“Tigers” is presented in two parts with a fade out during a choral break after the first verse. Vera Lynn’s version of “The Little Boy That Santa Forgot” is the first song to appear in the film and plays in the background on a radio throughout the scene where housekeeping discovers a stuporous Pink. It is the first song credited to Pink Floyd to appear in the film.
The track first appears on the Pink Floyd – The Wall movie soundtrack. Background vocals were performed by the Pontarddulais Male Choir led by Noel Davis. He would go on to work with the band on The Final Cut as well as Waters and Gilmour solo projects. Orchestrations were arranged and conducted by Michael Kamen, who had also worked with Pink Floyd previously while recording The Wall. Other than Waters on vocals, none of the other members of Pink Floyd appeared on the recording. Music for the song is orchestral and is similar to several tracks on Side 3 of the album. If it’s even possible, this version is more solemn than the movie version. The snare fills make the track sound more military or like a slow funeral march. This recording also features different percussion accents - short snare roll fills throughout, giving an already dark and emotional song an even more somber feel. The first verse uses a different vocal take that has never appeared on any other release of the track. It has a different intro that is shorter than most other versions. The single version is a unique mix and differs from the versions that appear in the film and all subsequent releases. In the US press pack for The Wall movie, it was referred to as “Tigers Broke Free”. Throughout recording sessions for the movie, its working title was “When The Tigers Break Through”. When it was eventually released as a single in 1982, it bore its original copyright date of 1979. The movie gave Waters the opportunity to restore “Tigers” back into The Wall storyline and the song was recorded for the film. It was initially rejected by the band for inclusion on the album because they felt it was too personal, even though its inclusion would have helped to tell the story. It was kept universalized, with some very important fine-tuning by Roger.” I insisted we make the record more accessible, more universal. Kids don’t want to know about old rock stars. “The record used to be Roger’s life story, and there were dates in the lyrics that put him at 36 years old. It was part of the piece originally but which made them uncomfortable because it tied it down to specifically “this record is about Roger Waters” rather than Pink, which was a worry, reasonably enough, I suppose.” There’s a song in the movie called “When The Tigers Broke Free” which is about my father being killed, which had been on the original Wall demo. “In fact, there was some stuff in The Wall that was too personal as well… which showed up in the movie. It’s a highly autobiographical song for Waters and tells the story behind perhaps the biggest brick in the wall - how Pink’s father died at the Battle of Anzio during World War II and by proxy Roger’s father, Eric Fletcher Waters. On the Bricks In The Wall demo, the song was originally titled “Anzio, 1944”. Although Roger Waters mentions in the 1999 DVD commentary that “Tigers” was written specifically for the 1982 film, plenty of other interviews with Waters and others indicate that the song goes back to the original Wall demo. The song was not included in the snippets of the original demo recordings on The Wall: Immersion – Work In Progress discs. There is no mention of it in any of the available Wall demo track listings. It’s definitely a “spare brick” - one of the original leftover songs from The Wall and one of two that was reintegrated in the film. “When The Tigers Broke Free” was released as a single on July 26, 1982, almost three weeks before the Pink Floyd The Wall – Movie. Originally written in 1978 for The Wall album, “When The Tigers Broke Free” was rejected by the band because they felt it was too personal.