"The Fletcher Memorial Home" is a song by Roger Waters, performed by Pink Floyd.[1] The song appears on their 1983 album, The Final Cut.[2] It is the eighth track on the album, and is arranged between "Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Desert" and "Southampton Dock". The song is also featured on the Pink Floyd compilations Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd[3] and A Foot in the Door – The Best of Pink Floyd.
The song is about Waters' frustration with the leadership of the world since World War II,[4] mentioning many world leaders by name (Ronald Reagan, Alexander Haig, Menachem Begin, Margaret Thatcher, Ian Paisley, Leonid Brezhnev, Joseph McCarthy andRichard Nixon), 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.[5]
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.[5]
Fletcher in the name of the song is in honour and remembrance of Roger Waters' father, Eric Fletcher Waters, who died during theSecond World War at Anzio.[4] Fletcher was the maiden name of Eric Waters' mother.
It's notable that the name is also associated with the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, also known as theFletcher School.
In The Final Cut Video EP the Fletcher Memorial Home scenes are filmed at Forty Hall in Enfield.
"The Fletcher Memorial Home"
Take all your overgrown infants away somewhere
And build them a home, a little place of their own.
The Fletcher Memorial
Home for Incurable Tyrants and Kings.
And they can appear to themselves every day
On closed circuit T.V.
To make sure they're still real.
It's the only connection they feel.
"Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome, Reagan and Haig,
Mr. Begin and friend, Mrs. Thatcher, and Paisly,
"Hello Maggie!"
Mr. Brezhnev and party.
"Scusi dov'è il bar?"
The ghost of McCarthy,
The memories of Nixon.
"Who's the bald chap?"
"Good-bye!"
And now, adding colour, a group of anonymous latin-
American meat packing glitterati.
Did they expect us to treat them with any respect?
They can polish their medals and sharpen their
Smiles, and amuse themselves playing games for awhile.
Boom boom, bang bang, lie down you're dead.
Safe in the permanent gaze of a cold glass eye
With their favorite toys
They'll be good girls and boys
In the Fletcher Memorial Home for colonial
Wasters of life and limb.
Is everyone in?
Are you having a nice time?
Now the final solution can be applied.
And build them a home, a little place of their own.
The Fletcher Memorial
Home for Incurable Tyrants and Kings.
And they can appear to themselves every day
On closed circuit T.V.
To make sure they're still real.
It's the only connection they feel.
"Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome, Reagan and Haig,
Mr. Begin and friend, Mrs. Thatcher, and Paisly,
"Hello Maggie!"
Mr. Brezhnev and party.
"Scusi dov'è il bar?"
The ghost of McCarthy,
The memories of Nixon.
"Who's the bald chap?"
"Good-bye!"
And now, adding colour, a group of anonymous latin-
American meat packing glitterati.
Did they expect us to treat them with any respect?
They can polish their medals and sharpen their
Smiles, and amuse themselves playing games for awhile.
Boom boom, bang bang, lie down you're dead.
Safe in the permanent gaze of a cold glass eye
With their favorite toys
They'll be good girls and boys
In the Fletcher Memorial Home for colonial
Wasters of life and limb.
Is everyone in?
Are you having a nice time?
Now the final solution can be applied.
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