Empty Spaces

"Empty Spaces"
Song

"Empty Spaces" is a song by the English progressive rock band Pink Floyd, featured as the eighth track on their 1979 rock opera The Wall. It is the second known song by Pink Floyd to contain a backmasked message, the first being "Bike".

Composition

The song is in E minor, and is two minutes, eight seconds in length. It features a long introductory section, with solo guitar and a repetitive drumbeat, and an airport announcement, as a reference to Pink heading for a concert tour. The song reaches a climax of tension, at which point Roger Waters plays a descending blues scale over the minor dominant, B minor, cueing the start of the vocals. Roger Waters sings a short verse, ending on the phrase "How shall I complete the wall?" This track shares a backing track with "What Shall We Do Now?", sped up from D to E, with new guitar and vocals. The last beat introduces the next song, "Young Lust".

Plot

The Wall tells the story of Pink, an alienated and embittered rock star. At this point in the narrative, Pink is now grown up and married, but he and his wife are having relationship problems because of his distance, and his nearly-complete emotional "wall". Pink asks himself how he should complete its construction.

Movie and live versions

On both the film adaptation and the recording of the live performance of this album, the song is dropped in favour of "What Shall We Do Now?".

Hidden message

Directly before the lyrical section, there is a hidden message. It is isolated on the left channel of the song. When heard normally, it appears to be nonsense. If played backwards, the following can be heard:

–Hello, Luka [hunters]... Congratulations. You have just discovered the secret message. Please send your answer to Old Pink, care of the Funny Farm, Chalfont...

–Roger! Carolyne's on the phone!

–Okay.

Roger Waters congratulates either a girl named Luka, or 'hunters' (i.e. people who deliberately look for backward messages hidden in songs) for finding this message, and jokes that she (or they) can send her (or their) answer to "Old Pink" (being either a comical reference to Syd Barrett, or a foreshadowing of Pink's eventual insanity), who lives somewhere in a funny farm (a term to describe a psychiatric hospital) in Chalfont. Before he can reveal the exact location, however, he gets interrupted by someone (James Guthrie) in the background who says Carolyne (Waters' then wife) is on the phone.

Covers

• The song was covered by Mushroomhead for the Universal re-release of XX.
• In 2009, AGM House Band covered it for a never-completed tribute to The Wall.
• In 2010, the progressive rock band Astra covered the track for a compilation album covering The Wall (titled The Wall: Rebuilt).|

Personnel

• David Gilmour – guitars, clavinet, Prophet-5 and ARP Quadra synthesizers
• Nick Mason – drums (only in the full version of the song, "What Shall We Do Now?")
• Roger Waters – vocals, bass, VCS3
• Richard Wright – piano

with:

• James Guthrie – ARP Quadra synthesizer

Further reading

• Fitch, Vernon. The Pink Floyd Encyclopedia (3rd edition), 2005. ISBN 1-894959-24-8.

External links

• Lyrics of this song at MetroLyrics