Row, which although now in much better shape technically, still
lacked a number of qualities that James felt were essential. It was also probably a wise decision to use neutral studios rather
than Britannia Row: in the confines of our own nuclear bunker things might have become terminally explosive on the inside
rather than the outside. The only real technical hitch we experienced at Mayfair was the assistant who overslept and kept
us locked out on a weekend just before Christmas, when we had all made a particular effort to come in – for his own safety
he was advised not to return in the New Year.

On one occasion during the recording of
The Final Cut,
James remembers a rather fraught session at the Billiard Room, with Roger attempting to perfect a particular set of vocals:
‘Roger was in his customary position, perched on the edge of the billiard table, headphones on, and singing. Most days, Roger
was in his stride and able to capture a moving vocal performance fairly quickly. Today was an off day. Pitch was not coming
easily, and the tension began to build. Michael was just not in the mood. He had not said a word for quite some time and his
attention was clearly elsewhere. He scribbled with great focus on a legal pad.’

Eventually Roger, distracted by Michael’s apparent lack of interest, stormed into the control room and demanded to know what
Michael was writing. ‘Michael had decided that he must have done something unspeakable in a past life, something he was now
karmically paying for by having to endure take after take of the same vocal performance. So he had written over and over on
his legal pad, page after page, line after line, “I must not fuck sheep”. He was not sure exactly what he had done in this
past life, but “I must not fuck sheep” seemed like a pretty fair guess.’

Some years later, when Michael was on tour as part of Roger’s band, the touring party were issued with T-shirts. All of them
had ‘Am I really cost effective?’ written on them in mirror writing (to remind them first thing every morning), while the
band had individualised messages on their T-shirts. Michael’s particular one read
… Both Michael and James, perhaps surprisingly,
belong to the extremely exclusive band of collaborators who have survived to work again with all of us.

My own part in the proceedings was pretty minimal for a while. I was spending more and more time motor racing: in 1981 I had
failed to get to Le Mans,
The Wall
shows having taken precedence. Steve, however, had done a remarkable piece of jet-setting by driving in the start of the
race, before rushing back to Earls Court
for the show on the Saturday night, and then returning to the circuit to drive in the latter half of the race on the Sunday
morning. To make up for this, I had organised one particularly smart piece of promotion in the form of encouraging Wilfred
Jung, the president of EMI Germany, to sponsor the Dorset Racing Lola 298 to run at the Nürburgring 1,000-km race in 1981
in full
Wall
livery. This was actually not very difficult since Wilfred was the most ardent motor race fan. I think we both felt that
this was exactly how to cement artist–company relations. The following year I had returned to Le Mans sharing a drive with
Steve. Between sponsor hunting, practice sessions and a disastrous part-ownership of a Grand Prix team, it’s a wonder I ever
found time to get to the studios…

Still, I spent some days laying down a few drum tracks and a certain amount of time turning up to show willing and to remind
everybody I existed. These undemanding tasks were only augmented when it became clear that another ingredient was failing
to live up to expectations: the holophonic sound effects were not working. At the start of recording we had been approached
by an Italian audio boffin called Hugo Zuccarelli. He claimed he had devised a new holophonic system that could be recorded
simply onto stereo tape. We were sceptical since some previous forays into the wonderful world of quad during the 1970s had
proved to be far too complex. The quad recording process required vast amounts of track space and seemingly endless adjustments
to the control knobs to place the sounds in the quadraphonic spectrum. Not only was the process extremely complicated in nearly
all aspects, but also the number of lunatics prepared to position their armchair precisely in the centre of their living room
to get maximum enjoyment from the experience was insufficient.

However, Hugo Zuccarelli’s holophonic – or ‘total sound’ – system
was different. It really worked. I still don’t know exactly how because it only used a pair of stereo mikes contained within
a dummy head. This provided some spatial sonic quality that when heard back through headphones replicated the way the human
ear works in daily life. Hugo’s first demo cassette was truly startling: I remember one effect where a box of matches was
shaken and moved around your head so it seemed to be behind, above or below. If you closed your eyes while listening on the
headphones it was quite disorientating and completely convincing.

We immediately decided to use the system for all the sound effects on the album, and I was volunteered to escort the holophonic
head (which answered to the name of Ringo) to various locations to capture the sound of church bells or footsteps. Roger was
particularly taken with the Doppler effect of traffic going by, and the musical effect that was created as the passing vehicle’s
tone changed. Finally my motor racing experience paid off: I spent many a happy hour capturing the sounds of the Queen’s Highway,
and trying to record screeching tyres on the skidpan at the Hendon Police Driving School (a total failure since even with
their brakes fully locked the cars glided over the oil slicks in eerie silence).

Roger also wanted warlike plane sounds. Through a high-ranking air force contact, I was granted permission to record a number
of Tornadoes at RAF Honington in Warwickshire. It was an extraordinary experience to stand at the end of the runway trying
to set a level for a sound so intense that as the afterburners were lit up the air itself was crackling with sonic overload.
I also drew on the old pals’ network to persuade a friend who was flying Shackletons to record one of the planes in flight.
The thought of a half-day spent circling the ocean looking for non-existent submarines did not thrill me, but Ringo manfully
accepted the
mission and was returned for breakfast and medals, along with twelve hours’ worth of droning aircraft noise on tape. I do
still have a twinge of guilt that I had so much help from friends within the armed forces, and that all that work ended up
on a protest record. I hope they have now all forgiven me.

It was a pity that before I’d even started work on
The Final Cut,
Roger felt it necessary to announce aggressively that since whatever I did ‘was drumming’, I couldn’t claim either extra
royalties or credit for any of this work. This really did seem like behaviour beginning to border on the megalomaniac, particularly
since I posed no threat to his plans. I decided to look on the bright side: at least it was a way of escaping from the fraught
atmosphere in the studio.

If I was not having much fun, David was certainly not having an easy time either. Roger was studiously ignoring any of David’s
suggestions, which is why he probably wanted Michael on board to augment the musical input. In many ways Michael was probably
as much a substitute for David as for Rick or Bob, given his melodic strengths and his experience in writing, and arranging.
It may well have been paranoia, but it did look as though David was being frozen out. By the time
The Final Cut
was finished Roger was effectively running the show. I think we had always worked on the basis that the writers should have
the final say on how the work should be produced. With no writing contribution at all from David his role was inevitably eroded.

However, I have no recollection of discussing whether it should be released as a Roger Waters solo album. In any case, such
a plan would probably already have been too late. The record company were expecting a Pink Floyd album, and would not have
taken kindly to being presented with a Roger Waters solo work. I would have resisted it because it would, I think, have signalled
the end of
the band, and I do have an unfortunate tendency to operate in the belief that ‘if we do nothing, maybe the problem will go
away’. And the option of us starting all over again on a group album at some point in the future seemed unthinkable. We should
of course have resolved these issues at the time, but we somehow dodged them completely.

Although we possessed a remarkable ability to enrage and upset each other, while still maintaining a straight face, we never
acquired the skill of talking to each other about important issues. After
The Dark Side Of The Moon
there had been a pronounced tendency for all of us to deliver criticism badly – and to take it even worse. Roger is sometimes
credited with enjoying confrontation, but I don’t think that’s the case. I do think Roger is often unaware of just how alarming
he can be, and once he sees a confrontation as necessary he is so grimly committed to winning that he throws everything into
the fray – and his everything can be pretty scary. On the positive side I think it is an enormous asset to his golf, tennis
and poker playing… David, on the other hand, may not be so initially alarming, but once decided on a course of action is hard
to sway. When his immovable object met Roger’s irresistible force, difficulties were guaranteed to follow.

What ensued was a massive argument about credits; eventually David’s name disappeared, although it was agreed that he would
still be paid. Michael Kamen remained as co-producer – along with James Guthrie.

Why were we prepared to go along with what felt like Roger’s takeover? We accepted so many things as inevitable that, looking
back, seem unnecessary. Such craven compliance might have been the result of gradual changes wrought in the band structure
over the previous decade. Perhaps lacking confidence in his own writing abilities, David may have felt that if we confronted
these issues we risked losing Roger and being unable to continue. Or in
the aftermath of Rick’s departure maybe we feared being marginalised and then negotiated out individually. It pains me to
admit it, but whatever the reasons, the tendency to cast Roger as the ultimate villain, though tempting, is probably misplaced.

I remember this period as particularly tense, with a sense of struggling to hold things together. My own life was not exactly
in apple-pie order. After the year away I was dealing with my own dramas. I was breaking up my marriage to Lindy and about
to hurtle into a new relationship with my present wife Annette. Given my penchant for avoiding confrontation in emotional
issues and real life it would smack of understatement to say this was not an easy time. It was particularly dreadful for Lindy
and my two daughters Chloe and Holly, although I have a bad feeling that I probably felt that I was the one really suffering.

By the time of the album’s release in March 1983 another Floyd connection had been severed. Due to some heavy budgetary overspend
on one video shoot, Storm and Po had disbanded Hipgnosis (citing ‘visual differences’ perhaps) and despite Gerald Scarfe’s
involvement in
The Wall,
Storm might reasonably have expected to pick up the job. However, both Gerry and Storm were passed over, and Roger chose
to design the cover himself. He used Willie Christie to take the pictures – I think this was a slight embarrassment for Willie,
since he happened to be Roger’s brother-in-law as well as an excellent photographer – but the absence of Hipgnosis did add
another few decibels to the impression of the ‘Last Post’ being sounded for the Pink Floyd that once had been.

I don’t think Roger feels entirely happy with
The Final Cut –
‘deeply flawed’ is one comment he made, I believe – but there must be many things about it he is happy with. The fact that
it is dedicated to his father spells out how personal the record was to him, and in a way how disenfranchised from it the
rest of us were.
For me the record represents such a difficult time in my life that this overrides any real judgement of the pieces. As with
all our records the final finished disc is as much a diary of a certain number of months of my life, rather than a musical
piece that I can view objectively.

Music is capable of tapping directly into a particular phase of your life, and you can maintain affection for dreadful songs
for years and years (‘Extraordinary how potent cheap music is’ as Noel Coward put it). For recording musicians, the odd thing
is that this time-frame is out of kilter, as the reality of an album actually exists in a period up to a year
prior
to its release. For me,
The Final Cut
is
the latter half of 1982, rather than 1983…