Not Now John - Composition

Composition

Unlike the majority of other tracks on The Final Cut, "Not Now John" takes an upbeat, driving, tempo — and hard rock style — for much of its duration. Gilmour and Waters split vocals duties, similar to the song "Comfortably Numb" from The Wall, and they represent different "characters" or points of view — Gilmour is the self-serving ignorant layperson while Waters is the intellectual, responsible observer of the world's woes. However, Waters sings verses associated with Gilmour's character near the end of the song. Gilmour sings the three main verses, and Waters sings the two interludes — which feature a musical reprise of "One of the Few" — as well as the lead-in to the first interlude and the outro following the second. During the demo stages of the album, the song was sung entirely by Roger Waters.

It is the only track on the album not to exclusively feature Waters on vocals. The interludes feature Waters' vocals and a 12-string acoustic guitar mimicking the structure of "One of the Few"; the acoustic guitar, however, is barely audible except for the fill on each fourth bar between Waters' vocals. Also, the lead-in to the first interlude — "Can't stop, lose job, mind gone, silicon, ..." — has Waters' high-pitched singing voice double-tracked with a low-pitched spoken voice — in a similar manner to his singing on the choruses of the song "The Hero's Return".

The word "fuck" occurs in the song seven times, six times as part of the phrase, "fuck all that"; near the end the song is a "Where's-the-bar?" lyric — which is sung in Italian, Greek, French and finally English — with the English iteration sung as, "Oi — Where's the fucking bar, John?" "Fuck" is bowdlerized to "stuff" in the 7" single release. (The four iterations are preceded by the lyric, "One, two, free four!" — reminiscent of the intro to another Pink Floyd song, "Free Four".)