“I had some criticisms of Dark Side Of The Moon. One or two of the vehicles carrying the ideas were not as strong as the ideas that they carried”: How David Gilmour attempted to lay the ghost of Pink Floyd to rest
David Gilmour will never escape questions about whether Pink Floyd would ever reunite, despite a mass of evidence to the contrary. When Classic Rock met up with him at his home 2002, eight years after Floyd’s then-final studio album The Division Bell and three before the band’s brief reunion at Live 8 , he was focussed on going it alone and finally laying his old band to rest.
But beneath that placid exterior there were other forces at work. “I can show you places where the nerves are there,” says David. “At the beginning of Shine On You Crazy Diamond there’s a close-up of me doing a vibrato on the acoustic guitar which is more than I’d ever intended. That was due to trembling. It wasn’t as under control as one would like it to be.”
We’re sitting in David’s studio upstairs in the barn overlooking his house, deep in the rockbroker belt that lies between London and the South coast. It’s a sunny September afternoon and small children occasionally dash between the house and some tents on the back lawn. His wife Polly pushes a pram around the garden, lulling their week-old daughter to sleep.
There’s no sign of celebrity life-style to titillate the tabloids. Even the studio denotes “musician at work” rather than “rock star in residence”. At one end there’s a mixing console with associated screens, computers and keyboards. Bits of masking tape mark out exactly where David is supposed to sit while he’s remixing Pink Floyd’s Pulse live DVD for 5.1 surround sound.
The rest of the room is a comfortable clutter of sofas, tables and bits of equipment with a sink in the corner and two piles of vinyl albums awaiting sorting. Next to one of the sofas is a stand with eight or nine guitars, many of which would be instantly familiar to anyone who has followed David’s career. Among them is his first guitar, a Spanish acoustic from the early 60s.