Wall, The (Pink Floyd) Easter Egg - Secret Backwards Message in the Wall (Corrected!)

The full message is: [backwards message:] "Congratulations, You have just discovered the secret message. Please send your answer to 'Old Pink', Care of the funny farm, Chalfont..." - Spoken By Roger [...interrupted...] "Roger, Caroline's on the phone..." - Unknown Voice from : http://listen.to/pinkfloyd

I recorded it and played it backwards. The file is at my site: http://www.geocities.com/divison_bell Read the files.txt file.

It's more intentional than you think. The "Carolines on the phone bit" is put in by roger to sybolise that people are trying to contact him but through pinks insanity he doesnt notice and gets increasingly more nuts. By the way, I'm from a Pink Floyd tribute band (though i'd mention it :-).

I first became aware of this message in Janurary of 1980, shortly after the release of the album "The Wall." I was attending Duke University at the time, and a dorm buddy of mine told me about it, where it was, and that it was backward masked. So I took my LP to the studios of the campus radio station, WDUK, and taped the segment containing the message. I then cut the segment out, reversed it, and spliced it back into the tape. Playing this reversed segment, I realized that the message was heard on only one channel, the right, if memory serves me correctly. So my first step was to mute the other channel. I then discovered that by filtering the signal through an equalizer adjusted as a bandpass filter for the frequencies between 400 and 1400 Hz, that all sounds except the message could be eliminated. Waters' voice was crystal clear. Later, with the advent of CD's, computer sound cards, and DSP, I tried this again by playing the segment on the CD, saving it as a .WAV file, and performing the aforementioned steps digitally. The results were the same. I encourage anyone interested to try this method, it is far easier, and provides superior results to the "finger on the label" trick. The message says: "Congratulations, you have just discovered the secret message. Please send your answer to Old Pink, c/o The Funny Farm..." I believe "Old Pink" refers to the Syd Barrett incarnation of the band, and the mythos surrounding his exit. I also wondered what question I was supposed to answer. Well, in my opinion, the question is: "What shall we do now?" You see, the original dust cover (not the jacket) contains lyrics for the song of that name. This song appears in the movie of "The Wall," on the recording of the live performance, and even in Waters' live performance at the Berlin Wall. But that song never appears on the vinyl or CD. In its place is the secret message. A final thought- In early 1980, I did send a letter to Old Pink, at the specified address, containing my answer. It was returned, unopened, as "addressee unknown." ???

To further elaborate on the significance of the part that says "Roger, Carolyne's on the phone" (I do mean "Carolyne" instead of "Caroline"), Carolyne was his wife at the time. There are several references to Roger's love life in "The Wall", and this is one of them. Another one would be the forwards phone message at the end of "Young Lust", in which Pink (the album's protagonist) is calling home and discovers that there is a man there with his wife and figures out that the wife is cheating on him. Roger has said two completely different things on this in two interviews, so I'm not quite certain which phone call incident with his first wife, Judy Trim, really happened. In a 1979 interview, he says that the way he found out his wife was cheating on him was the exact same way Pink did, but in the commentary for "The Wall" DVD, he claims that he simply called home and Judy told him that she was no longer in love with him and was seeing another man. Needless to say, he divorced her (don't even ask me how many wives he's gone through--I'm pretty certain he's not with Carolyne right now and that's about it).

I've always heard that the phone call had something to do with Waters's wife. Oh well, I have a file but I don't know how to build my website.

I have also read an analysis (a rather brilliant analysis at that) that discusses this secret message. Caroline (the wife of Roger Waters) is mentionned for this reason: The story concept of The Wall was based on the early life of Roger Waters (growing up without a father) and Syd Barrett (the rock and roll descent into madness). As Roger mentions "...Old Pink down at the Funny Farm...", it symbolizes the journey into madness that Roger could have very well taken. However, his insane ramblings are cut short by "Roger, Caroline's on the phone". Waters put this in to represent how if it wasn't for his wife, he would have surely gone down the tourniquette of madness that his former close friend Syd Barrett had sadly gone down.

It does work with the CD (although not at the time that you stated). Once you start playing Empty Spaces in reverse, it is about the the 55 second mark. It clearly says "Congratulations... You have just found the secret message... Please send your answer to old pink care of the Funny Farm... Chalfonte. The Chalfonte is a hostoric hotle in new jersey. I ave no idea what the significnce of it is.

i found a website w/ video interviews with people who helped produce the wall and they told of how intentional it was. it said that was a sort of tribute to syd barret. and in the movie the wall there is a documentery that speaks of how barret shaved all the hair on his body like "Pink" did in the movie.

You can find it here: http://www.goear.com/listen.php?v=f8966c9 And this is the message: Este es el Mensaje: Roger Waters: "Congratulations, You have just discovered the secret message. Please send your answer to "Old Pink", Care of the funny farm, Chalfont..." Other guy's voice: "Roger, Carolyne's on the phone..."

I heard this message for the first time back around 1984. I owned a Tascam 4-track cassette recorder, which had an interesting property. Since it recorded on all four tracks at once, you could flip the tape over and listen to what you recorded in reverse. So I queued up my "The Wall" album, on the "Empty Spaces" track, and recorded it, and finally made out what Roger was saying.

Re. the "historic hotel in New Jersey", Pink Floyd are a British band, and Chalfont was a town in Hertfordshire not far north of London (it's today served by Chalfont and Latimer Station on the Metropolitan (London Underground) and Aylesbury via Amersham (Chiltern Railways) lines) long before there was any such place as New Jersey.

I think most everyone is missing a HUGE piece of this one. The entire first portion of the song (played forwards, "What shall we use...") is the question when played in reverse. The part that is spoken clearly by Roger Waters is in response to this question. Play the ENTIRE song backwards and you will see that it is ALL back masked.