David Gilmour: Why I'm Bringing Back Pink Floyd After 28 Years

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Rolling Stone/Kory Grow

A few days after Russia invaded Ukraine, singer-turned-soldier Andriy Khlyvnyuk posted video of himself belting “The Red Viburnum in the Meadow” — a folk song about the country’s strength in the face of adversity — to Instagram. The vocalist, who fronts the Kyiv group Boombox, had hoped to be playing gigs in the U.S. last month. But when he heard Russia had invaded his homeland, he returned to defend it. At the outbreak of the war, he told Rolling Stone he felt it was his duty to stick up for Ukraine for the sake of the world. “[The West] needs us as the shield to protect it all,” he said.

In the video, he’s wearing fatigues and clinging to a submachine gun as he serenades the empty streets: “Our glorious Ukraine shall hey, hey, rise up and rejoice.”

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour watched the clip with awe. “My daughter-in-law, who actually is Ukrainian, sent it to me and I thought, ‘Wow, that’s fantastic,'” Gilmour tells Rolling Stone. “It just struck me that here we are, with our name [Pink Floyd] and this platform, and we could use it more. That piece of singing immediately got me thinking of turning it into something.” So he sequestered himself in his studio, figured out the chords that would support Khlyvnyuk’s powerful vocals, and wrote what became “Hey, Hey, Rise Up” — the first new Pink Floyd recording in nearly 30 years.

“I thought this could be something that we use our platform for, for enormous good,” Gilmour says. So I called [Pink Floyd drummer] Nick [Mason] up and said, ‘Did you want to be a part of it?’ And he said, ‘Yes, great.'” Last week, the pair, along with bassist Guy Pratt and keyboardist Nitin Sawhney, recorded the song, which sticks to the traditional melodies of the folk song (notwithstanding a few emotive guitar solos) at Gilmour’s home studio with a projection of Khlyvnyuk’s original video. It was the first time Gilmour and Mason had recorded a new Pink Floyd song since the sessions for 1994’s The Division Bell.

Read more: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/pink-floyd-david-gilmour-ukraine-interview-1334514/