Hey you, out there on the road
always doing what you’re told
Can you help me?
Hey you, out there beyond the wall
breaking bottles in the hall
Can you help me?
Hey you don’t tell me there’s no hope at all
Together we stand, divided we fall…
Songwriter: Roger Waters Performed by: Pink Floyd
A NOSY neighbor has been saying that since the start of the Enhance Community Quarantine or ECQ, Moi just stays at home all day and smokes weed while listening to the music of Pink Floyd. Nothing could be further from the truth, or is it?
It’s not entirely true as Moi also regularly does a lot of writing, this column included, of course, while listening to Pink Floyd and smoking weed with a cool glass of Chablis.
As I have been saying, when I listen to Pink Floyd so do my neighbors.
There’s this particular song that perfectly describes the isolation and loneliness set upon us by this quarantine. “Hey You” is a song by English rock band Pink Floyd, released on their 1979 double album The Wall.
Pink Floyd is an English rock band formed in London in 1965. Gaining a following as a psychedelic rock group, they were distinguished for their extended compositions, sonic experimentation, philosophical lyrics and elaborate live shows, and became a leading band of the progressive rock genre. They are one of the most commercially successful and influential bands in popular music history.
Considered one of the UK’s first psychedelic music groups, Pink Floyd began their career at the vanguard of London’s underground music scene By 1967, they had developed an unmistakably psychedelic sound, performing long, loud suitelike compositions that touched on hard rock, blues, country, folk, and electronic music. Other genres attributed to the band are space rock, experimental rock, acid rock, and psychedelic rock.
The band was named after two American Blues musicians: Pink Anderson and Floyd Council which clearly shows the music genre that strongly influenced the band.
The music of Pink Floyd will always leave the trendy social-climbing millennials staring into space in utter bewilderment.
And we segue to our featured song; from www.songfacts.com:
This is one of the most mysterious songs on The Wall. It seems to be about the longing for human interaction. The phrase “Hey You” implies calling out to someone, following that phrase in every verse is a person in some sort of desperate or pathetic scenario. Following these scenarios in every verse is a question asking for human interaction, and as the song goes on these questions become more desperate in every verse: “Can you feel me?” “Would you touch me?” “Can you help me?” In scheme of the album as a whole the song is about how although people put up their “Wall” to keep people out, they desperately but hopelessly long for real human interaction.
From https://songmeanings.com:
The song is definitely about a person’s struggle within themselves. It is about the feelings of loneliness and isolation that stem from bouts of depression that the person is dealing with. He is talking to himself “Hey you”…The feeling of hopelessness that accompany the thoughts of one who is depressed and the desire to break free from the disease.
The album The Wall is also the soundtrack of a film also with the same title and the song Hey You is about the struggles of a drug infused rock star aptly named “Pink” who in his drug infused reality created a “wall” to isolate himself from people when all he really wanted was to have a normal interaction with people, a classic oxymoron.
Although there’s another thought which I’m very much inclined to agree that “Hey You” is really about Pink Floyd’s founding member, songwriter and creative leader the late Syd Barrett an artist and creative genius who gave the band its name Pink Floyd by juxtaposing the first names of bluesmen Pink Anderson and Floyd Council.
Sadly, because of drug abuse particularly LSD, Syd Barrett became schizophrenic and was eventually asked to leave the band. He left the music scene and devoted what was left of life to his paintings and gardening he died in 2006 aged 60 from pancreatic cancer.
In memory of Syd Barrett and the others who have been to the “dark side of the moon” let me leave you with some unsettling lines from Hey You:
But it was only fantasy
the wall was too high
as you can see
No matter how he tried
He could not break free
and the worms ate into his brain… (brotherlouie16@gmail.com/PN)
