'Short and Sweet' can be seen as this song's precursor. Īs with ' Comfortably Numb', also from The Wall, the music to 'Run Like Hell' has its roots in Gilmour's first solo album. The EP version also contains an extended, 32-beat intro and an extended 64-beat outro where David Gilmour's main guitar phrase repeats before the track ends. 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. Sound effects are used to create a sense of paranoia, with the sound of cruel laughter, running footsteps, car tyres skidding, and a loud scream. 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 song features the only keyboard solo on The Wall by Richard Wright (although on live performances, ' Young Lust' and ' Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2' would also feature keyboard solos) after the last line of lyrics, a synthesizer solo is played over the verse sequence, in place of vocals. The first version of the song had music written by Waters (which appears on the Immersion box set of The Wall) with the lyrics as on the album but then Waters's music was scrapped in favour of Gilmour's music during the recording of the band demos (which too appears on the Immersion box set).

Waters provides the vocals (except for Gilmour's multitracked harmonies singing 'Run, run, run, run,'). The music was solely written by David Gilmour (one of three songs on The Wall for which Gilmour is credited as a co-writer), and the lyrics were written by Roger Waters. 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!'.' History 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. In the film adaptation, Pink directs his jackbooted thugs to attack the 'riff-raff' mentioned in the previous song, in which he ordered them to raid and destroy the homes of queers, Jews, and black people. The song is written from the narrative point of view of antihero Pink, an alienated and bitter rock star, during a hallucination in which he becomes a fascist dictator and turns a concert audience into an angry mob. To date, it is the last original composition written by both Gilmour and Waters, the last of such under the Pink Floyd banner, and is the last composition ever recorded by all four members of the classic 70s-era Floyd lineup together, within their traditional instrumental roles of Waters on bass, Gilmour on guitars, Nick Mason on drums, and Richard Wright on keyboards, on the same song. A 12' single of 'Run Like Hell,' ' Don't Leave Me Now' and ' Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)' peaked at #57 on the Disco Top 100 chart in the U.S. It was released as a single in 1980, reaching #15 in the Canadian singles chart and #18 in Sweden, but it only reached #53 in the U.S. ' Run Like Hell' is a song by the English progressive rock band Pink Floyd, written by David Gilmour and Roger Waters.

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