Segment a classic album, and you are left with little snippets of meaning. The Wall is the sum of all its parts, even if many of those moments are underwhelming or objectively heavy-handed. They needed to be. Roger Waters would write stronger, politically themed works elsewhere, the albums preceding the so-called classic, for instance. But what becomes clear is The Wall has many fan favourites. Between Comfortably Numb and Run Like Hell, Pink Floyd had their hands on golden opportunities. The latter track still feels a tad flat on the studio version. It’s a version of the song that, once you’ve heard it performed live or issued on a bootleg, is hard to return to. Rip the song from its hallucinated story context, and you have a very fine instrumental piece from David Gilmour, which sounds a little too pop adjacent. It is a vision from a fictional character, after all. Perhaps that’s the defence we can make for Run Like Hell, a song Gilmour has said he’ll never play again.
He and Roger Waters made for a strange and not at all harmonious writing pair. Gilmour would pen this with the founding member, and there’s a simplicity to Run Like Hell which lasts now. It’s why Polly Samson writes the guitarist’s material even now. There is, as Gilmour called it, a “terrifying and violent” purpose to Run Like Hell, but the instrumental work on the studio version is somewhat unconvincing. A catchy and riotous piece of work where the space-age whine of Gilmour’s guitar and the thudding fails to make a sinister atmosphere. It’s the screaming and howling from Waters which brings that to life, and even then it’s barely. Catchy, certainly, and within the context of The Wall it’s a crucial part of the story. But as an instrumental experience, as a song with merit beyond its message, Run Like Hell struggles. Much of The Wall does. But that is a problem for the studio, not the song. Not entirely, anyway.
Comfortably Numb gets better when you hear the live versions from the band’s touring days. Is There Anybody Out There, managed a strong version of The Wall classic. These are songs which were expanded on so often, became staples of Waters and Gilmour’s live shows separately, that it’s hard to think of these songs without the context of a dozen live shows. Run Like Hell needs that extra leg up, that excess which carries the song to a new and better horizon. It’s a fine song which has become a staple of Waters’ live shows, with Gilmour having dropped this violent track. There’s little mystery to it, so no wonder Waters has taken it as a staple of his set. It makes sense to do so, especially given the sharper tone of his lead vocals.
But it’s not exactly classic Pink Floyd. The guitar work feels like a trend-setting moment for some of the worst glam and pop-rock to feature in the 1980s, while the repetition of “run”, while offering a dreamlike state, does very little. Waters’ lead vocal work too, impressive his voice may be, doesn’t quite lash out with the same rage as, say Money or Have a Cigar. That’s not a problem of fiction and non-fiction, it’s merely the case for the instrumentals and the story surrounding it. The Wall feels like testing the waters before Amused to Death built on these tones of childhood remorse and a bleak-looking future. Run Like Hell tries to balance the lighter touch of its instrumental work with the depths of sin and villainy found in the relentless dream sequence. It’s a fine piece of a wider project, though the original remains tame.
