"Hey You" is a song by English rock band Pink Floyd, released on their 1979 double albumThe Wall. The song, along with "The Show Must Go On", was edited out of the film for fear on the part of the filmmakers that the film was running too long; however, a rough version is available as an extra on the 25th Anniversary Edition DVD.
Composition
The song starts off with an acoustic guitar, restrung in a fashion similar to Nashville tuning, but with the low E string replaced by a high E tuned two full octaves higher than normal. It plays arpeggios over E and D minor added ninth chords. The alternate stringing allows for adjacent pitches to ring out separately on separate strings throughout the arpeggio. A fretless bass enters, also played by guitarist David Gilmour rather than usual bassist Roger Waters. Next to join in is the Fender Rhodes electric piano by Rick Wright, Gilmour's vocals, singing in the first person, as the character "Pink", and overdubbed acoustic guitar and drums at the start of the second verse. In the middle is a guitar solo which is played over the album's leitmotif of the melody to "Another Brick in the Wall". After the solo, Roger Waters sings the lead vocal for the rest of the song, in a narrative role, referring to "Pink" in the third person and then as Pink. The bridge is a chord sequence later heard on the album as "Bring the Boys Back Home", ending on an E minor chord, leading to a reprise of the instrumental introduction, augmented by prominent ARP Quadra riffs and a faintly audible sound of a drill. At this point, there is a piece of indecipherable whispering from the left channel. Drums and vocals then join in. At about 3:23 into the song, a sonar-like sound, similar to the ping in "Echoes", is heard. When Waters sings the final verse, he does so one octave higher than Gilmour, with the highest note being the first C above middle C.
Plot
The Wall tells the story of Pink, an alienated young rock star who is retreating from society and isolating himself. In "Hey You", Pink realizes his mistake of shunning society and attempts to regain contact with the outside world. However, he cannot see or hear beyond the wall. Pink's call becomes more and more desperate as he begins to realize there is no escape.
Film version
"Hey You" was shot for the film Pink Floyd—The Wall, but the sequence was ultimately not included. A workprint appears on the special edition DVD, in black and white. Most of the footage was used in other sequences. The scene begins with Pink trying to claw out of his freshly completed wall. The scene then switches to Pink's concert-goers, all of them with a blank and vacant look on their faces. These are the people "Standing in the aisles with itchy feet and fading smiles" that Pink is trying to reach out to. Next is a shot of empty infirmary beds followed by a view of two empty chairs in a white room. A motionless Pink fades into the chair on the left, with his nude wife fading into the right chair a short time later. After turning her head to look at her unresponsive husband, she fades out of the scene, which shifts to a montage of rioting scenes, with people tipping over cars and throwing Molotov cocktails at riot police. After the montage, a hand is shown clawing at a window followed by a large group of maggots. After a shot of Pink in an infirmary bed and his screaming wife superimposed over the image, the scene takes back to the riot, where a long line of police officers hold back a mob of rioters who have barricaded themselves behind a pile of desks and mattresses. The scene ends with Pink against his wall, having given up on finding a way out.
David Gilmour — electric guitar, guitar solo, vocals
Nick Mason — drums
Richard Wright — piano, keyboards
Tim Renwick — acoustic guitar, rhythm electric guitar
Jon Carin — keyboards, programming, vocals
Guy Pratt — fretless bass guitar
Gary Wallis — percussion
Sam Brown – backing vocals
Claudia Fontaine – backing vocals
Durga McBroom – backing vocals
Covers and other uses
In the 2005 Noah Baumbach movie The Squid and the Whale, an important part of the plot revolves around a teenage boy who claims to have written "Hey You" and becomes popular at school for it, winning a talent show, until someone realises it is a Pink Floyd song. In 2016, contestant Aline Oger sang the song in the Belgian edition of The Voice.
