Why 'Young Lust' was a parody of groupie culture and how the answering machine message became a narrative linchpin in 'The Wall'

“Young Lust” isn’t just a hard-rock rave-up—it’s Roger Waters’ deliberately cartoonish take on the rock-star-groupie treadmill. The lyrics (“I need a dirty woman”) and the sleazy guitar riff mock the macho posing that Waters saw as hollow and destructive. He wanted to show how Pink, the protagonist, substitutes real human connection with transactional, anonymous sex while on tour.

The answering machine clip that crashes in after the song came from a real groupie who called the studio during the “Wall” sessions. Waters kept the raw recording—her breathy “Isn’t this where… we came in?”—because it perfectly underscored Pink’s emotional emptiness and foreshadowed the wall’s final collapse. It’s one of the album’s most unsettling moments: the parody becomes painfully real.