'A Great Day For Freedom 2022' - Pink Floyd Update Track

Pink Floyd released the track "Hey Hey Rise Up" months ago to support Ukraine after Russia invaded. The b-side of the single is the older track "A Great Day For Freedom." The catch, of course, is that this is a new version of the older song. The version below is known as "A Great Day For Freedom 2022"

In the YouTube notes to the revised version of the song, Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour writes: For this limited edition release, David Gilmour revisited The Division Bell track ‘A Great Day For Freedom’, he has reworked the song using the original tapes which feature Nick Mason on drums and Richard Wright on keyboards, along with backing vocals from Sam Brown, Claudia Fontaine and Durga McBroom. The track was composed by Gilmour with lyrics by himself and Polly Samson. Speaking about the song in 1994, Gilmour said, “There was a wonderful moment of optimism when the Berlin wall came down – the release of Eastern Europe from the non-democratic side of the socialist system. But what they have now doesn't seem to be much better. Again, I'm fairly pessimistic about it all. I sort of wish and live in hope, but I tend to think that history moves at a much slower pace than we think it does. I feel that real change takes a long, long time.”

Talking about the inspiration for ‘Hey Hey Rise Up’ Gilmour commented, “Any war, but particularly a war that is started by a world superpower against an independent democratic nation, has got to raise enormous anger and frustration in one. As I said before, I have a small connection there; my daughter-in-law is from Ukraine. And the band Boombox are Ukrainian people that I already knew, not well, but from some time ago. It’s an enormously difficult, frustrating, and anger-making thing that one human being could have the power to go into another independent democratic nation and set about killing the population. It’s just obscene to an extent that is just beyond my belief.”

1/3 Using A Great Day For Freedom as the B-side of the new Pink Floyd single, Hey Hey, Rise Up seemed like an obvious and relevant choice. And David has, for some time, wanted to record a simpler more direct version of the song.

— Pink Floyd (@pinkfloyd) July 22, 2022

2/3 So here it is, with a newly edited video taken from a Pulse rehearsal during Pink Floyd’s two-week run at Earl’s Court, London, in 1994. The recording, using the original drums and bass by Nick and David, has keyboards by Rick and backing vocals by Claudia, Sam and Durga...

— Pink Floyd (@pinkfloyd) July 22, 2022

3/3 ...taken from the Pulse rehearsals. New piano, Prophet 5 synthesiser and Hammond are played by David, as on the original demo.https://t.co/lo3Zv6HzkU

— Pink Floyd (@pinkfloyd) July 22, 2022