Run Like Hell - Lyrics and Music

Lyrics and Music

The song is written from the point of view of anti-hero 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. The lyrics are explicitly threatening, directed at the listener, one with an "empty smile" and "hungry heart", "dirty feelings" and a "guilty past", "nerves in tatters" as "hammers batter down your door." Even the act of lovemaking is doomed, for "if they catch you in the back seat trying to pick her locks", the results will be fatal. Although the lyric "You better run like hell" appears twice in the liner notes, the title is never actually sung; each verse simply concludes with "You better run".

The music was 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. Waters provides the vocals (except for Gilmour's multitracked harmonies singing "Run, run, run, run,"). The song features the only keyboard solo on The Wall (although on live performances, "Young Lust" and "Another Brick in the Wall, Part II" would also feature keyboard solos); after the last line of lyrics, a synthesizer solo is played over the verse sequence, in place of vocals. 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. 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. The original single version and promotional EP both contain a clean guitar intro, without the live crowd effects.

As with "Comfortably Numb", also from The Wall, the music to "Run Like Hell" has its roots in Gilmour's first solo album. "Short and Sweet" can be seen as this song's precursor. "Yes," Gilmour told Musician magazine, "it's a guitar with the bottom string tuned down to a D, and thrashing around on the chord shapes over a D root. Which is the same in both . It's part of my musical repertoire, yes."

The guitar intro begins with the scratching of strings dampened with left-hand muting, before settling on an open D string dampened by palm muting. As heard earlier on the album, on "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 1)", the muted D is treated with a specific delay setting, providing three to four loud but gradually decaying repeats, one dotted-eighth note apart, with the result that simply playing quarter notes (at 116 beats per minute) will produce a strict rhythm of one eighth note followed by two sixteenth notes, with rhythmic echoes overlapping. Over this pedal tone of D, Gilmour plays descending triads in D major (mostly D, A, and G), down to the open chord position (a quieter, second overdubbed guitar plays open chords only). Some of the guitar tracks are also treated with a heavy flanging effect.

The verses are in E minor, with pedal tones of the guitar's open E, B, and G strings (a full E minor triad) ringing out over a sequence of power chords, resulting in the chords E minor, Fmaj7sus2(♯11), C major seventh, and Bsus4(add♭6). Providing contrast, another guitar, equally treated with delay, plays a low-pitched riff on the roots and minor sevenths of each chord, although the E♭ (minor seventh of F) and B♭ (minor seventh of C) do not match the sustaining open E and B strings an octave above.

Aside from the added tones in each chord, the basic verse sequence of E minor, F major, E minor, C major, and B major is reprised later in "The Trial", the conceptual climax of The Wall. However, David Gilmour is not credited as a co-writer of "The Trial", which is credited to Waters and producer Bob Ezrin.

Before the final riff ends the song, a piercing shriek by Roger Waters can be heard, not unlike one heard in between "The Happiest Days of Our Lives" and "Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)".