The Trial Lyrics
[Verse 1: Prosecutor]
Good morning, Worm your honour
The crown will plainly show the prisoner
Who now stands before you
Was caught red-handed, showing feelings
Showing feelings of an almost human nature
This will not do
Call the schoolmaster!
[Verse 2: The Schoolmaster]
I always said he'd come to no good in the end, your honour
If they'd let me have my way, I could have flayed him into shape
But my hands were tied, the bleeding hearts and artists
Let him get away with murder, let me hammer him today
[Chorus: Pink (and Choir)]
Crazy, toys in the attic, I am crazy
Truly gone fishing
They must have taken my marbles away!
(Crazy, toys in the attic, he is crazy)
[Verse 3: Wife]
You little shit, you're in it now, I hope they throw away the key
You should have talked to me more often than you did, but no!
You had to go your own way
Have you broken any homes up lately?
Just five minutes, Worm your honour, him and me, alone
Babe!
Come to mother baby, let me hold you in my arms
M'lud I never wanted him to get in any trouble
Why'd he ever have to leave me?
Worm, your honour, let me take him home
[Chorus: Pink (and Choir)]
Crazy, over the rainbow, I am crazy
Bars in the window
There must have been a door there in the wall
When I came in
(Crazy, over the rainbow, he is crazy)
[Verse 5: The Judge]
The evidence before the court is incontrovertible
There's no need for the jury to retire
In all my years of judging, I have never heard before
Of someone more deserving of the full penalty of law
The way you made them suffer, your exquisite wife and mother
Fills me with the urge to defecate
(Go on, Judge, shit on him!)
Since, my friend, you have revealed your deepest fear
I sentence you to be exposed before your peers
Tear down the wall!
Tear down the wall!
Tear down the wall!
Tear down the wall!
Tear down the wall!
Tear down the wall!
Tear down the wall!
Tear down the wall!
Tear down the wall!
Tear down the wall!
Tear down the wall!
Tear down the wall!
Tear down the wall!
Tear down the wall!
Tear down the wall!
*explosion*
*bricks crumbling*
About
Backed by a lush orchestral score (to the point producer Bob Ezrin gets a co-writing credit), Roger Waters incorporates various characters of Pink’s life as The Wall’s protagonist puts himself on trial. The verdict conducted by the exaggerated and personified bricks ultimately orders his wall be torn down when he judges himself both responsible for the making of the wall as well as capable of reconnecting with the outside world.
The characters are depicted still with all of their flaws but this time, we can also see Pink’s flaws.
It’s not as if by making the wall he was the only one hurt, even if the reason was the people he hurt to begin with. He has a part in it too and therefore it’s time for reckoning.
Notably, while elsewhere on the album the various characters are divided up between Waters and Gilmour, on this track all parts (other than the chorus) are sung by Waters; perhaps to emphasize the fact that all these characters are really just different facets of Pink’s broken psyche.
Q&A
Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning
The idea is that the drugs wear off and in “Waiting for the Worms” he keeps flipping backwards and forwards from his real, or his original persona if you like, which is a reasonably kind of humane person into this waiting for the worms to come, persona, which is crack!, flipped, and is ready to crush anybody or anything that gets in the way…which is a response to having been badly treated, and feeling very isolated. But at the end of “Waiting for the Worms” it gets too much for him, the oppression and he says “stop.” I don’t think you can actually hear the word “stop” on the record, or maybe you can, anyway it goes “STOP,” yeah, it’s very quick, and then he says “I wanna go home, take off this uniform and leave the show,” but he says “I’m waiting in this prison cell because I have to know, have I been guilty all this time” and then he tries himself if you like. So the judge is part of him just as much as all the other characters and things he remembers…they’re all in his mind, they’re all memories, anyway, at the end of it all, when his judgement on himself is to de-isolate himself, which in fact is a very good thing.
- 2.Lucifer Sam
- 4.Flaming
- 8.The Gnome
- 9.Chapter 24
- 10.The Scarecrow
- 11.Bike
- 13.Remember a Day
- 15.Corporal Clegg
- 17.See-Saw
- 18.Jugband Blues
- 19.Cirrus Minor
- 20.The Nile Song
- 21.Crying Song
- 22.Up The Khyber
- 24.Cymbaline
- 25.Party Sequence
- 26.Main Theme
- 27.Ibiza Bar
- 28.More Blues
- 29.Quicksilver
- 30.A Spanish Piece
- 31.Dramatic Theme
- 36.Sysyphus
- 39.The Narrow Way
- 42.If
- 43.Summer ’68
- 44.Fat Old Sun
- 48.Fearless
- 49.San Tropez
- 50.Seamus
- 51.Echoes
- 53.When You’re In
- 54.Burning Bridges
- 57.Mudmen
- 58.Childhood’s End
- 59.Free Four
- 60.Stay
- 62.Speak to Me
- 64.On the Run
- 65.Time
- 67.Money
- 68.Us and Them
- 70.Brain Damage
- 71.Eclipse
- 74.Have a Cigar
- 78.Dogs
- 80.Sheep
- 82.In the Flesh?
- 83.The Thin Ice
- 87.Mother
- 88.Goodbye Blue Sky
- 89.Empty Spaces
- 90.Young Lust
- 91.One of My Turns
- 95.Hey You
- 97.Nobody Home
- 98.Vera
- 100.Comfortably Numb
- 101.The Show Must Go On
- 103.Run Like Hell
- 105.Stop
- 106.The Trial
- 107.Outside the Wall
- 108.The Post War Dream
- 109.Your Possible Pasts
- 110.One of the Few
- 112.The Hero’s Return
- 113.The Gunner’s Dream
- 114.Paranoid Eyes
- 117.Southampton Dock
- 118.The Final Cut
- 119.Not Now John
- 121.Signs of Life
- 122.Learning to Fly
- 123.The Dogs of War
- 124.One Slip
- 125.On the Turning Away
- 126.Yet Another Movie
- 127.Round and Around
- 129.Terminal Frost
- 131.Sorrow
- 132.Cluster One
- 134.Poles Apart
- 135.Marooned
- 138.Take It Back
- 139.Coming Back to Life
- 140.Keep Talking
- 141.Lost for Words
- 142.High Hopes