The Fletcher Memorial Home

The Fletcher Memorial Home 4:11

Lyrics:
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 TV
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 Paisley, Hello Maggie!
Mr Brezhnev and party.
The ghost of McCarthy,
And the memories of Nixon.
And now, adding color, Who's the bald chap?
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 abuse themselves playing games for a while
Boom boom, bang bang, lie down you're dead

Safe in the permanent gaze of a cold glass eye
With their favorite toy
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?      Good-bye!
Now the final solution can be applied

This bitter and angry song, named after Roger's father, expresses his feelings about the tyrants who toy with human life the way a child might with plastic army men. Roger's 'final solution' for these uncaring demagogues is the same as that which one of their number dreamed up at Wannsee, Germany on 20 January 1942.

Roger Waters: "Just because something's going to be a lyric in a song, that lots of people may listen to, doesn't mean that one should temper one's personal feelings any more than one would talking to somebody in a pub." [TAP 48]

* Sung lyric (shown here) is different from the one on the printed lyric sheet.

TRACK LISTING
Post War Dream, The
Your Possible Pasts
Hero's Return, The
Gunner's Dream, The
Paranoid Eyes
Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Desert
Fletcher Memorial Home, The
Southampton Dock
Final Cut, The
Not Now John
Two Suns in the Sunset