David Gilmour comments on Pulse and Floyd's Future (1995)

[The Piper]

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 ~ack 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 schoo~ing (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 accorded 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 someone
usually considered to be "part of a band." He also glayed 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-l>ublicized 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 OfReason. 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 myself 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
pres-ence 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 in 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 wou~dn'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 available.
Especially during the Wall years, he was too busy doing other stuff. On A
Momentary Lapse OfReason, 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 Mlichael ~ackson 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?"