Hey Hey Rise Up
MY LIFE IN PINK FLOYD – AND BEYOND. DAVID GILMOUR: IN HIS OWN WORDS...
Nearly 55 years after Pink Floyd’s first single was released comes this glorious gesture of humanitarian aid from one of rock history’s biggest bands. Using the Pink Floyd name to draw attention to its cause, Hey Hey Rise Up must surely be the band’s final cut.
The idea for the song started when David Gilmour saw a video on Instagram of Andriy Khlyvnyuk, singer of the Ukrainian band Boombox. Gilmour knew of Andriy when Boombox came to play a show in London in 2015 to support of the Belarus Free Theatre, which Andriy couldn’t attend due to visa problems. “So the rest of the band backed me for my set,” Gilmour said. “We played Wish You Were Here for Andriy that night.”
Gilmour himself has strong emotional ties with Ukraine, having a Ukrainian
daughter-in-law and grandchildren, and he heard about Andriy’s support for the Territorial Defence in Ukraine. In a statement he said: “Then I saw this incredible video on Instagram, where he stands in a square in Kyiv with this beautiful gold-domed church and sings in the silence of a city with no traffic or background noise because of the war. It was a powerful moment that made me want to put it to music.”
The new single opens with an emotionally charged chorus of voices, courtesy of the Ukrainian VERYOVKA Folk Song and
Dance Ensemble. This is followed by Andriy’s vocals, sampled from the original Instagram post, singing the First World War Ukrainian protest song, The Red Viburnum In The Meadow, backed by Gilmour on guitar, Nick Mason on drums, Guy Pratt on bass, and Nitin Sawhney on keyboards.
Gilmour follows Andriy’s stirring vocal with a related musical section in C# minor, which - as he he told The Guardian, allowed him to be “the rock god guitar player”. It doesn’t disappoint.
Gilmour delivers over one and a half minutes of impassioned solo lead guitar playing in three distinct sections. The first, starting around one minute into the song, sees him at the height of his powers, showcasing his unique blend of overdriven blues and spacey effects. At 1.30, after a call of ‘Hey hey’ from Andriy, the drums back off the beat and Gilmour switches tone for a more mournful solo passage, his guitar gently weeping over the choir’s washed harmonies. At 2.05, the drums kick back in and Gilmour’s guitar increases in intensity, delivering the final white-hot lead break that seems to cry out for justice.
Despite not meeting Andriy for the recording, Gilmour was able to speak to him in his hospital bed in Kyiv, where he is recovering from injury: “I played him a little bit of the song down the phone line and he gave me his blessing. We both hope to do something together in person in the future.”
If this really is to be the last recording under the official Pink Floyd name, it’s a fitting gesture from a band that gave us such impassioned anti-war statements as Us And Them, The Dogs Of War and The Final Cut. The goal for this latest single is to raise funds for humanitarian charities and lift morale. A powerful addition to the legacy of Pink Floyd.
A powerful addition to the legacy of
Pink Floyd
In extracts from two major interviews, David Gilmour looks back on his long career – with Pink Floyd and as a solo artist. He speaks about the formative influences that shaped him as a guitarist, and all that followed...
Joining Floyd in 1968 as their former leader Syd Barrett was losing control of the band and his sanity. The landmark albums and songs that defined Pink Floyd. The bizarre ‘lost’ album Householdobjects (recorded with – you guessed it – household objects!). Thefinal Cut - the last album the band made with founding member Roger Waters. The reunion with Waters for the Live 8 concert in 2005. The solo records and session work that sustained the guitarist outside of Floyd. The thrill of playing guitar with a Beatle. And the satisfaction that comes from Floyd’s mighty legacy...
GUITAR HEROES
I’m a real jack of all trades. I’m completely the anti-purist. I was never going to dedicate my life to being B.B. King. My influences were Pete Seeger, Lead Belly, Bob Dylan, Hank Marvin, all the blues guys and everything. It was all a complete hotchpotch, a mass of different styles and influences. I saw no reason why all these influences could not co-habit – and I still don’t! Bill Haley’s Rock Around The Clock was a pivotal moment for me. And that was superseded in what seemed like months by Jailhouse Rock by Elvis Presley, also pivotal. The Beatles were pivotal. Jimi Hendrix was a pivotal moment. Pete Seeger was a pivotal moment when I was young. I learnt guitar from him. Too many to name.
THE EARLY FLOYD WITH SYD BARRETT
Syd would gradually phase out of live performance, and stick around and write songs for us. He obviously wasn’t up to playing live very much, so they asked me to join, and for him to be the Brian Wilson backroom boy figure. It could have felt very uncomfortable, but it didn’t really. After five gigs, it obviously wasn’t working. We went off to do the gig insouthampton and didn’t bother picking him up. It’s a well trotted-out story. We certainly didn’t know those would be the last gigs we played together. I don’t think we were ever in the studio at the same time. I worked on one or two of the tracks that were already recorded. All five of us are certainly on [1968 song] Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun. We didn’t record whole new tracks until after he’d left.
ADVENTURES IN SOUND
The music was exploratory, and it was exciting to explore. But that, to me now, looks like a process – a process to find out what you do and don’t like. And when you get older – necessarily, it seems to me – you find what you do like, and that maybe narrows your vision down a little bit. And in those early days, while it was exciting, there
“Comfortably Numb and Wish Youwerehere – I never tire of them”