The Pink Floyd song Roger Waters said was full of “misery and pain”
None of Pink Floyd’s songs are particularly cheery. The British progressive rock icons had a monopoly on gloom as their tracks grappled with everything from simple heartache to fictionalised dystopias for depressed rock stars to exist within. But for one track, the sadness held within it was a very real experience for Roger Waters.
It’s no wonder that the group’s music often dipped into melancholy when considering their personal history. The impact of their original leader, Syd Barrett’s painfully dark descent into drugs and mental illness hit the band hard, contributing to the sadness that hung over many of their songs. But even after he’d left the group and become estranged from the old friends, the very nature of life is that pain will always be part and parcel of living.
During the recording of the band’s seminal album, The Wall, Waters was feeling the lows of life. Even though the album is most commonly talked about regarding Barrett, with the record’s depressed protagonist seeming to take his shape, one deeply emotive track is a personal cut from Waters, who found catharsis in writing.
‘Hey You’ is a direct call out, whether that be for help, healing or a final glimmer of connection as his relationship failed. “Can you feel me?”, “Would you touch me?”, “Can you help me?” he sings, becoming more desperate yet more isolated as the verses go on. To Waters, it was a sad reflection of how he felt at the time as heartbreak crept in.
“It’s about the breakup of my first marriage, all that misery and pain and being out on the road when the woman declares over the phone that she’s fallen in love with somebody else,” he told Mojo. “It’s about the break-up of my first marriage, all that misery and pain and being out on the road when the woman declares over the phone that she’s fallen in love with somebody else,” he continued, able to joke about it now.
But that devotion that Waters himself describes as “hopeless” is felt in the track as metaphorical walls are built higher and higher, trapping him in pain and isolating him from the world, including his lover. “The wall was too high, as you can see / No matter how he tried, he could not break free,” he sings as he realises he can’t escape the feeling or the situation.
“I could do nothing but go fetal and weep,” Waters said.
But, much like hoards of other writers who have put their saddest thoughts down into art, Waters hoped there would be some good that could come from it. Whether it be simply a soundtrack to make others feel less alone when they found themselves in the same pit of despair or as a liferaft proving that things would get better for listeners just as they did for Waters himself, he hoped it could prove helpful.
“The song is also partly an attempt to make connections with other people, to say that maybe if we act in consort, some of the bad feelings will go away,” he said, adding, “In community, there is comfort”.
