Pink Floyd: what are "swollen hand blues?"

In Pink Floyd’s album “The Wall,” the song “Nobody Home” contains the line, “got those…swollen hand blues…”.

Later on, in “Comfortably Numb,” David Gilmour sings: “When I was a child, I had a fever…my hands felt just like two balloons…”

What is the significance/meaning behind these two lyrics?

The “Nobody Home” line is possibly a masturbation reference; though some have interpreted it as a symptom of heroin abuse.

The line in “Comfortably Numb” just refers to the kid’s fever, I think.

The line in “Comfortably Numb” was explained by Roger Waters as a detail recalled from his own life, where his hands swelled up in reaction either to illness or to a medication. No metaphoric significance intended there.

“Swollen hand blues” I took to be a reference to masturbation.

From a 1980 radio show with Jim Ladd interviewing Roger Waters:

“swollen hand blues” refers to masturbation. Gilmore (or maybe Roger Waters) copped to that in an interview with Jim Ladd that I heard on the radio shortly after the album was released.

As for the other thick hands, just a fever thing on how your body doesn’t feel right undwer those circumstances.

Dammit, Biffy. That’s the interview I was thinking of. Guess I remembered wrong.

Another Waters quote:

Guess we’re all a bunch of perverts.

When this song came out I knew exactly what he meant by:

I had several bouts of really high fever as a child and experienced the same phenomenon. Probably some sensory loss or hallucination caused by the fever. I don’t know if it is common but I recognized the meaning of the phrase immediately.

Apparently other people have had the same feeling.

In my case, it wasn’t just my hands - my whole body swelled up to fill the room. It got all soft and bubbly and spongy, too.

Or at least, that’s how it felt. So I knew what he meant in the song.

This is that one exception for the rule about rock song lyrics: if you don’t know what it is about, it’s about sex.

Y’know, I might be sorry I asked, but yeah, why would anyone think those lines are about masturbation?

Isn’t everything?

I thought the whole idea was that once, when “Pink” was a kid, he got sick and either the drugs or the fever made him feel strange, as if his body was inflating and his mind was drifting away.

Decades later, grown-up rock star Pink has overdosed on drugs in his hotel room, and is feeling the same kind of sensations. For a moment, he feels as if he’s about to experience some important psychic or spiritual revelation… but then the band’s doctor injects him with a stimulant, bringing him more-or-less back to reality, and ending any hope he had of a grand spiritual breaktrough.

It mentions hands, and…

There’s plenty of sex in rock lyrics, but this way of thinking brings about a lot of misunderstandings and weirdness.

Or drugs.

All y’all are sick. :stuck_out_tongue:

Long time fan of Pink Floyd. It never once occured to me that the line “swollen hands blues” was a reference to masturbation. To me it sounded like a complaint from a tired, worn out blues guitar player, complaining about sore (swollen) hands after a gig. Perhaps due to arthritis setting in after years of play. <shrug>

I mean, read the lyrics for the entire song. Doesn’t it paint a picture of a tired old musician who’s done too much hard living?

And in this case, drugs IS correct.

“Comfortably Numb” is about rock star Pink (Roger Waters’ alter ego) getting high in his hotel room. All kinds of images go through his head, including a memory of a childhood illness that had given him similarly weird sensations long ago.

That’s what I’ve thought all along as well.

Aye, me too.

Ditto. The masturbation angle never occurred to me. I don’t know about anyone else, but when I masturbate, it’s not my hands that swell up.

I used to feel like that whenever I was given sudafed as a kid. That was back when sudafed had the ‘good’ ingredients.

That was my uninformed take on it. Seemed to fit the image with nicotine-stained finger and a grand piano to prop up his mortal remains.