Pink Floyd’s greatest post-Roger Waters track, according to David Gilmour
The biggest hurdle for any rock band is losing a frontman. Even if the singer was often sidelined or only managed to croak out a tune now and then, it’s easier to overlook their live flaws when they can deliver great material in the studio. While Pink Floyd prided themselves on being a democracy, David Gilmour always sounded his best when interpreting Roger Waters’ lyrics in the studio.
While Syd Barrett does have his fans in the Floyd community and has gone down as a legend of the psychedelic rock movement, Waters was more interested in looking at the big picture. He had been there from the beginning, and the only way for him to recover from Barrett’s disillusion in the late 1960s was to step up and write his own material. And when put against Gilmour’s guitars, it may as well have been a match made in heaven.
Dark Side of the Moon may thrive on the phenomenal musicianship behind every track, but Waters was far more interested in telling a story across an album. Wish You Were Here and Animals all had certain themes running through every track, but once The Wall and The Final Cut kicked in, it was clear that Waters saw himself as the leader of the band and that everyone else was merely along for the ride. And that ride wasn’t one that Gilmour wanted to be on for much longer.
Since Waters spent a long time building Floyd from the ground up, Gilmour’s choice to move on without him was an outright betrayal in his mind. But Waters wasn’t the only one who could pull off a concept record, and while A Momentary Lapse of Reason does feel like a David Gilmour solo album in some spots, The Division Bell was the moment where the band started to truly understand what made them special again.
Every song had been tied together with the central theme of miscommunication, and listening to tracks like ‘Coming Back to Life’, Gilmour had the heart to carry on the band far beyond where Waters took them. As everything builds, though, ‘High Hopes’ helps leave everything on a high note for this phase of their career.
Looking back on the record, Gilmour felt that the tune was among the best that they had made since Waters’s departure, calling it “one of my favourite all-time Pink Floyd tracks.” However, the true power behind the tune came more from where it stands in Floyd’s discography rather than any particular performance.
Although Gilmour’s solo on the tune is among the best on the record, hearing him look back on his old days when the grass was greener could easily be about his time lost without Waters and finding his way back on track. And by closing things out with the tolling of the bell to tie into the album’s title, the album comes to a rousing finish worthy of being counted among songs like ‘Eclipse’ and ‘Pigs on the Wing (Part 2)’ as the best cherry on top of one of their albums.
The only real problem is the fact that the tune wasn’t truly their swan song. This is the kind of rousing finale that everyone would love to have during their career, but despite The Endless River being the final proper album that the band ever made, ‘High Hopes’ is the real sound of Pink Floyd coming full circle.
