Is Dave self-taught?

is he?

"Never had one lesson." -Ferris Bueller

but he must have learnt somtin from other musicians right?

maybe that Ferris meant he never took a lesson from a proffesional teacher.
to learn from a friend also counts as learning aint it?

Your guess is as good as mine.

I am by no means a student of the Floyd, like Botley, and have forgotten most of what I once did know (simply cause I just don't care anymore), but I seem to vagualy remember Dave saying that Syd taught him when they were chums.

Are we talking about guitar?

No, horseshoes.

In that case...... he was taught by Zeb One Eye from Kalamazoo who was a famous exponent of horseshoes. He developed a knack of throwing them whilst they were still attached to the horses hooves. The style unfortunately never caught on!

Most likely from the high cost of having to put down so many spine-broken stallions.

Yup * spits towards spitoon* that's right pardner.......

i think i read somewhere that it was the other way around, that Dave taught Syd guitar, but uh...hm

I doubt that Syd taught Dave, or vice versa. Their styles are very different; I remember in an interview Dave talking about replacing Syd as a guitarist, and how it was difficult learning his songs on the guitar, because of his style.

As I understand it, they both learned together by listening to and copying r'n'b records whilst growing up in Cambridge. I don't think it was a case of one 'teaching' the other, because where would the 'teacher' have learned in the first place? This was in the early 60's mind you, later on their styles diverged.

Pete Seeger taught David how to play, by record though. Pete is a folk artist here in America and put out a how to play guitar record in the 50s. David has mentioned in a few interviews that is how he learned to play. I would imagine he just refined his own style from years and years of playing.

Dave said that he and Syd played together when they were at school but never precised if one or the other was the "teacher". But he did say that he considered himself the best guitar player of the two but that Syd was much much more imaginative.