Interview: Pink Floyd's David Gilmour
Published: Nov. 4, 2002 at 12:56 PM
By GARY GRAFF
When British art rocker Robert Wyatt called Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour with a request to play at the 2001 Meltdown Festival he was curating, Gilmour readily agreed.
Then the reticent and retiring performer put down the phone and thought to himself, "What have I done?"
Motivated, he acknowledges, by "fear," the 56-year-old Gilmour crafted an ambitious performance that he presented at London's Royal Festival Hall during June of 2001 and liked doing so much he repeated it last January.
It's now been captured on the home video and DVD "David Gilmour in Concert," a 16-song set drawn from the two engagements and featuring guest appearances by Wyatt, Band Aid/Live Aid founder Bob Geldof and Gilmour's Pink Floyd bandmate Rick Wright.
It will also be shown at 8 p.m. Tuesday (Nov. 5], the day the project is released, on VH1 Classic.
For the concerts, Gilmour's untraditional ensemble included string players, saxophonist Dick Parry (another long-time Floyd association) and a gospel choir. His repertoire included Floyd favorites such as "Shine On You Crazy Diamond," "Wish You Were Here" and "Comfortably Numb," songs by Floyd founder Syd Barrett -- who Gilmour replaced in the band in 1968 -- one new songs ("Smile," co-written with his second wife, Polly) and left field selections like "Je Crois Entendre Encore" from the Bizet opera "The Pearl Fishers" and "Hushabye Mountain" from the film "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang."
Gilmour says his primary goal was to do something far afield from the light-and-sound stadium spectacles that he's performed with Pink Floyd, which last toured during 1994.
"I knew I didn't want to do just the same old thing, so I had to come up with a different plan," the father of eight says by phone from London.
"I tried to choose things that I thought would suit this type of arrangement. Some of them were very obvious, like 'Wish You Were Here,' and some others seemed less obvious at the time but worked out very nicely.
"I think you sometimes have to be encouraged to look forward and not to look back all the time. Certainly I have a tendency towards enjoying other aspects of life a bit too much, so it's good for people like (Wyatt) to push me into things occasionally. It certainly got me off my butt."
Gilmour -- who also played on Paul McCartney's 1999 album "Run Devil Run" -- says he's kept going since that push and has been writing songs for a new album that could well be finished and out by the latter part of 2003. He's not sure yet what that new music will sound like, but he predicts that the chamber-ish setting of his recent concerts "is the sort of blueprint for what I will do in some shows the next time I go out."
However, Gilmour cautions, that will likely be as a solo artist and not with the Pink Floyd machine in tow -- despite the frequent entreaties of fans, management and concert promoters around the world.
"Frankly, that's just not what my mind is on at the moment," he says of the band. "I have been there and I have done that; those guys and I have spent an awful lot of our lives working together. It's not that I don't like any of that or don't possibly want to do it again, possibly, one day. I really don't know.
"Right now I have something else I'm doing, and that's what my mind is concentrating on. Anything else, including Pink Floyd, is a distraction."
When British art rocker Robert Wyatt called Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour with a request to play at the 2001 Meltdown Festival he was curating, Gilmour readily agreed.
Then the reticent and retiring performer put down the phone and thought to himself, "What have I done?"
Motivated, he acknowledges, by "fear," the 56-year-old Gilmour crafted an ambitious performance that he presented at London's Royal Festival Hall during June of 2001 and liked doing so much he repeated it last January.
It's now been captured on the home video and DVD "David Gilmour in Concert," a 16-song set drawn from the two engagements and featuring guest appearances by Wyatt, Band Aid/Live Aid founder Bob Geldof and Gilmour's Pink Floyd bandmate Rick Wright.
It will also be shown at 8 p.m. Tuesday (Nov. 5], the day the project is released, on VH1 Classic.
For the concerts, Gilmour's untraditional ensemble included string players, saxophonist Dick Parry (another long-time Floyd association) and a gospel choir. His repertoire included Floyd favorites such as "Shine On You Crazy Diamond," "Wish You Were Here" and "Comfortably Numb," songs by Floyd founder Syd Barrett -- who Gilmour replaced in the band in 1968 -- one new songs ("Smile," co-written with his second wife, Polly) and left field selections like "Je Crois Entendre Encore" from the Bizet opera "The Pearl Fishers" and "Hushabye Mountain" from the film "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang."
Gilmour says his primary goal was to do something far afield from the light-and-sound stadium spectacles that he's performed with Pink Floyd, which last toured during 1994.
"I knew I didn't want to do just the same old thing, so I had to come up with a different plan," the father of eight says by phone from London.
"I tried to choose things that I thought would suit this type of arrangement. Some of them were very obvious, like 'Wish You Were Here,' and some others seemed less obvious at the time but worked out very nicely.
"I think you sometimes have to be encouraged to look forward and not to look back all the time. Certainly I have a tendency towards enjoying other aspects of life a bit too much, so it's good for people like (Wyatt) to push me into things occasionally. It certainly got me off my butt."
Gilmour -- who also played on Paul McCartney's 1999 album "Run Devil Run" -- says he's kept going since that push and has been writing songs for a new album that could well be finished and out by the latter part of 2003. He's not sure yet what that new music will sound like, but he predicts that the chamber-ish setting of his recent concerts "is the sort of blueprint for what I will do in some shows the next time I go out."
However, Gilmour cautions, that will likely be as a solo artist and not with the Pink Floyd machine in tow -- despite the frequent entreaties of fans, management and concert promoters around the world.
"Frankly, that's just not what my mind is on at the moment," he says of the band. "I have been there and I have done that; those guys and I have spent an awful lot of our lives working together. It's not that I don't like any of that or don't possibly want to do it again, possibly, one day. I really don't know.
"Right now I have something else I'm doing, and that's what my mind is concentrating on. Anything else, including Pink Floyd, is a distraction."
© 2002 United Press International. All Rights Reserved.
This material may not be reproduced, redistributed, or manipulated in any form.
This material may not be reproduced, redistributed, or manipulated in any form.
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