- All of it. Bits of it were later recycled into other tracks on The Wall.
Bob Ezrin convinced Roger Waters to drop the song, although elements were reworked and recycled into other tracks.
Extremely little is known about the track “Death Disco”. It was on Roger Waters’ original demo Bricks In The Wall, but then disappeared very quickly after that. If Pink Floyd ever recorded “Death Disco” (which is doubtful), none of those recordings ever made it onto the subsequent production demos. Lyrics for the track have never been published.
“Death Disco” appeared fairly early on Side 2 of Roger’s original demo cassette. It was sequenced third on the side between “Follow The Worms” (what would become “Waiting For The Worms”) and a classical guitar version of “Is There Anybody Out There?”.
Music critic Janet Huck described it as a “silly, hackneyed song… in which a DJ harangued the audience”[1] with fascist insults. Co-producer Bob Ezrin convinced Waters to drop the song, although elements were reworked and recycled to became the basis of similar lyrics later heard in “In The Flesh”. The song also contained a guitar riff that was later worked into “Young Lust”.
The track was not included as part of the snippets of Bricks In The Wall/Roger Waters’ Original Demo that were released on the Work In Progress discs of The Wall: Immersion. To date, it is unreleased and has never been available in any form through legitimate or bootleg channels.
I’m actually glad that “Death Disco” never made it onto the album. Regardless of how the song may have sounded — the style of music, etc., it turns out that “Disco wasn’t forever” like we thought at the time. The title alone would have dated the track and possibly the album.
Some Pink Floyd resources state the title as “The Death of Disco” or “The Death of Cisco”. Both are incorrect.
On June 29, 1979, the band Public Image Ltd. released a single called “Death Disco”. This is not the same song.
Alternate Versions
None.
Last update: April 15, 2017
1- “Up Against The Wall”, Huck, Janet, February 1980, from Pink Floyd through the eyes of…, edited by Bruno MacDonald. p. 127
Hey I heard that it was mis labeled as run like hell. This is it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qacfLpmGTlk and the reddit thing. https://www.reddit.com/r/pinkfloyd/comments/gl9z6w/did_you_know_the_lost_wall_outtake_death_disco_is/ “Death Disco” had lyrics similar to Run Like Hell, and was musically similar to Young Lust. This one hits both of those.
Thanks for the links. I thought the lyrics later became the foundation for “Waiting For The Worms” but you make some excellent points.
They mislabeled several tracks on the Immersion set and this could be one of them. My guess is that they renamed the tracks so that they made it easier to refer to their final release counterparts.
No problem sir. ; )
I say we rally up as much people go to lost media wiki create a page for death disco, get a search party to try and find it, and maybe aske roger waters how it sounded and if it was the run like hell demo. We gotta find this brick