The Gunner's Dream
1983 song by Pink Floyd
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"The Gunner's Dream" is a song from Pink Floyd's twelfth studio album The Final Cut (1983).[1][2] This song was one of several to be considered for the band's "best of" album, Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd (2001).[3] The song tells the story and thoughts of an airman gunner as he falls to his death during a raid, dreaming of a safe world in the future, without war. It is one of the four songs on the video version of the album The Final Cut Video EP. In his lyrics, Waters references real-life events including the then very recent Hyde Park and Regent's Park bombings by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), and takes the refrain "some corner of a foreign field" from Rupert Brooke's poem The Soldier (1914).
2 April 1983 (US)
| "The Gunner's Dream" | |
|---|---|
| Song by Pink Floyd | |
| from the album The Final Cut | |
| Published | Pink Floyd Music Publishers Ltd |
| Released | 21 March 1983 (UK) 2 April 1983 (US) |
| Recorded | July–December 1982 |
| Genre | |
| Length | 5:07 |
| Label | Harvest (UK) Columbia (US) |
| Songwriter | Roger Waters |
| Producers |
|
| Music video | |
| "The Gunner's Dream" on YouTube | |
Critical reception
In a retrospective review for The Final Cut, Rachel Mann of The Quietus described "The Gunner's Dream" as the album's centerpiece; the track "tenderly imagines the lost hopes and expectations of a bomber gunner shot down and falling to his death over Berlin."[4] Mann believed Waters' voice is "beautifully matched to words whose understatement adds to the power."[4]
Personnel
Pink Floyd
- Roger Waters – vocals, bass guitar, and tape effects
- David Gilmour – guitar
- Nick Mason – drums
with:
- The National Philharmonic Orchestra conducted and arranged by Michael Kamen
- Raphael Ravenscroft – tenor saxophone
- Michael Kamen – piano and electric piano
- Andy Bown – Steinway piano
Use of the song in media
The song was re-recorded with Durga McBroom on vocals for inclusion in the soundtrack for G.B. Hajim's animated sci-fi musical Strange Frame (2012).[5][6][7]
