After nearly three decades without creating new original music, Pink Floyd – with the exception of Roger Waters – is back in support of Ukraine.
Guitarist and singer David Gilmore, drummer Nick Mason, guitarist Jay Pratt and composer Nitin Sawhney collaborated to create the song “Hey Hey Rise Up” in support of the United Nations Humanitarian Fund in Ukraine.
According to the Guardian, Gilmore was inspired by Ukrainian musician Andrey Klevnyuk of the band BoomBox. In February, Khlyvnyuk left the rock band to fight in Ukraine against Russia while BoomBox was touring in the United States.
Gilmore Watch a video on Instagram The musician in uniform sang a protest song in Kyiv’s Soviyskaya Square and then felt inspired to do something about it.
“I thought this was very magical and maybe I could do something with it,” Gilmore He told the Guardian newspaper. I have a great platform [Pink Floyd] I worked on it all these years. It is really difficult and frustrating to see this crazy and unjust attack by a superpower on an independent, peaceful and democratic country.
“Frustrated seeing that and thinking ‘What can I do?’” “Sort of unbearable.”
So, Gilmore, who has a Ukrainian daughter-in-law and half-Ukrainian grandchildren, got rid of this frustration and made something productive from it.
The group got together and recorded the song and a music video, which shows Mason playing drums with a painting by Ukrainian artist Maria Primachenko. Waters, who left the group in 1985, reportedly did not return for the reunion. However, the song features the voice of Khlevniuk from the video that initially inspired Gilmore.
Gilmore reached out to Klevigno, who was taken to the hospital for injuries in the dispute.
“The next time I saw him, he was in the hospital, after being hit by a mortar,” Gilmore told the Guardian. “He showed me this little sliver of a quarter inch in diameter that was stuck to his cheek. He kept it in a plastic bag.”
Along with the new song, Pink Floyd also recently announced that it has removed all of its music from Russian and Belarusian digital music providers.
Gilmore hopes that the song, which will be released on Friday, will serve an important purpose for the people of Ukraine.
“I wouldn’t do this with many other things,” Gilmore said, “but it’s critical that people understand what’s going on out there and do everything they can to change this situation.”
