The Happiest Days of Our Lives
| "The Happiest Days of Our Lives" | |
|---|---|
| Song |
The Happiest Days of Our Lives is a song by the British progressive rock band Pink Floyd. It was released on The Wall album in 1979.
Composition
The song is reasonably loud in dynamics. It is approximately 1 minute, 52 seconds in length, beginning with 24 seconds of a helicopter approaching followed by shouting from the schoolmaster. After that the sound effects abruptly cut out for the lyrical portion. Throughout the most of the song, the lead instrument is the bass guitar and during the bridge to Another Brick In The Wall Part II, there are intense drums and backing vocals.
At the end of the song, there is an abrupt halt in the music. This is due to the fact that The Happiest Days of Our Lives is followed by Another Brick in the Wall, Part II, and the two mesh together in what is often mistaken as one song. It is due to this that many radio stations play the two songs together.
Plot
As with the other songs on The Wall, The Happiest Days of Our Lives tells a portion of the story of Pink, the album's protagonist. In this song, his rather horrendous education is revealed, alongside a violent schoolmaster.
Film Version
Pink and his friends try to put a bullet on the rail track's (one of his father's bullets). Pink is caught in the tunnel where the train passes with masked kids inside, then the teacher appears shouting, then disappears. We then go to his school where his teacher scolds him for making a poem (the lyrics from "Money" from Dark Side of the Moon), we then see him having dinner with his wife, where he then sees images of himself beating his students.
Personnel
- David Gilmour - guitars, backing vocals
- Nick Mason - drums, percussion
- Roger Waters - bass, lead vocals, backing vocals
- Richard Wright - clavinet, organ
- James Guthrie - percussion
References
- Fitch, Vernon. The Pink Floyd Encyclopedia (3rd edition), 2005. ISBN 1-894959-24-8
Trivia
In the movie based on the album, the sound at the beginning of the song is depicted as coming from a train entering a large tunnel, rather than a helicopter heard on the album.
According to Gerald Scarfe, there was supposed to be a puppet of the teacher at the end of the tunnel in the film. Alan Parker made shots of it, but it didn't work, so they used the actor who played the teacher to do it instead.
It is believed that the teacher in the film is the same one from The Final Cut album.
Also in the movie, the Teacher, upon discovering young Pink's "poem", reads it aloud to the class. The "poem" he recites is actually a portion of the lyrics from the song "Money" from Floyd's earlier album, "Dark Side of the Moon".
When Kate Bush was trying to add a similar helicopter to the fadeout of her single "Experiment IV," her recording engineers were unable to duplicate the overwhelming sound. So she asked Roger Waters for the original tape, and he obliged her as long as he was thanked in the credits.