Pink Floyd - The Hero's Return
Pink Floyd - The Hero's Return


Pink Floyd - The Hero's Return Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: The Final Cut
Released: 1983

The Hero's Return Lyrics


Jesus, Jesus, what's it all about?
Trying to clout these little ingrates into shape.
When I was their age all the lights went out.
There was no time to whine or mope about.
And even now part of me flies over
Dresden at angels one five.
Though they'll never fathom it begind my
Sarcasm desperate memories lie.

Sweetheart sweetheart are you fast asleep? Good.
Cause that's the only time that I can really speak to you.
And there is something that I've locked away
A memory that is too painful
To withstand the light of day.

When we came back from the war the banners and
Flags hung on everyone's door.
We danced and we sang in the street and
The church bells rang.
But burning in my heart
My memory smolders on
Of the gunners dying words on the intercom.

Writer/s: WATERS, ROGER
Publisher: Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

The Hero's Return
  • Roger Waters wrote all of the songs on The Final Cut, which was his last album with Pink Floyd. In "The Hero's Return," he sings about the homecoming of a soldier who needs understanding but receives adulation, which does him no good. Waters was very much antiwar, as he saw the trauma inflicted on the returning soldiers. He says that the character in this song is the teacher portrayed in the 1979 Pink Floyd album The Wall - a person with considerable demons whose only job prospect is in the school system. At the end of this song, we learn that our hero is haunted by hearing his war comrade's dying voice over an intercom.
  • This song has a missing last verse:
    "Jesus Christ, I might as well be dead
    if I can't see how dangerous it must feel to be
    training human cogs for the machine
    without some shell-shocked lunatic like me
    bombarding their still soft shores
    with sticks and stones that were lying around
    in the pile of unspeakable feelings I'd found
    when I turned back the stone turned over the stone
    of my own disappointment back home."
    This verse references "lunatic" from "Brain Damage," and The Machine from the Wish You Where Here album. (thanks, Mike - Mountlake Terrace, Washington)