{"id":807872,"date":"2026-10-19T19:54:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-19T19:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/807872\/"},"modified":"2026-10-19T19:54:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-19T19:54:09","slug":"how-pink-floyd-made-high-hopes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/807872\/","title":{"rendered":"How Pink Floyd made High Hopes"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2014 Prog explored the history of Pink Floyd<\/a>\u2019s The Division Bell<\/a>, which had been released 20 years previously. We included a potted history of the track High Hopes, regarded by many as the best song on the record.<\/p>\n

Shortly before the summer of 1993, Pink Floyd \u2013 joined by Guy Pratt<\/a> and fellow touring Floyd musicians, guitarist Tim Renwick, percussionist Gary Wallis and keyboard player Jon Carin \u2013 entered Olympic Studios in West London, and recorded a handful of new songs. In autumn, they reconvened on David Gilmour<\/a>\u2019s houseboat Astoria and began developing the pieces further.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Gilmour then faced the hurdle of writing words. Unlike Roger Waters<\/a>, he wasn\u2019t a confident lyricist. Ex-Slapp Happy songwriter Anthony Moore \u2013 who\u2019d co-written on A Momentary Lapse Of Reason<\/a> \u2013 and former Dream Academy singer-songwriter Nick Laird-Clowes would both contribute to The Division Bell. But it was Gilmour\u2019s then girlfriend, journalist and author Polly Samson<\/a>, who\u2019d end up co-creating the lion\u2019s share of the lyrics.<\/p>\n

\u201cI started writing things and looking to her for an opinion, and gradually, as a writer herself and an intelligent person, she started putting her oar in and I encouraged her,\u201d Gilmour said. He spent the days working on the music on the Astoria, before going home to write with his soon-to-be wife. \u201cThere was,\u201d he said, \u201ca whole invisible side to the process.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not everyone was comfortable with the situation. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t easy at first,\u201d admitted prodicer Bob Ezrin<\/a>. \u201cIt put a strain on the boys\u2019 club, and it was almost clich\u00e9d to have this new woman coming in and then get involved in the career. But whatever David was thinking at the time, she helped him find a way to say it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Between them the couple wrote the album\u2019s strongest song, High Hopes. \u201cIt pulled the whole album together,\u201d said Ezrin. \u201cIt also gave us an idea around which to hang some of the broader concepts.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was partly inspired by Gilmour\u2019s childhood and adolescence in Cambridge. Its beautiful lap steel guitar solo evoked Shine On You Crazy Diamond, while composer Michael Kamen\u2019s orchestral arrangement flashed back to the strings and woodwind he\u2019d used on Comfortably Numb.<\/a><\/p>\n

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Naming High Hopes the 11th best song of the 1990s<\/a>, Classic Rock noted: \u201cMost clearly with the opening lines \u2018Beyond the horizon of the place we lived when we were young\/In a world of magnets and miracles\u2019 and the closing lines \u2018The grass was greener\/The light was brighter\/The taste was sweeter\/The nights of wonder\u2026\u2019 the lyrics look back nostalgically to childhood wonder and innocence, before the realities of life conspire to break the spell.<\/p>\n

\u201cInterestingly, the final couplet (\u2018The endless river, forever and ever\u2019) revisits a line in Floyd\u2019s 1967 single See Emily Play (\u2018Float on a river\/Forever and ever.\u2019) The dark clouds dissipate with the arrival of the closing section, when Gilmour delivers a wonderful slide-guitar solo that\u2019s arguably among the best he\u2019s recorded.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the end of 1993 the album was complete and the band began casting around for titles. Nick Mason<\/a> favoured Down To Earth; others preferred Pow-Wow. In the end Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker\u2019s Guide To The Galaxy and friend of the band, spotted the words \u2018the division bell\u2019 in the lyrics to High Hopes, and suggested that instead.<\/p>\n

The song\u2019s themes of nostalgia and reflection were reprised in the Gilmour\/Samson\/Laird-Clowes composition Poles Apart. Its first verse was apparently inspired by Syd Barrett<\/a>; its second by Waters. What Ezrin called \u201cthe broader concept\u201d of The Division Bell was communication and the difficulties thereof: between friends, wives and lovers, and former bandmates.<\/p>\n

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