"Bring the Boys Back Home" is a song from the Pink Floyd album, The Wall. The song was released as a B-side on the single, "When the Tigers Broke Free". Composition As the final notes of the previous song "Vera" decay, the listener hears several snare drums articulating a march beat in time, fading in like approaching soldiers. The song proves to be polyrhythmic, as this beat continues unchanged while the orchestra, choir, and lead vocals begin in . Roger Waters sings the simple and direct lyric in his upper register, stridently, supported by a choir. A IV-V-I chord progression in G major repeats, providing a sense of satisfaction. This is followed by a reversal, from G to D major with F-sharp in the bass, to C major, which features a tritone movement in the bassline, going from F♯ to C, introducing a sense of instability. This progression is a recurring Pink Floyd theme, appearing throughout the album in "Hey You", "Vera", and others, as well as several songs on Waters and company's follow-up concept album on the losses of war, The Final Cut. Waters and choir exhort, "Bring the boys back home / Don't leave the children on their own". On the final iteration, the song climaxes on the relative minor of E minor. The choir abruptly drops away, leaving Waters' voice alone, agonised and struggling to sustain the high note (the first B above middle C). A lone snare drum also remains, continuing its now-threatening march beat, as insane laughter and voices from Pink's past and present mingle while his manager pounds on his hotel-room door. According to songwriter Roger Waters, "Bring the Boys Back Home" is the central, unifying song on The Wall: Performances The original Pink Floyd concerts of The Wall were so expensive that, ultimately, the band lost money staging them. They were also, at that time, the most elaborate stage productions a rock band had ever mounted. For these reasons, and others, it is understandable that the band chose to use the original recordings of Michael Kamen's orchestral arrangements, rather than hire and rehearse a live orchestra, for what was then considered a rock and roll concert. Recordings of the original sound effects (televisions, helicopters, various atmospheric effects) were also used (as were the specific echo effects in several songs, such as "Hey You" or "Stop"). With the use of click tracks, the musicians