In London, you can't escape the eye. Nor can you escape Pink Floyd. The graphically represented iris and dilated pupil on the cover of Floyd's new live album, Pulse, is everywhere, like some sort of Big Brother. Every record store on every street has window displays featuring the eye, while thousands of blinking red lights strobe from the racks within. British TV channels run ongoing interviews with the members of Pink Floyd and excerpts from the new concert video. Even across the Atlantic, Pulse is omnipresent. New York City turns the top of The Empire State Building into a skyscraping light show that celebrates the record's release, A hundred stories below,
Pulse posters and billboards line the streets. For all intents and purposes, this live version of Dark Side Of The Moon has been given all the trappings of the sec-ond coming of Christ.
For David Gilmour, however, all the excitement is post-mortem. He wants noth-ing more than to simply retreat to the quiet of his London home and enjoy his new son, who is less than two months old. The spectacle of publicity is mere fallout, after all: It was Gilmour who orchestrated Pink Floyd's most recent concert spectacle in the first place. In the relative calm of West London, far from any spectacle and publicity, Gilmour sits in the rooftop atrium of a small hotel just off of Hyde Park. It is a typical London sum-mer day, humid, overcast and grey, with the ever-present threat of a thunderstorm.
Below is an English garden, lush and green, with row after row of brilliant flowers. It is atypically quiet here, as the noise of London fails to pierce the tranquil veneer of either the atrium or the garden. In other words, the setting is so British you almost expect some-one from Monty Python to walk across the yard and explode.
Gilmour sits at a table, looking out over the garden and sipping cappuccino. His broad face betrays something of Jack Nicholson about it-the way he uses his eyebrows and the way he smiles. His voice is as smooth as the vocals on "Comfortably Numb" or "Learning To Fly." Surprisingly, it is a voice that sounds like that of a very young man, perhaps one in his twenties.
But Gilmour was in his early twenties when he joined Pink Floyd, and that was nearly thirty years ago. Today, David Gilmour is one of the few rockers that the British revere as one of their royalty.
He has become something of a nobleman-"landed gentry" in the words of Brits-like ~agger,
Clapton, and McCartney. His cool demeanor, low profile, sophistica-tion, proper
schooling (very important in British society) and incredible success over the decades
have afforded him a level of respect not always given to longtime rock and rollers.
By comparison, it's doubtful that members of Slade or Motorhead will ever get the
same treatment from British society that Gilmour does.
Gilmour has also assumed his rightful place among guitarists as one of the most unique,
immediately recognizable, and enduring stylists in the history of rock music.
As such, he has been accord
ed near-legendary status in the guitar community- this despite his personal
reclusiveness and reluctance to play anything that is too over the top.
So why has Pink Floyd, under Gilmour's direction, chosen to release such an ostentatiously
lavish album at this stage of its career? Especially an album that fea-tures a complete
live version of Dark Side Of The Moon, one of the most popular record-ings of all time?
"The reason for Pulse is Dark Side Of The Moon, obviously," says Gilmour, stirring
his cappuccino. "We weren't going to do a live album for this tour; it seemed a bit
superflu-ous having just done one a few years ago. But, as we started out on the tour,
we were looking for ways to change the show around and make ourselves a little more
flexible and have a little fun, and Dark Side Of The Moon was one of the ideas that
came across. Vve thought,'That'll be easy, we're already playing half the songs.'
But
it took us about three months to put all the bits of sound-effect tape into it, besides
getting all
the old film and making one or two new bits of the ones that were too ancient or damaged.
So we did it on the end of our American tour, and then when we carried it over to Europe,
we started thinking,'Well, it would be nice for us-and for posterity-to have a live version
of Dark Side Of The Moon,' which I always particularly wanted. We, infact, discussed it years
ago-even when Roger was still in the band-about putting a live version of Dark Side Of The
Moon back together and recording it, because we don't have a record of it ourselves.
So, I thought that would be a very nice idea. Of course, discussing it, we finally thought
it was daft to just put out Dark Side Of The Moon-we might aswell put out the whole thing."
Floyd's tour of the globe in 1994 may well have been the most elaborately staged con-cert tour in the history of the world, incorpo-rating film, lighting effects, and a sound sys-tem that would make George Lucas cream his jeans, along with more than two hours of music. And, it was bigger than the previous Floyd show, which was bigger than the one before that, which was bigger than...and on and on.
With everything that went into this last show, could
the Pink Floyd concert spec-tacle ever get any bigger than it has gotten?
"I think the question is, well, can the spectacle get any better. I don't know. Limits
are there to be surpassed, I suppose, aren't they? People have been saying that we would
never be able to top the original Dark Side Of The Moon show in 1973. We're not trying to
top previous shows, we're just trying to do a different show each time as well as we could
possibly do it. We've set the standards for this kind of show, ever since the stadium
shows in 1973. Obviously, the technology is better, and it's easier to do many of the
things: The lasers are of better quality, so is the sound system. But we had the
quadra-phonic sound system and the circular screen even back then."
Gilmour is also not inter-ested in going backwards, in making the show smaller or
more intimate.
"I'm not big on playing small places with Pink Floyd. I mean, when
we'd been doing this tour for six months and finally got back to London, we played
Earl's Court, which holds about 18,000 people. That was a nice small club, like being
in Madison Square Garden," he laughs.
As a guitarist, Gilmour has been singled out for tastefully melodic solos, rarely crank-ing up the speed but always playing with just the right combination of aggression and restraint. He is one of only a handful of gui-tarists recording today who can be identified just by the tone of his solos.
Pulse is rife with vintage- sounding Gilmour.
"My sound is what it is because of the way my hands and fingers are made, and due
to my musical taste as well. I can't sound like anything else. That's just how I sound.
I've never tried to make it like that, it's just the way I am. The fact that it
is distinctive to other people is something that at first-in the early years-I was
kind of unhappy about. I wanted to sound like other people. I had my moments of wanting
to sound
like Hendrix, or Eric Clapton, or Teff Beck. Eventually, I got to like the way I sounded,
and I think things got better from that moment, really."
After 30 years of recording and touring, then, is he completely comfortable with
himself as a guitarist?
"Sometimes I feel ter-ribly uncomfortable with the way I play, sometimes I feel
comfortable with the way I play; it just depends on the moment. There are moments on
tour-especially after the 200 gigs on the late 1980s tour and the 100 gigs on this
last tour-when I feel like I've played every lick and every note there is to be played, and I get bored with myself. Then the next night, I think,'No, it's great,' and I find something new to explore, someplace where I haven't been." Gilmour has also explored those places on his own, in moments apart from Pink Floyd. His two solo albums 1978's David Gilmour and 1984's About Face-sold approximately a million copies each, an amazing amount of records for someon
e usually considered to be "part of a band."
He also played as a sideman on several albums, including Supertramp's
Brother Where You Bound?, Pete Townshend's White City, and Paul McCartney's Give My
Regards To Broadstreet.
One might thirlk that he could have had a respectable career away froin Pink Floyd and the
well-Publicized difticul-ties with Roger Waters. Was there ever a tinle when he
wanted to play his own Inusic, unencumbered by everything that Floyd entailed?
Gilmour sits back and rubs his chin, thinking the matter through.
"1 have to coil-fess to a certain sort of jealousy of Eric Clapton's position,
where he has his wealth of riiaterial, and he's such a corisuniiiiate blues player
that he's got a wealth of odler people's material that he can play that's not so well
known. He can take out a rlew band every tinle, and do his stuff-arld that would be a
nice position to be ill. But I'ni not in that position. I have spent my entire adult
life working on Pink Floyd. 1 nlean,
I've dulle a couple of solo projects alld I've
thoroughly enjoyed thenl, and ~earrled all awful lot from them, but my life's work
has been Pink Floyd.
I did songs from my albums on my solo tour in 1984, but there
was never a time when I didn't see us doing another Pink Floyd record-ever.
Even right before Momentary Lapse Of Reason.
It was difficult to do another Pink Floyd record until Roger actually said,
'I am out of here, I am leaving. When he declared that, it actually made it
easier to get on with it. Because, you know, the last five official years with Roger,
from 1980 onwards, were torture for all of us- including him. I couldn't see us putting it back together and going in [to the studio] and seeing whether he'd show up, and seeing whether he'd be helpful or destructive or what it was going to be like. I always thought that we would carry on. I had declared that we would carry on, and when he said in December 1985'1 am leaving,' it actually sort of opened the door for us. So, while I can certainly see my
self doing another solo pro-ject, I certainly didn't then-or now-see that I should be
forced to start my career again as a solo artist."
Is is coincidental that Gilmour's first solo album appeared at the same time that his
guitar playing was taking a more defined role in the band's sound? His increased
presence was most obvious beginning with Wish You Were Here and moving into
Animals, which featured some of Cilmour's most impressive and diverse playing.
Prior to that, the guitar had just been one of many ele-ments in the overall Floyd
sound, a sound which included tape loops, sound effects, ambúient noise, and
"synths and all that, right?" finishes Gilmour.
"I hadn't-and haven't-thought
much about it, really. I think the use of more guitar shows the grad-ual shift i
n the way we were doing things, and different peoples' influences on what we were
doing. With Roger not being a soloist or an instrumentalist, really, it was left
to me to do all that sort of stuff-along with a bit of saxophone here and there."
Yet despite his gradual rise to the posi-tion of overseeing all that is Floyd,
Gilmour's sound and playing have remained virtually unchanged for two decades.
This has won him devoted guitar adherents who feel he embodies all that is melodic
and emotional in guitar playing. Yet there are Gilmour crit-ics who feel that he has
simply used his min-imalism to the point of overkill via Pink Floyd.
David appears not to be bothered in the least by anyone's accounting of his guitar skills.
"I have a certain style, you know, because I was given these particular fingers.
They are the ones I got, and they are not ter-ribly quick."
Gilmour holds out his hands, palms up, and splays his fingers.
"There are some things they can't do, and there are some things they do better than
anyone else, thank God [laughs]. I can rehearse and I can practice for months,
and I don't get any quicker. I've given that up years ago. And I can't be bothered
with too much practicing, I'm afraid. I should, but I'm terribly
lazy about it."
His belief in what he can and cannot do, however, prompts him to seek out other
gui-tar players who possess the skills he claims not to have. This is hardly the way
most recording guitarists think.
"The limits of what I can think of, or what I can write or think about for a guitar,
are greater than my own personal playing limits. So if it comes up, which it does once
in awhile, that I can't play the part that I want to play-not having the technical
proficiency in some areas- then I'11 get someone else in to do it for me.
To me, it's simple: Since there are some things I don't do, then there's no reason
why I wouldn't get someone else to do something I thought of but I couldn't do.
We've had a lot of people doing guitar parts for us. Tim Renwick played a bit on
Pulse. I've known him since he was a kid, since he was 13. He was from Cambridge,
where I'm from, and he's always been a damn good guitar player. We'd have been willing
to go for him on any project, but he was never availab
le. Especially during the Wall years, he was too busy doing other stuff.
On A Momentary Lapse Of Reason, we had Michael Landau play on the opening parts
of'One Slip. Lee Ritenour was on 'One Of My Turns,' from The M/'all. He played
the rhythm guitar part on the second half of that. Basically I couldn't come up with
a good part for that song, so I think I threw my guitar down and said,'I can't get
anywhere with this, I don't know what to do on it. Get someone else to play it.' So
we got Lee to do it. In the case of'One Of My Turns,' I didn't even think of the part.
I've sort of modified it and adapted it for the way we play it live. I think we also
double-tracked the high-strung acoustic guitar on 'Comfortably Numb,' so he may be
playing one of those.
There was another guy, whose name escapes me, who played the Spanish
classical guitar part on 'Is There Anybody Out There?' because I felt I couldn't do
it quite cleanly enough or well enough for the record. Onstage, of course, I ended
up doing it, and it wasn't a
problem. I can't quite remember how we came across Snowy White [second guitarist
for the Wall tour. He was a great guitar player, but I honestly can't remember who
recommended him, or why, or when. I don't think at that tinie I was too used to hiring
other musicians, so I can't remember how we went about it. Since then, I've started
noticing other musicians with na eye to using them, from the point of view of who
I might use in the future. I've been keeping a little book on musicians of all sorts
who I thought were interesting, not just gui-tar players."
Have any of the younger, more speed-oriented players ever interested him?
Gilmour scrunches up his face, frowns, and looks up at the ceiling as if he has lost
some-thing.
"Ah yes...and where are they now?" he asks, before laughing loudly. "There aren't
many of the speed merchants that I have any great curiosity about.
Eddie Van Halen is great, a brilliant guitar player. Some of his solos on his own
stuff and on the Michael Jackson
piece are short, concise, brilliantly crafted solos. They're not just about speed.
He can do a bit of something that's quite gentle and then throw in something that just
blows you away because of the sheer pace of it for a second. And then he goes back to
something else. There are moments when I would like to be able to do that, but, as I
said, you get what you're given.
I mean, Jeff Beck is still my sort of guitar hero,
really, I suppose. He's the one that I think pushes the boundaries. He's consis-tently
exciting. ~eff can play damn fast, he can do speed, but he chooses not to most of the
time and that's what impresses me. It's what he chooses to leave out rather than what
he chooses to stick in."
E~ter get the urge to record or perform with leff?
"I played with him once, doing a ~an Hammer song, I'm not sure where now, but I
played the bass and Jeff played the guitar. That was a bit of fun."
Gilmour does not see himself as having reached the pinnacle of his playing,
despite his use of studio
musicians to handle certain guitar parts. To keep from getting into a rut,
especially when writing, Gilmour is willing to try new things on his instruments.
"I use new tunings quite a lot. I ~ike to disorientate myself a little bit, so I'11
use a different instrument or a different tuning. I'lleven use a piano, which I'm not
very good at, because it's too easy to fall into established patterns on the guitar.
For example, with an acoustic guitar, I'11 just strum a chord mostly. That will lead
me into a song, but it won't lead me in a particular guitar direction, if you know what
I mean." He grins, admitting, "I also get a bit folky when I play the acoustic."
What about his beloved electrics, espe-cially the prized Strat that bears the serial
nurnber 0001?
"I'11 use the old rVumber One once in a while. It's a beautiful, beautiful gui-tar,
but, you know, it's been about and it feels quite delicate. You wouldn't want to thrash
that around, especially not on the road. I actually don't like taking any
of the older ones out on the road because there's always the possibility that things
like that get stolen.
The Strats that I do use, which are sort of eaAy 1~Sb~s '57 ~ntage
Ilreissue'J Strats ma~e in California, with one or two minor modifi-cations to them,
are so good that I'm com-fortable with them, and they're all I use most of the time, even
in the studio."
When Gilmour mentions the studio, he's talking about a refurbisfied
houseboat moored on the River Thames, a boat that he converted to a studio in time
for Floyd's last studio record, The Division Bell. For the time being, there are no
plans to use the houseboat for any new recordings. In fact, Gilmour is not quite sure
what the future holds.
"When I joined this band, I was 21. I don't think I had any
inkling of what I'd be doing at 49 when I was 21. I didn't give it a thought.
I didn't think anyone ever got to this stage. But there are a lot of black blues
players in their eighties and nineties who are still going strong, and, well, luckily
there's no rules, and no one to tell us what we can and cannot do-except the public,
who support us and buy our records.
I don't know what I'II be doing for the rest of forever.
This tour-and this project- is finished with this album, and I've been working on
the music and the video ever since the tour finished, as well,as dealing with personal
and family matters. With the birth of a new son, it's a new time of life for me,
very nice, very refreshing. So I haven't had a minute to think about the future.
MTe don't have any plans at the moment, but it might be something completely different
next time. Who knows?"