![]() "One could see and feel the clouds of conservatism heading towards the school system at the time," he says. Stage-school students had to mime the words.įor singing on the album, the children got tickets to a Pink Floyd concert, an album, a single and - most importantly - a certain celebrity around school.ĭisillusioned with the education system, Mr Renshaw moved to Australia shortly after. The pupils were also upset when they weren't allowed to be in the video for the song because they didn't have Equity cards. "That was really very, very hard to take because we had built up the school into something. "It became a sort of cause celebre and it just felt as though the whole world had crashed in on us, or on me particularly," she says. She found the criticism of her and the school hard to take. She was not happy but had no idea of the extent of the trouble the song would cause. By that time of course it was a bit too late to back down." "I had to go and talk to Margaret about it. "When I saw what the lyrics were, of course I went: 'Oops'," says Mr Renshaw. ![]() Yet the message of the song was not easy to swallow. "I still have hairs standing up on my arms and everywhere just remembering the sound. Waters says he will always remember the first time he heard the final recording of the song. "They said: 'No, we don't want you to do that, we want you to sing like you're in the playground.'" "We sang like the school choir," says Caroline. They were given the words and asked to sing. He took a handful of excited kids out of class and marched them round to the studio. "I had this sound in my head of kids, London kids," he says.īypassing the head teacher's office, they ended up in the music room, where the unconventional Mr Renshaw was always looking for ways to broaden his students' musical horizons. Waters was pleased with his song, but knew he needed another element to make it work. It was just an average school day when Pink Floyd's manager and sound recordist turned up looking for children to sing on the record. "Otherwise I don't honestly know how I would have got through." "Very quickly I gravitated towards the music department, because it was a safe place to be," she says. ![]() "I had this intense, emotional home life and it gave me hope that there was something beyond the misery of my existence," says former student Tabitha, who sang on the record.Ĭaroline, who also sang, was bullied because she was from a wealthy family. But for his students, he provided a safe place to be, where they could be themselves. Lessons were often bizarre, including going round the school hitting walls and listening to the sound they made.
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