| Is There Anybody Out There? | |
| Artist: | Pink Floyd |
| Album: | The Wall |
| Published: | Pink Floyd Music Publishers Ltd |
| Released: | 30 November 1979 (UK) 8 December 1979 (US) |
| Recorded: | April–November, 1979 |
| Genre: | |
| Length: | 2:44 |
| Label: | Harvest (UK) Columbia (US) |
| Producer: |
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"Is There Anybody Out There?" is a song from the eleventh Pink Floyd album, The Wall.[2] [3]
The first half of the piece has the same concept of "Hey You", being a distress call from Pink. Musically, it's a droning bass synthesizer with various sound effects layered on top, and a repeating chorus of "Is there anybody out there?". The shrill siren-like sound effect used during this song is also used in an earlier Pink Floyd work, "Echoes". The noise is mimicking a seagull cry. The seagull noise was created by David Gilmour using a wah-wah pedal with the guitar and output leads plugged in the wrong way round.
The second half of the song is an instrumental classical guitar solo. So in interviews, David Gilmour has said that he tried to perform it, and was not satisfied with the final result ("I could play it with a leather pick but couldn't play it properly fingerstyle").[4] Accordingly, session musician Joe DiBlasi[5] was brought in. He is wrongly credited as "Ron DiBlasi" on the Pink Floyd website.[6]
The Wall tells the story of Pink, an alienated young rock star who is retreating from society and isolating himself. At this point in the plot, the bitter and alienated Pink is attempting to reach anybody outside of his self-built wall. The repeated question "Is there anybody out there?" suggests that no response is heard.
On the other hand, "Comfortably Numb" starts with the sentence "Hello, Is there anybody in there?", addressed to Pink.
In the film Pink Floyd – The Wall, during the ominous opening to the song, Pink is standing in front of the completed wall, and throws himself against it several times as if trying to escape. Then, during the acoustic guitar section, it cuts to Pink laying out all his possessions on the floor of the hotel room in neat piles. At the end of the song, it cuts to the bathroom where Pink shaves off his eyebrows and body hair, and tries to cut off his nipples with the razor, severing them.
There are two excerpts from the TV programmes Gunsmoke and Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. overlaid in the background of the track.
The Gunsmoke excerpt is from the episode entitled "Fandango" (first aired: 11 February 1967); Dialog starts at 32:54 of the show; the dialogue is as follows:
The Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. excerpt is from the episode entitled "Gomer Says 'Hey' to the President" (first aired: 20 October 1967); Dialog starts at 1:45 of the show; the dialogue is as follows:
with:
Personnel per Fitch and Mahon.[7]