How Pink Floyd Built the Dystopian Soundscape of 'Run Like Hell'

The driving rhythm guitar in “Run Like Hell” wasn’t written to be clever—it was written to feel threatening. David Gilmour built the riff around a simple two-chord pulse (D and G) and then layered it with an Electro-Harmonix Electric Mistress flanger pedal. The effect gave the part a cold, mechanical sweep, like a police siren or a factory press. Gilmour said he wanted the guitar to sound like “a big, scary machine marching down the street.” The whole thing was recorded live in the studio with the band, no overdubs on that core rhythm.

The crowd noise and sirens that fill the track came from multiple sources. Roger Waters pulled police siren sounds from a sound effects library and fed them through a harmonizer to make them more unnatural. The crowd was a