So the band doctor is summoned. Usually his biggest worries are making sure the shit the band members are doing is clean, helping them come down after a jag, and maybe prescribing penicillin. But this time it’s really bad: the lead band member is having a full-blown psychotic break; the guy’s on the verge of catatonia. But if he isn’t onstage and performing in ten minutes it all goes down the toilet: contracts cancelled, millions in penalty clauses, etc.
So: what does a totally unethical doctor give someone who’s this mentally ill that will at least get him functional (if hallucinating) for the next few hours; and what does this do to an already damaged psyche?
Benzos are actually the typical treatment for it (according to a quick google search). Also, the song was inspired by an IRL event where Roger was given sedatives before a show to calm his nerves.
I think that’s not quite right. IIRC, he had some kind of food poisoning (“…but you may feel a little sick”). Not sure when that was supposed to have happened (or if I’m remembering correctly), but the only song written by Roger Waters on The Piper at the Gates of Dawn is “Take Up Thy Stethescope and Walk.”
The food poisoning you’re referring to is likely the nerves I’m referring to. Everything I’ve read said that he had stomach cramps which that the doctor thought assumed was due to nerves/stage fright and gave him a sedative to keep him going through the show.
The incident that inspired the song happened in 1977 and Comfortably Numb is on The Wall, not Piper At The Gates Of Dawn.
Yeah, I know, I’m just saying there’s an earlier reference to Roger Waters’ disdain for doctors. There’s an interview or something in which he explains the reference in Comfortably Numb. I might have it, will post if I come across it, not that important, as you say.
Given the Pink Floyd boys were relatively clean, I wouldn’t be surprised if the verse was inspired by an incident where Waters felt a bit under the weather and the manager got him a nice hot cup of tea :D.
Amphetamines wouldn’t make sense with the rest of the song. There is no pain. You are receding. Only coming through in waves. You may feel a little sick.
At least to me, that all sounds like someone on opiates.
Agreed. I couldn’t find the interview I mentioned in my last post, and what you said is right there in the Wikipedia entry (it says “tranquillisers”). In an interview that I did find online, Waters says that it was hard for him to raise his arm to play, which doesn’t sound like a stimulant.
The thing is, I remember the word botulism being used in the interview that I couldn’t find, and, if that’s the case, I think he wouldn’t even have been able to stand, let alone finish a show. So if that word was used, it seems more likely that it was used incorrectly.
Maybe it was a pot belge ? A little bit of this, a little bit of that. (Wiki mentions a mix of cocaine, heroin, caffeine, amphetamines, other analgesics, morphine, and strychnine.)
That certainly suggests that Pink is uncommunicative, maybe catatonic.
The next questions then suggest depression:
It’s always been unclear to me if the response from Pink is entirely internal at this point - the spaced-out feel of the chorus always makes me feel that it is, and that he is in a disassociative state …
Then The Doctor gives an injection
It seems clear to me that this is an upper at this point - probably too much, inducing the authoritarian mania of the following In the Flesh reprise (which is really the performance from the beginning of the soundtrack) and leading to the panicked mental escape of Run Like Hell.
The post-upper letdown is Waiting for the Worms/The Trial
I’ve probably spent way too much time listening and thinking about The Wall