Gilmour tells LAUNCH, "The management sometimes rings me up and says, 'Hey, you should get out there and do some stuff.' But frankly, for me at the moment, that's just not what my mind is on. You know, I have something else I'm doing, and that's what my mind is concentrating on. Anything else is, you know, a distraction."
That something else is working on a new solo album in the wake of David Gilmour In Concert, a DVD and VHS due November 5 that was recorded at performances in June 2001 and January 2002 at London's Royal Festival Hall. Working with string players, a gospel choir, and other instrumentalists, Gilmour performed several Pink Floyd favorites, a couple of songs by Floyd co-founder Syd Barrett, a section of a Bizet opera ("Je Crois Entendre Encore"), "Hushabye Mountain" from the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and one new song, "Smile," co-written by Gilmour with his wife, Polly.
Gilmour says that the concert performances represented on the video inspired him to concentrate on new music again, which supersedes any consideration of Pink Floyd activity, and particularly of the time that would require. "I wouldn't do a Pink Floyd tour without a new record--that just seems wrong, seems sort of insane. And to do a Pink Floyd project, which involves making a record and doing a tour, takes at least two years of your life--24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week concentration and hard work--so, as I say, that's just not what I'm thinking of doing right at the moment, not something that I'm relishing."
Pink Floyd has not toured or released a new album since 1994, although last fall it issued a retrospective, Echoes.
-- Gary Graff, Detroit