The Fletcher Memorial Home

Song_infobox
Name = The Fletcher Memorial Home


Artist = Pink Floyd
Album = The Final Cut
Released = March 21 1983 (UK)
April 2 1983 (US)
track_no = 9
Recorded = July-December 1982
Genre = Progressive rock
Symphonic rock
Length = ~4:12
Writer = Roger Waters
Label = Harvest Records (UK)
Capitol Records (US)
Producer = Roger Waters, James Guthrie and Michael Kamen
prev = Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Desert
prev_no = 8
next = Southampton Dock
next_no = 10"The Fletcher Memorial Home" is a song by Roger Waters, performed by Pink Floyd. The song appears on their 1983 album, "The Final Cut". It is the eighth track on the album, and is arranged between "Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Desert" and "Southampton Dock". It was performed live by Roger Waters for the first time in 2006. The song is also featured on the Pink Floyd compilation "" [http://www.cduniverse.com/search/xx/music/pid/2232147/a/Echoes:+The+Best+Of+Pink+Floyd.htm] .

The song is about Waters' frustration with the leadership of the world since World War II [http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=5155] , mentioning many world leaders by name, including Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, suggesting that these "colonial wasters of life and limb" be segregated into a specially-founded retirement home. It labels all the world leaders as "overgrown infants" and "incurable tyrants", and suggests that they are incapable of understanding anything other than violence, or their own visages on a television screen.

In its concluding lines, the narrator of the song gathers all of the "tyrants" inside the Fletcher Memorial Home and imagines applying "the Final Solution" to them (i.e. having them all gassed) presumably to keep them from causing any more chaos and death. This ties into the general theme of the album in its entirety, which concludes with a song describing nuclear armageddon as mankind's ultimate fate. As it is placed on the album, it is bracketed by songs that likewise deeply criticize the Falklands War. Waters perceived the conflict to sum up the betrayal of the British soldiers who fought and died in World War II, and that the lives of British and Argentine soldiers were being used as political pawns; for example, that Margaret Thatcher's decision to go to war was, in his eyes, designed to give her a much-needed boost in popularity.In the song he also briefly touches on fascism and the Red Baiting of the 1950s by mentioning Senator Joseph McCarthy ("the ghost of McCarthy") in connection with all the other tyrants. Waters also implies that the majority of the public did not respect the "tyrants" as he clearly states "did they expect us to treat them with any respect."

"Fletcher" in the name of the song is in honour and remembrance of Roger Waters' father, Eric Fletcher Waters, who died during the Second World War at Anzio [http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=5155] .

This song is considered to have libertarian leanings, with the general distrust of political leaders and accusations of tyranny. [http://sandefur.typepad.com/freespace/2005/05/more_libertaria_1.html] [http://austrianeconomists.typepad.com/weblog/2008/03/no-folk-songs-f.html]

ee also

*D-Day Dodgers

References