Roger Waters’ second solo album, released after his split from the mega image of Pink Floyd, has been one of the most cutting albums of the late ’80s. It is one of those classic concept album or rock opera album that Waters had famously introduced since the concept of “The Dark Side of the Moon”. The classic brain and legend behind the concept album genre, Waters deals with the issue of communication through this album. Much like The Who’s “Quadrophenia”, Waters has introduced the character Billy, who is a 23 year old disables chap seen as a “vegetable” to others. Billy lives with his twin brother Benny and Ben’s wife, Molly and their children. He has a high level of gifted intelligence but no way at all to convey it to other “normal” people around him.

Through the wedges of the issues relating to problems of communication faced within the prospective realms of an excepted normal society, the album also makes attack on Margaret Thatcher’s regime. Thatcher’s mocking condescension and Benny’s ex-pression of repressed anger finds a volatile outlet through his shoplifting spree. The revolution then breaks out through this seemingly harmless and normal person. However, Benny gets caught by the police and Molly being unable to cope with Billy alone sends him to a relative’s place. That’s when his gift of hearing and transmitting radio waves through his head is made clear. The album goes from theatrical to exceeding questions of social reality versus the reality within your head. It also processes this entire mystical charm about it which veins out of the social repressions and rebellions to stay cushy in this place of comfort within one’s head. Then we are given the question of mysticism and exploration within the self. Thus begins Billy’s search for ways to explore as well as express himself through his innate powers. He is able to connect into computer programs and speech synthesizers through the help of the chord less phone stolen by his brother. He is also able to call a radio station and able to tell the story of his brother and his family and even able to barge into a military satellite by breaking morse codes. He eventually wants to break into the governmental ethics and how its entire drama play affected through mass media fools the public. He in fact enjoys doing this by breaking further into the military satellite and announcing a nuclear invasion with having “four minutes” left in the world. (As treated in the very famous and masterpiece tracks of “Four Minutes” and “Home”)

The album is a detection of not only the political facades of governmental policies but also the inter politics within mass media that makes dunces of “normal” people and hence raises the question of how well we communicate or confuse each other with the growing competitive nature of mass media.