Pink Floyd: Careful with That Axe, Eugene Meaning

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Careful with That Axe, Eugene Lyrics

Down, down. Down, down. The star is screaming.

Beneath the lies. Lie, lie. Tschay, tschay, tschay.

[sound of Waters blowing into the microphone]

[light screaming from Waters]

Careful, careful, careful with that axe, Eugene.

[very...

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   #1 top rated interpretation:
   anonymous

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   Nov 20th 2013 report

   Careful with that Axe, Eugene tells the story of two people in the forest cutting a tree. Nick Mason drum being the sound of the axe hitting the tree. While Eugene chops the other man sits on the other side, resting. The resting man calls to his friend "Careful with that axe, Eugene." The first scream is the resting man being hit with the axe. The second scream is Eugene, realizing he has just killed his friend.

2. 2TOP RATED

   #2 top rated interpretation:
   anonymous

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   Mar 15th 2017 report

   Pink Floyd had a "roadie"c alled Eugene and when setting up for the venue....Eugene stumbled when carrying on Dave Gilmore's favourite guitar....his fav.axe. Gilmour calls out..."careful with that axe, Eugene"...but to no avail,as Eugene continued to stumble over cables, dropping Gilmour's fav "axe"...damaging it.....causing Gilmour and Waters to start screaming....

3. 3TOP RATED

   #3 top rated interpretation:
   anonymous

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   Feb 2nd 2013 report

   Im laughing with all those explanations.
   
   The song was originally titled Keep Smiling People when it was written.
   Youtube: /watch?v=gW9FBuUVqrc
   
   It was suppossed to be part of the film, The Committee, but the version recorded was horrible according to the band
   
   the next time it appeared it was called murderistic Woman
   Youtube: /watch?v=rCa6BN4KL8g
   
   from then on it evolved into the song you hear today.
   
   One theory is that in the early 1960's there was a small serial killing spree in the area of London near the river Thames.
   
   After three or four murders, a suspect was caught. That suspect's name was Eugene Craft. He was tried and found guilty. Hence, "Careful" might be a reference to that incident. But Floyd to my knowledge has never admitted where it came from.
4. anonymous

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   Aug 1st 2022 report

   It's about a bunch of people fabricating sometimes bizarre stories about the origins of a song when in fact not one of them actually knows what it's really about, if it's even about anything.
   (I know somebody's going to be butthurt by this and will claim that of course they know for sure what it's about. To those with aching buttholes I say: provide your source or stfu)
5. anonymous

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   Dec 7th 2021 report

   The complete album, Ummagumma, is a record of the painful separation between Floyd and Syd Barret,a separation relentlessly driven by Roger Waters.
   The instances of Barret's deep mental illness impacting the bands performances, his frequent no shows at studio sessions and live performances had led to an inevitable separation. The addition of Gilmour to Floyd's lineup in '67 was, to all Floydians, the clearest of signals that Syd's time was up, the headman's axe was slowly and quite brutally falling.
   Water's attitude towards Barret eventually caused irreparable damage to the band's inter personal relationships, mostly set aside in the process of establishing a 'new' musical identity for the band. Gilmour himself has talked of the scruffy and shameful treatment of Barret at the hands of Waters....what happened in '68 never left the band and is the base of the non relationship Gilmour and Waters have in these times.
   Careful with that Axe Eugene depicts the love most of the band members had and still have for the gloriously talented Syd, and Waters the brutal business man who had no issues with dumping Barret. The rest, as they say, is an oscillating groove in the imagination of a vinyl artefact
   
   Mark Hartley
   
6. anonymous

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   Oct 22nd 2021 report

   This might be about Hesus the ancient Druid god who was often depicted with an Axe. Human sacrifices were not uncommon and were often done with axes, somewhere in the woods at night. Hence the screaming sounds and references to stars.
7. anonymous

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   Mar 4th 2021 report

   Knowing Roger and others it sounds like project “eugenica” :). Nowadays, we globally witness that project implementation. Some humanoids that play gods certainly hold horrible weapons not just a symbolic axe. Nothing to do with conspiracy theory. I rather suggest we turn around, collect data as well as available info and analyse. If all of us stick to our personal professions and experience and dig into that familiar material only, if we process what we see in media, all contradictions and controversials it seems practice, doesn’t it. And Eugen does not seem to be careful at all, just persistent...
8. anonymous

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   Jun 29th 2020 report

   I say the guitar dropping roadie sounds right.they liked it better than the other name.easy on that axe lemme. Famous roadies.
9. anonymous

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   Jun 29th 2020 report

   I have a nephew who had a childhood friend named Eugene. The kid was supposed to come over to play video games or something and when I heard what his name was, I said to my nephew, "Careful with that axe, Eugene." He couldn't stop laughing. I always found this title amusing, too. I would see it listed on the back of a Pink Floyd album and I would chuckle to myself. I just played it on youtube and this might have been the first time I have ever taken the time to actually give it a listen. The title is the best thing it has going for it, because there is nothing particularly great about this track.
10. Maitreya

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    Mar 6th 2019 report

    The great thing about such a song as Careful with that Axe, Eugene is a sort of polyphonic symbolism that it contains within its structure of drumbeats, whispers, screams and scat vocals. On the surface level it narrates the story of an incident in the forest where a woodcutter may have murdered his friend in a frenzy. Metaphorically it reminds one of several cultural tropes such as the killing of Abel by Cain symbolic of murder of nature; a primal scream of creation and destruction, of angst and Oedipal horror upon seeing the real; mankind horrified by murder of nature by human beings bursting out in an expressionist frenzy like in Munch's painting Scream.
    One can also perhaps relate the song to a Rashomon phenomenon ( after Kurosawa's classic film) where the nature of truth is obfuscated and any attempt to know what happened in the forest or who's the actual culprit remains opaque. On another level its Waters reminding human beings to be careful with the machinery and not to mess with nature, to refrain from wars and destruction.
11. anonymous

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    Mar 2nd 2019 report

    The great thing about such a song as Careful with that Axe, Eugene is a sort of polyphonic symbolism that it contains within its structure of drumbeats, whispers, screams and scat vocals. On the surface level it narrates the story of an incident in the forest where a woodcutter may have murdered his friend in a frenzy. Metaphorically it reminds one of several cultural tropes such as the killing of Abel by Cain symbolic of murder of nature; a primal scream of creation and destruction, of angst and Oedipal horror upon seeing the real; mankind horrified by murder of nature by human beings bursting out in an expressionist frenzy like in Munch's painting Scream.
    One can also perhaps relate the song to a Rashomon phenomenon ( after Kurosawa's classic film) where the nature of truth is obfuscated and any attempt to know what happened in the forest or who's the actual culprit remains opaque. On another level its Waters reminding human beings to be careful with the machinery and not to mess with nature, to refrain from wars and destruction.
12. turd

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    Mar 29th 2018 report

    disregard the user name...
    
    Tribute to Jerry Garcia. Got his finger chopped off by his brother???
13. anonymous

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    Oct 31st 2017 report

    It's simply a darker and more vague take on Maxwell's Silver Hammer.
14. anonymous

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    Jun 24th 2017 report

    The song to me represents an lsd trip: the beginning being a nervous come up (shown with the eerie keyboard and random note picking), the main section the peak of the trip (ecstatic guitar soloing with screams and drums representing the ecstasy and confusion of the peak) and finally the come down at the end of the song (shown with sedateful whispers by waters and calming vocals by Gilmour over his guitar notes)
15. anonymous

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    May 7th 2016 report

    About the bugish creepy crawlers trying to get under our skin and into our minds that was ''imagined'' in the mindset of what the serial axe murderer Eugene Craft actually committed in real life to make themselves, especially GILMORE and WATERS in the PINK FLOYD band more interesting to obtain their ''psychotic killer instinct aura'' and numb freeze their fans to scare a little bit, if and when seeing axes used on trees sometimes thinking they're like people that should be TRUMPED DOWN TO THE STUMP when they become rotten and don't flower anymore to produce good fruit for us to enjoy eating.
16. anonymous

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    Feb 28th 2016 report

    Euthanasia Genetics.
    
    Careful with that, ya know?
17. anonymous

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    Nov 20th 2014 report

    My middle name is Eugene, as was my father's and his father's and as far back as I have traced. As a child, my father would admonish me with "Careful with that ax Eugene" when I was about to do something I could hurt myself or someone at. This predated the song and it is safe to say my father never heard the song or of the song in his life. It was with astonishment that I first learned of the title. When I asked my father about the often used phrase, he said it was just something his father used to say to him. My father's clan Machpie originates in the Hebrides and I often wondered if the phrase may have as well. Though I have no real idea.
18. anonymous

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    Dec 5th 2012 report

    This song is all about losing your religion. The axe is the symbol for the struggle a person meets when doing so. And at the top of this struggle ( please note the climax in the music) the primal scream arises. With this scream the person frees himselfs from the chains of religion. After the primal scream the screams to follow are less intense ( also the music calms down). At the end of the song all religion is gone and the person is in freedom with himself. John Lennon was inspired by this song when writing Imagine.

    This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway

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