Decoding the telephony signals in Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'

Telephony signaling and the phone number in “Young Lust”

• Commenters clarify that +44 is the UK country code; internal UK numbers start with 0, omitted for international dialing.
• Several people recall historic London numbering: 01 + 6‑digit numbers, later 071/081, then 0171/0181, and finally 020.
• The blog author confirms: the captured number uses SS5 tones; the middle digits were spliced out in the audio, explaining why “1831” alone doesn’t map cleanly to a London number.
• Some suggest brute‑forcing against historical phone books; others note identifying the exact line is hard due to missing digits and lack of archived directories.

How the call was actually recorded

• An interview is cited: the producer, in LA, called his London neighbor via an operator, recorded the whole thing, and later edited his own voice out, leaving only the operator and neighbor.
• The blog author reconciles this with the SS5 analysis: the operator dialed the UK number, and the international leg used SS5, which could sometimes be heard by callers.

Ethics, rights, and sampling

• Some find it charming that a random operator and neighbor ended up on a major album without formal clearances; others see it as exploitative or at least inconsiderate.
• There’s debate over whether such concern is genuine empathy or just criticism.
• Related examples surface: session singers and spoken‑word contributors who were underpaid or uncredited on famous albums.

Telephony technology and phreaking nostalgia

• Several comments compare SS5 to “CCITT5,” noting they’re essentially the same standard.
• Links and references to historical Bell/CCITT documents appear; people reminisce about blueboxing, MF signaling, calling card scams, and pre‑digital operator workflows.
• A former operator describes scantron-based call records and unusual keypads.

Music, albums, and cross‑media trivia

• Discussion branches into other telephone or sample easter eggs in rock songs and TV, and the specific DTMF number in a Guns N’ Roses track.
• Many reminisce about listening to whole albums, side‑to‑side structuring, cassette/8‑track quirks, and circular album designs (e.g., starts/ends that loop).