Britain is a country where old rock musicians, David Gilmour and Nick Mason use 'Pink Floyd' as a force for good in support of a Russian-ravaged, war-torn Ukraine

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Fifty-eight years ago, in 1964, Nick Mason, an 18 year old drummer, became a founder member of the legendary rock band, 'Pink Floyd'. Three years later he and the other members of the band were joined by an 18 year old guitarist and vocalist, David Gilmour. Today, most musical observers assume 'Pink Floyd' was long defunct. It last released new music 28 years ago, although in 2014 David and Nick had reconvened to turn outtakes from their 1994 album 'The Division Bell' into the largely instrumental, 'The Endless River', as a tribute to the band’s keyboard player Rick Wright who had died from cancer in 2008. At the time, David was insistent that this was the finale for a band that had sold more than 250m albums. He said they couldn’t tour without Rick and told the BBC : “It’s a shame, but this is the end”.

Last month David was asked if he’d seen the Instagram feed of Andriy Khlyvnyuk, frontman of Ukrainian rock band 'BoomBox'. David had performed live with BoomBox in 2015, at a London benefit gig for the 'Belarus Free Theatre' in which they played a brief set of 'Pink Floyd' songs and Gilmour solo tracks. At the end of February, Andriy had abandoned BoomBox’s US tour in order to return home and enlist to fight against the Russian invasion. 

On his Instagram, David found a video of the singer in military fatigues, a rifle slung over his shoulder. He was standing outside Kyiv’s St Sofia Cathedral, singing an unaccompanied version of 'Oh, the Red Viburnum in the Meadow' (link), a 1914 protest song written in honour of the Sich Riflemen who fought both in the First World War and the Ukrainian War of Independence. 

"Marching forward, our fellow volunteers, into a bloody fray,

For to free, our brother - Ukrainians, from hostile chains.

And we, our brother - Ukrainians, we will then liberate,

And we, our glorious Ukraine, shall, hey - hey, cheer up - and rejoice!

And we, our brother - Ukrainians, we will then liberate,

And we, our glorious Ukraine, shall, hey - hey, cheer up - and rejoice! " (link)

When he heard it David said : “I thought : 'That is pretty magical and maybe I can do something with this”. Fired by a desire to help Ukraine, David said :  “I’ve got a big platform that 'Pink Floyd' have worked on for all these years. It’s a really difficult and frustrating thing to see this extraordinarily crazy, unjust attack by a major power on an independent, peaceful, democratic nation. The frustration of seeing that and thinking : 'What the fuck can I do?’ is sort of unbearable”. The result is 'Hey Hey, Rise Up!' (link), the new single for Ukraine by a Pink Floyd in which David and Nick are now flanked by 58 year year old Nitin Sawhney and 60 year old Guy Pratt in the present incarnation of the band. All proceeds of the song will go to Ukrainian Humanitarian Relief. 

David also has personal connections with Ukraine and said : "My grandchildren are half-Ukrainian, my daughter-in-law Janina is Ukrainian. Her grandmother was in Kharkiv until three weeks ago. She’s very old, disabled, in a wheelchair and has a carer, and Janina and her family managed to get her all the way across Ukraine to the Polish border and now they’ve managed to get her to Sweden”.

It took some time for him to track Andriy down, trawling Instagram and trying phone numbers. Eventually he found an email address. “He wanted to speak on FaceTime. I think he wanted to be sure it was me. The next time I saw him, he was in hospital, having been injured by a mortar. He showed me this tiny quarter-inch piece of shrapnel that had embedded itself in his cheek. He’d kept it in a plastic bag. But you can imagine, if those kind of things are going off, it could just as easily have been a piece over an inch across, which would have taken his head off”.

As to the genesis of the new song David said : “I rang Nick up and said : "Listen, I want to do this thing for Ukraine. I’d be really happy if you played on it and I’d also be really happy if you’d agree to us putting it out as 'Pink Floyd’ " And he was absolutely on for that. It’s 'Pink Floyd' if it’s me and Nick, and that is the biggest promotional vehicle. That is, as I said, the platform that I’ve been working on for my whole adult life, since I was 21. I wouldn’t do this with many more things, but it’s so vitally, vitally important that people understand what’s going on there and do everything within their power to change that situation. And the thought, also, that mine and Pink Floyd’s support of the Ukrainians could help boost morale in those areas. They need to know the whole world supports them".

David last spoke to Andriy on Tuesday and : “He said he had the most hellish day you could imagine, going out and picking up bodies of Ukrainians, Ukrainian children, helping with the clearing up. You know, our little problems become so pathetic and tiny in the context of what you see him doing”. He sent him the song and was : “Pleased and relieved that he liked it". In a text he had written : 'Thank you, it’s fabulous. One day we’ll play it together and have a good stout afterwards, on me.” David had replied : 'Yes, let’s do that’”.