Pink Floyd

High Hopes

"High Hopes" is a song from the 1994 Pink Floyd album, The Division Bell, written by David Gilmour and Polly Samson. Its lyrics speak of the things one may have gained and lost in life and also an autobiographical flair to it for Gilmour. Douglas Adams, famous for writing The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, chose the album title from one of the lyrics in this song

Pink Floyd manager, Steve O'Rourke, who lobbied to be included on one of the group's albums, appears at the end with Gilmour's step-son, Charlie, who hangs up a telephone on O'Rourke

The beginning of "High Hopes" is reminiscent of another of his songs, "Fat Old Sun", from the Pink Floyd album Atom Heart Mother. Bells chime at the beginning of both pieces, for example.
The video/backdrop film for this track, which featured an oversized bust of Syd Barrett, was featured on an episode of Beavis and Butthead. Beavis said that if you didn't know the name Pink Floyd or anything about the band and just saw this video, you might think this was wimp music. Butthead replied to him that this is wimp music.

"High Hopes" was really the last one, it was written after all the other (songs) were sort of, in some form or another. I think I wrote it in July or something. It was very, very quick. It's one of those ones that works, quickly, but beautifully, almost immediately and, I came up with a tiny bit of music, just had it on a cassette, just a few bars of piano. And then I went off to get away to a small house somewhere with my girlfriend, Polly, and try and make some progress on the lyric writing. And she gave me a phrase about something about before time wears you down. And I took it from there, and...got stuck into a whole sort of thing about, I suppose, my, it's autobiographical really, I suppose I'd have to say on that one, it's about my life, Cambridge life, and my childhood, I suppose. Yeah, we came up with it very, very quickly, we wrote the words to it in, most of the words to it in a day. And then I went back to the studio, with no one else there, the minute I got back, and put a demo down of it. Did everything myself on it, and it was virtually complete in a day.


High Hopes Video and Lyrics




Beyond the horizon of the place we lived when we were young
In a world of magnets and miracles
Our thoughts strayed constantly and without boundary
The ringing of the division bell had begun
Along the long road and on down the causeway
Do they still meet there by the cut
There was a ragged band that followed in our footsteps
Running before time took our dreams away
Leaving the myriad small creatures trying to tie us to the ground
To a life consumed by slow decay

The grass was greener
The light was brighter
With friends surrounded
The nights of wonder

Looking beyond the embers of bridges glowing behind us
To a glimpse of how green it was on the other side
Steps taken forwards but sleepwalking back again
Dragged by the force of some inner tide
At a higher altitude with flag unfurled
We reached the dizzy heights of that dreamed of world

****

Encumbered forever by desire and ambition
There's a hunger still unsatisfied
Our weary eyes still stray to the horizon
go down this road we've been so many times

The grass was greener
The light was brighter
The taste was sweeter
The nights of wonder
With friends surrounded
The dawn mist glowing
The water flowing
The endless river

Forever and ever
"Hey, is that Charlie? yes... Hello Charlie... great"