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Two Suns in the Sunset
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Wikipedia article
"'Two Suns in the Sunset'" is the closing track on Pink Floyd's 1983 concept album 'The Final Cut', and Roger Waters' final chronological contribution to the band, before leaving in 1985.
Since there was no promotional tour for 'The Final Cut', and this album was entirely ignored by Gilmour, Wright and Mason during the tours for 'A Momentary Lapse of Reason' and 'The Division Bell', "Two Suns in the Sunset" was never performed live by Pink Floyd. However, Roger Waters, as a solo artist, premiered the song almost 35 years after its release in a concert from the Us + Them Tour, held on 17 October 2018 at Itaipava Arena Fonte Nova in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. Waters also played it in 2022 on his This Is Not a Drill tour.[https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/roger-waters/2022/ppg-paints-arena-pittsburgh-pa-1bb52978.html]
Lyrics and music
Partway through the song, the lyric "the sun is in the east, even though the day is done" refers to the glowing fireball of a nuclear explosion. The song was partly inspired by Andrzej Wajda's movie 'Ashes and Diamonds' (Polish: Popi i Diament)
Session drummer Andy Newmark plays drums on this song, as Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason felt unable to perform its complex time signature changes. The song begins and ends in 9/8 time, while the majority of the song is in 4/4 (or "common time"), and it is punctuated with added measures of 7/8 and 3/8. Adding to the complexity, the main theme of the rhythm guitar has chords changing emphatically in dotted eighth notes, so three eighth-note beats are divided equally in two. This is not unlike what "Mother", from the previous Pink Floyd album, 'The Wall', does, and on that song, Mason relinquished the drumming duties, in that case to Jeff Porcaro.'Pink Floyd: The Wall' (1980 Pink Floyd Music Publishers Ltd., London, England, [USA ])'Pink Floyd: The Final Cut' (1983 Pink Floyd Music Publishers Ltd., London, England.)
Reception
In a review for 'The Final Cut', Justin Gerber of 'Consequence of Sound' described "Two Suns in the Sunset" as "the album's crowning achievement."
Toby Manning was less enthusiastic in his retrospective review, saying that this was the one song off 'The Final Cut' where the musician Waters couldn't stay on the same level as the conceptualist Waters.
Personnel
*Roger Waters vocals, acoustic guitar, bass guitar, scream, sound effects
*David Gilmour electric guitar
with:
*Andy Newmark drums
*Andy Bown Hammond organ
*Raphael Ravenscroft saxophone
*Michael Kamen piano
See also
*List of anti-war songs
References
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