“Childhood’s End” now has a music video.
Pink Floyd produced the new video for the old song ahead of the Nov. 2016 release of the Early Years 1965-1972 massive box set.
“Childhood’s End”, from Pink Floyd’s seventh album Obscured By Clouds, has been remixed from the original master tapes in 2016 by Andy Jackson and Damon Iddins.
In February 1972, the band were already playing The Dark Side Of The Moon live and starting to record its songs, but production was briefly halted when they accepted their second commission for filmmaker Barbet Schroeder, to create the soundtrack for his feature film La Vallée.
In the last week of February 1972, Pink Floyd started work, at Strawberry Studios in Herouville, France, and as David Gilmour later described: “We sat in a room, wrote, recorded, like a production line.” The result was 10 pieces of music: six songs and four instrumentals, which Melody Maker described as “some of the most aggressive instrumentals the Floyd have recorded.”
David Gilmour’s “Childhood’s End” was one of the few songs from the soundtrack to be included in Pink Floyd’s live shows and was featured on European dates, starting on December 1, 1972, and at the start of the band’s March 1973 tour of North America, usually with an extended instrumental passage.
The definitive Early Years box set, released November, 2016.
The Early Years 1965 – 1972 is a comprehensive 27-disc box set that sees Pink Floyd delve into their vast music archive to produce a deluxe package that includes 7 individual book-style volumes, featuring much previously unreleased material. The Early Years box set contains unreleased tracks, BBC Radio Sessions, remixes, outtakes and alternative versions over an incredible 11 hours, 45 mins of audio (made up of 130+ tracks) and live and TV performance in over 14 hours of audio-visual material. The content includes over 20 unreleased songs, more than 7 hours of previously unreleased live audio and over 5 hours of rare concert footage, along with 5 meticulously produced 7″ singles in replica sleeves, collectable memorabilia, feature films and new sound mixes. Previously unreleased tracks include 1967’s “Vegetable Man” and “In The Beechwoods,” which have been mixed for the first time, specially for this release. The Early Years 1965-1972 will give collectors the opportunity to hear the evolution of the band and witness their part in cultural revolutions from their earliest recordings and studio sessions to the years prior to the release of The Dark Side Of The Moon, one of the biggest selling albums of all time. From the single “Arnold Layne” to the 20-minute epic “Echoes,” fans will see the invention of psychedelic progressive rock via an insightful collection that explores the Pink Floyd story from the time Roger Waters, Richard Wright, Nick Mason and Syd Barrett met at London’s Regent Street Polytechnic, through to Syd’s departure and David Gilmour joining to form the iconic lineup.
October, 2020:
Restored. Re-edited. Remixed.
In 1987, Pink Floyd made a triumphant resurgence. The legendary British band, formed in 1967, had suffered the loss of two co-founders: keyboardist/ vocalist Richard Wright, who left after sessions for The Wall in 1979, and bass player and lyricist Roger Waters, who had left to go solo in 1985, soon after the 1983 album The Final Cut.
The gauntlet was thus laid down for guitarist/singer David Gilmour and drummer Nick Mason, who proceeded to create the multi-platinum A Momentary Lapse Of Reason album, a global chart smash, which also saw the return of Richard Wright to the fold.
Released in September 1987, A Momentary Lapse Of Reason was quickly embraced by fans worldwide, who flocked to attend the live tour dates, which started within days of the album’s release. The tour played to more than 4.25 million fans over more than 2 years, and, as a celebration of the enduring talent and global appeal of David, Nick and Richard, supported on tour by 8 other stellar musicians, it was unsurpassed at the time.
Although the actual final live date was in June 1990, the critically acclaimed, Grammy Award-nominated, Delicate Sound Of Thunder concert presentation celebrated the last shows of 1988 – a 5-night run filmed and recorded at the Nassau Coliseum in Long Island, New York, in August of that year. The restored version was sourced directly from hundreds of cans of original 35mm negatives, painstakingly transferred to 4k by Adrian Bull at Cinelab London. Originally directed by Wayne Isham, the concert was completely re-edited from the restored and upgraded footage by Creative Director Aubrey ‘Po’ Powell and editor Benny Trickett.
Similarly, the sound was completely remixed from the original multitrack tapes by longtime Pink Floyd engineer Andy Jackson with David Gilmour, assisted by Damon Iddins.
The setlist carefully balances the then-new material and Pink Floyd classics, and as a record of the creative power of David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Richard Wright at their incendiary best, Delicate Sound of Thunder is an engrossing and uplifting experience.
JUST RELEASED April 7, 2022:
The official video for ‘Hey Hey Rise Up’, Pink Floyd’s new Ukraine fundraiser feat Andriy Khlyvnyuk of Boombox.
‘Hey Hey Rise Up’, released in support of the people of Ukraine, sees David Gilmour and Nick Mason joined by long time Pink Floyd bass player Guy Pratt and Nitin Sawhney on keyboards, all accompanying an extraordinary vocal by Andriy Khlyvnyuk of Ukrainian band Boombox. All proceeds go to Ukrainian Humanitarian Relief. This is the first new original music that they have recorded together as a band since 1994’s The Division Bell. The track uses Andriy’s vocals taken from his Instagram post of him in Kyiv’s Sofiyskaya Square singing ‘The Red Viburnum In The Meadow’, a rousing Ukrainian protest song written during the first World War. The title of the Pink Floyd track is taken from the last line of the song which translates as ‘Hey, hey, rise up and rejoice’. The song’s opening choral parts are by Ukrainian VERYOVKA Folk Song and Dance Ensemble.
Gilmour, who has a Ukrainian daughter-in-law and grandchildren says: “We, like so many, have been feeling the fury and the frustration of this vile act of an independent, peaceful democratic country being invaded and having its people murdered by one of the world’s major powers”. Gilmour explains how he came to know Andriy and his band Boombox. “In 2015, I played a show at Koko in London in support of the Belarus Free Theatre, whose members have been imprisoned. Pussy Riot and the Ukrainian band, Boombox, were also on the bill. They were supposed to do their own set, but their singer Andriy had visa problems, so the rest of the band backed me for my set – we played Wish You Were Here for Andriy that night. Recently I read that Andriy had left his American tour with Boombox, had gone back to Ukraine, and joined up with the Territorial Defense. Then I saw this incredible video on Instagram, where he stands in a square in Kyiv with this beautiful gold-domed church and sings in the silence of a city with no traffic or background noise because of the war. It was a powerful moment that made me want to put it to music.”
While writing the music for the track, David managed to speak with Andriy from his hospital bed in Kyiv where he was recovering from a mortar shrapnel injury. “I played him a little bit of the song down the phone line and he gave me his blessing. We both hope to do something together in person in the future.” Speaking about the track Gilmour says, “I hope it will receive wide support and publicity. We want to raise funds for humanitarian charities, and raise morale. We want express our support for Ukraine and in that way, show that most of the world thinks that it is totally wrong for a superpower to invade the independent democratic country that Ukraine has become.” The video for ‘Hey Hey Rise Up’ was filmed by acclaimed director Mat Whitecross and shot on the same day as the track was recorded. David Gilmour: “We recorded the track and video in our barn where we did all our Von Trapped Family live streams during lockdown. It’s the same room that we did the ‘Barn Jams’ with Rick Wright back in 2007. Janina Pedan made the set in a day and we had Andriy singing on the screen while we played, so the four of us had a vocalist, albeit not one who was physically present with us.” The artwork for the track features a painting of the national flower of Ukraine, the sunflower, by the Cuban artist, Yosan Leon. The cover of the single is a direct reference to the woman who was seen around the world giving sunflower seeds to Russian soldiers and telling them to carry them in their pockets so that when they die, sunflowers will grow.
LYRICS:
Oyu luzi chervona kalyna pokhylylasya,
Chohos’ nasha slavna Ukrayina zazhurylasya.
A my tuyu chervonu kalynu pidiymemo,
A my nashu slavnu Ukrayinu, hey-hey, rozveselymo!