Although I would imagine that memories of this tend to be hazy... for many—most—Americans aged 50 and older, it’s fairly likely that the first time they heard Pink Floyd (unless they were serious musos with subscriptions to Crawdaddy, Rolling Stone and Creem) was via the 1972 single “Free Four” (as in “One, Two, FREE FOUR!”) their first song to garner significant FM radio airplay, making it into the top 50.

“Free Four” comes from the group’s Obscured by Clouds soundtrack produced for Barbet Schroeder’s La Vallée (“The Valley”) film. It’s the second song the Floyd would record (after A Saucerful of Secrets’ “Corporal Clegg” in 1968) about Roger Waters’ father, who died in WWII. Now largely forgotten,“Free Four” is a jaunty little number, apparently, until you pay attention to the lyrics, which are as biting and as bitter as anything Waters has ever written:

The memories of a man in his old age
Are the deeds of a man in his prime.
You shuffle in gloom in the sickroom
And talk to yourself till you die.
Life is a short, warm moment
And death is a long cold rest.
You get your chance to try
In the twinkling of an eye:
Eighty years, with luck, or even less.
So all aboard for the American tour,
And maybe you’ll make it to the top.
And mind how you go.
I can tell you, because I know.
You may find it hard to get off.
You are the angel of death
And I am the dead man’s son.
And he died like a mole in a fox hole.
And everyone is still in the run.
And who is the master of foxhounds?
And who says the hunt has begun?
And who calls the tune in the courtroom?
And who beats the funeral drum?

And who would have thought that about a year later, the purveyors of this depressing ditty would unleash one of the top selling albums of all time? You’ll note that “Free Four” sounds like Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky” played by The Kinks with Marc Bolan on second guitar and sung by Paul McCartney.
 

 
“Free Four” picture sleeves are among the most collectible of all Pink Floyd records.