"Run Like Hell" is a song by the English progressive rock band Pink Floyd, written by David Gilmour and Roger Waters.
The song is written from the narrative point of view of antihero Pink during a hallucination in which the alienated and bitter rock star becomes a fascist dictator and turns a concert audience into an angry, violent mob.
In the film adaptation, Pink directs his jackbooted thugs to attack the "riff-raff" mentioned in the previous song (In the Flesh Pt.
One scene depicts an interracial couple cuddling in the back seat of a car when a group of neo-Nazis accost them, beating the boy and raping the girl while the narrator sings "You better run".
The Wall director Alan Parker hired the Tilbury Skins, a skinhead gang from Essex, for a scene in which Pink's "hammer guard" (in black, militaristic uniforms designed by the film's animator, Gerald Scarfe) smashes up a Pakistani diner; Parker recalled how the action "always seemed to continue long after I had yelled out 'Cut!'.
Following the solo, the arrangement "empties out" and becomes sparse, with the guitar only playing an ostinato with rhythmic echoes, and brief variations every other bar.
The original 7" single version and Pink Floyd The Wall -- Special Radio Construction promotional EP both contain a clean guitar intro, without the live crowd effects.
[5] Gilmour said "Short and Sweet", from his eponymous debut solo studio album, was similar to "Run Like Hell", with both songs using drop-D tuning and chords based around a D root.
Billboard felt that the lyrics were not as "biting" as Pink Floyd's previous single "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2," but stated that "it's the driving, dance-oriented, percussion-filled rhythm which makes the song come alive.
[10] Cashbox said that "David Gilmour’s hard bitten guitar and Roger Water's incessant bass beat set the perfect instrumental mood for the lyrical paranoia.
"[12] Ultimate Classic Rock critic Michael Gallucci rated it as the 7th best Roger Waters song with Pink Floyd, calling it "a paranoid and drug-fueled riff on the dangers of stardom and its parallels with fascism.
According to Phil Taylor, David Gilmour played "Run Like Hell" on a Fender Telecaster guitar tuned to a drop-D on the 1994 tour.
He also performed the song solo at the Colombian Volcano benefit concert in 1986, trading lines with house-band keyboardist John "Rabbit" Bundrick (who later played on Waters' solo album, Amused to Death) and again during his 2015–2016 Rattle That Lock Tour, trading lines with Guy Pratt as documented on the 2016 Live at Pompeii album and film,[17] which was also released as the third single to promote the release.