David Gilmour isn’t about to turn his back on his legacy with Pink Floyd, but it’s clear in speaking with him that creatively, he’s got his feet firmly planted in the present.
“I just felt liberated from any idea of owing something to my past,” he tells UCR. “I was able to just move forward [and] do something different.”
The Pink Floyd guitarist and vocalist is celebrating the arrival of Luck and Strange, his first new solo album in nearly a decade. It’s a piece of work that’s colored by the unexpected period of isolation that came with the COVID-19 pandemic. During that time, he found himself sequestered with his family. They began hosting livestreams, dubbed the “Von Trapped” series, a clever nod to the 1965 film, The Sound of Music and the Von Trapp family.
As a result of those unexpected musical moments, Gilmour was energized and thought about how he might apply what he was feeling to the direction of his next solo LP. Discussions with Polly Samson, his wife and longtime collaborator, fueled further activity. “That led to finding a new, younger producer [Charlie Andrew] who was not tied to any of the old ways of thinking. In fact, he had no real idea about Pink Floyd, Pink Floyd’s career, me or my solo career or any of those things,” he explains. “A lot of elements from this are just starting from a fresh standpoint that I would describe as being liberated in some way. That’s not to say that I’m not full of pride and joy with the long career and the things that have happened in the past. But my focus is definitely looking forward.”
As he was preparing for upcoming live dates supporting Luck and Strange, Gilmour joined Ultimate Classic Rock Nights host Matt Wardlaw to talk about his new music and what fans can expect from the pending live shows.
You spent a day jamming with your band in your barn, back in 2007. One particular musical moment from that day helped to form the roots of the title track for this new record. What was the impetus for that jam?
It was really that we were on tour, during the On an Island tour. When we got to the end of that tour, I was thinking, “It feels like it’s a waste for these guys, who are cooking and hot…you know, we’re really in a groove together and playing really well.” I thought it was a waste not to do something else with that and the cohesiveness that we had. I got the core of the band, Rick [Wright], me, Guy [Pratt] and Steve DiStanislao to go to my house, into a barn. Of course, there were things that hadn’t occurred to me. It was January and the barn, the boards don’t even meet. There’s howling, icy winds blowing through it and it’s about five degrees below zero. [Laughs] But we managed.
So that was the plan and we did that. There are still 30 or 40 other bits of music, but that one was the first morning. It was the first thing that we did. I had that little piece of guitar. [Gilmour imitates musical section that became part of “Luck and Strange”]. I was just listening to that happening and listening to myself playing that and thinking, “That’s quite nice.” Gradually, they all joined in, one by one and we played it for 20 minutes. And that is the track. Obviously, we’ve worked on it a bit. We’ve added bridges and middle eights, choruses, but there was no rehearsal [with the original recording] and no second take. That is the take. They joined in so naturally and “Luck and Strange” all came out in that moment.
Listen to David Gilmour’s ‘Luck and Strange’
What brought you back to that particular piece of music?
It’s very hard to know or be able to explain why some pieces of music put their hand up and insist that now is their moment. I can’t explain it, really. That one, I mean, I had it in that basic form with the choruses and bridges before I did Rattle That Lock, but for some reason, it didn’t raise its hand and say, “Do me.” This time it did. I work a little bit that way. On the song “Sings,” there’s a sample of me, in which I recorded [myself] writing the chorus for that song in 1997 when my son was 2. You can hear him going, “Sing, Daddy, sing.” He’s now nearly 30. [Gilmour chuckles]. That was a chorus of a song that I tied it together with another piece of music that I wrote maybe six or seven years ago. There’s a lot of chance and a lot of accidents that happen on the way to this thing taking the form that it did.
You’ve spoken about how you have over a thousand “little tunes and stuff” that you’ve got catalogued. How did you get all of that organized? Because it seems like that would have been an interesting process.
To be honest, I’ve got lots of pieces of music going back into the ‘80s. I’ve got some whole songs, I’ve got some newer ones that I’ve done and I’ve got my trusty iPhone. I have recorded over a thousand tiny bits of something. I mean, it might just be a sound of a bird singing. I haven’t actually really been through those yet, but one of these days, I will — or I think I will — when I need something. [Laughs] It sounds like a hell of a lot, but to be honest, you play through them and 19 out of 20, you say, “That can go straight in the bin.”
The way you’re playing acoustically with the orchestra, building up to the solo, on “Scattered,” is pretty stunning. Just generally, that made me wonder how you work out your guitar solos. Is there any one way?
No, there’s no one way. I mean, it’s not like I sit down with a piece of paper and have that song [with] its components and parts, I’m afraid I just sort of let it happen. You know, you get to that point and I’m holding the nylon string guitar in my hand. I think, “Just keep playing, that’s nice.” I don’t know if I should mention this, but it’s a lot more haphazard than you would imagine. The moments for the different things just choose themselves and assert themselves onto you.
Listen to David Gilmour’s ‘Scattered’
You and Polly have been collaborating for a long time now. But you’ve got a lot of the family involved with this record. What do you think that added to the overall spirit of it?
The family thing is one issue. That really came out of the COVID experience and the locking down, where I was together with my family a lot more. The topics of these pandemic-type illnesses — at the beginning, we thought were going to be really much more dangerous than they eventually turned out to be. At the same time, Polly’s book, A Theatre for Dreamers, was coming out. Some events that we had booked in for promotion to get that known a little bit in the world had to be canceled. Charlie [Gilmour], our son, suggested that we do some livestreams. We didn’t know what that meant, at all. But that’s what we did. It tied in with Polly’s lovely book, doing readings from it and answering questions from people online while that was all going on, [with] me singing a song or two.
Usually, it was a cover of a Leonard Cohen song, because [he] appears in her book to some extent. I had Romany [Gilmour] there with us and she’d been learning the harp, playing it beautifully. It turned out that we were doing these songs with Romany singing harmony with me and playing the harp. That showed me what we could do together and how the sound of her voice with mine seemed to have something extra to it that’s not the usual thing when you get other people singing with you. You know, the Everly Brothers sound pretty good together, the Beach Boys. There’s a hundred elements due to the world and time and political situations that led us towards the way this album got made. There’s a liberation in there as well, with these livestream things and my daughter being a part of it.
Polly’s been a part of [my collaborative process] for [more than] 30 years. Getting Charlie in to help write some lyrics, I just felt liberated from any idea of owing something to my past. I was able to just move forward, do something different and that led to finding a new, younger producer who was not tied to any of the old ways of thinking. In fact, he had no real idea about Pink Floyd, Pink Floyd’s career, me or my solo career or any of those things. A lot of elements from this are just starting from a fresh standpoint that I would describe as being liberated in some way. That’s not to say that I’m not full of pride and joy with the long career and the things that have happened in the past. But my focus is definitely looking forward.
Watch David and Romany Gilmour Perform ‘Yes, I Have Ghosts’ on the ‘Von Trapped’ Series
What can you tell us about the upcoming shows?
I haven’t really gotten these shows very well worked out yet. I’ve got a very loose list of songs and things that I’m expecting to do, which do include one or two from the ‘70s. [Laughs] Everyone seems to want to know about that! I imagine that I’ll be doing all of this album, but maybe in a couple of chunks. It’s not quite clear yet. But a lot of the music will be newer and younger than 50 years old.
One area in your catalog that you don’t seem to revisit in the live setting is the first two solo records.
You know, I love both of those earlier two solo records. I’ve got nothing whatsoever against them. I listened to About Face and the sound is dated — that’s not overcomable — but some of the topics that are being discussed are also way out of date. Some of the themes aren’t quite as universal as you might want to be doing today. You’re right, I haven’t played any of them for years and probably won’t this time either. [Laughs] It’s just that thing that they don’t sound like me now.
t’s interesting how in the electronic press kit for this new album, you’ve got a lot of gear and pedals around you. But it doesn’t seem like you require much to get your sound.
No, I mean, I sound like me. That’s a great positive, but it’s inescapable. I can’t not sound like me. [Laughs] You know, I’ve always been a bit of an aficionado for pedals, but I don’t like to overuse them. I just bang one in when I want a bit more boost or something. Half the ones, I don’t even know what they are that I’m using, to be honest. I have a great tech guy, Phil Taylor, who looks after all of those things for me and says, “Try this.”
One of the other things about your guitar playing is the economy of your approach. You’ve demonstrated that you can express so much in your playing without using a lot of notes. What was the moment when you realized the fact that less can be more?
When I realized my fingers were just never going to go much faster. You’ve got to find your own path in this thing. I love making music and I love playing guitar, but to me, it’s like, I’m playing melodies over a bed of something. While it would be nice to occasionally whiz from one slow delicate melody to another through a flurry of 36 notes in five seconds, it’s just not really quite me. I do wish I could do it a bit better sometimes. [Laughs]
With this album, there’s the unmistakable feeling of mortality that we’re all facing at some point. I hear that in a song like “Sings.” It seems like it would have been an emotional thing recording some of these songs.
I love that song. I think Polly was worried that it was too sweet. But I told her it’s a work of genius. I am so happy with the way this record has formed itself. The way Polly has gotten herself into my brain and obviously, hers — and created subjects that she writes about so beautifully, so poetically, but so eloquently. They all tie in together. The subject of each song is not the same as the subject of other songs. We’re not talking a concept album here, but we are talking about a cohesion between all of the songs that creates something maybe a bit better than all of the parts.
Watch David Gimour Discuss ‘Luck & Strange’
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Gallery Credit: Matthew Wilkening, except as noted below.
