Pink Floyd, the psychedelic rock band from the 1970s, will release its first new song in nearly three decades on Friday to raise money for the people of Ukraine, the band said on Thursday.
The recording, “hey hey get up”, is an adaptation of a World War I protest song and features Ukrainian rock star Andriy Khlyvnyuk of the band Boombox.
Mr. Chlyvnyuk was on tour in the United States when the war started and returned to Ukraine’s capital, Kiev, to enlist in his country’s military. The vocals on the Pink Floyd track come from a viral video the Ukrainian singer posted three days after the war of himself dressed in combat gear, with a rifle in his hand and singing a Ukrainian protest song in Kiev’s Sofiyskaya Square.
The anthem, “The Red Viburnum in the Meadow”, was written during World War I and has been sung at Ukrainian solidarity rallies around the world since the Russian invasion. Pink Floyd gives it a soaring rock treatment, with David Gilmour giving a haunted guitar solo and Nick Mason’s steady drums propelling it forward. Guy Pratt plays bass and Nitin Sawhney adds keyboard. Roger Waters, who left the group in 1985, was not involved.
The last line of the national anthem, “Hey, hey, arise and rejoice”, was the inspiration for the song’s title. Proceeds from the sale will go to the Ukraine Humanitarian Fund.
Mr Gilmour said Mr Khlyvnyuk was blessing the song from the hospital where he is recovering from an injury from a mortar shell.
Mr Gilmour described meeting Mr Khlyvnyuk in 2015, when Boombox backed him on a show supporting a persecuted Belarusian theater group.
Both Pink Floyd and Mr. Gilmour, who has Ukrainian relatives, pulled their music from digital providers in Russia and Belarus in March and said they were standing next to the world in “strongly condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine†
The move was one of the music industry’s many solidarity efforts in recent weeks. At the Grammy Awards last week, there were remarks by President Volodymyr Zelensky and performances by Ukrainian singer Mika Newton and poet Lyuba Yakimchuk, who recently fled the country.
In March a benefit concert with stars like Ed Sheeran and Camila Cabello reportedly raised $17.6 million†
SOURCE – www.nytimes.com