David Gilmour: ‘The rich and powerful have siphoned off the majority of music industry money’ | David Gilmour
The Division Bell is my favourite Pink Floyd LP and the song High Hopes felt like a full stop for the band. At the time, was that ever a possibility, or did you think there was a future? bcdcdude
I didn’t think there wasn’t. There was no particular reason why we should have stopped at that point, but things slowed down for a while. Other things got in the way, as they do in life, and we didn’t get round to doing another album or tour. High Hopes is a lovely end to an album but not the end of a career necessarily.
What’s one thing we don’t know about you that has always given you joy? Bobbski
I’ve always loved carpentry. I’ve made things out of wood pretty much my whole life, from boot removers to tables, to treehouses, to boathouses. The insurance chaps are not overly keen on me doing that in case I chop my fingers off.
Syd Barrett’s floorboards (featured on the cover of The Madcap Laughs album you co-produced) recently sold for more than £28,000. What items from your past would you pay silly money to be reunited with? McScootikins
Not much really. No old cars. No old guitars. I suppose I’d like to have back the red leather jacket that Syd gave me in 66 or 67. Also my pink velvet trousers that I bought from Granny Takes a Trip on Kings Road. They were stolen from the laundromat on Old Brompton Road in 1969 – not that I think I’d fit into them any more or that I’d wear them if I did!
What are your thoughts about the idea that the music industry should create a fund to support grassroots music in the UK via a self-imposed levy on concert tickets? Zvilnik
I think the music industry is a tough one these days, and for people who are recording in it, the rewards are not justifiable. The rich and the powerful have siphoned off the majority of this money. I was lucky to be part of the golden years when there was a much better share going to the musicians, so I support anything that could be done to make that easier. The working musician today has to go out and play live – they can’t survive any other way. They won’t do it by the recording process and that’s a tragedy because that is not encouraging new music to be created. It’s not the greatest era that the world has been through, as gradually all the work moves to robots and AI, and the amount of people creaming off the money gets smaller and smaller and they get richer and richer. “Sod everyone else” seems to be the attitude.
What does your Comfortably Numb guitar solo mean to you? Do you know what it is saying, if it is saying something? UncleSweetheart
The music I wrote that I play over that solo is a simple but effective, inspiring sequence. It’s very nice to play over, and every time I play it, it means something different.
Modern music seems to have ditched the guitar solo. Is it now just a relic of older bands? PeteD
I guess these things are cyclical – I’m still doing them. Hopefully more of them will come back. Interludes are a very valuable part of music.
Do you prefer Telecasters or Stratocasters? RoryH
Every song demands a different guitar, and I just obey what that command is – I love them both.
Do you think you will ever perform on stage with Roger [Waters] again? Girlyouknowitstrue
Absolutely not. I tend to steer clear of people who actively support genocidal and autocratic dictators like Putin and Maduro [president of Venezuela]. Nothing would make me share a stage with someone who thinks such treatment of women and the LGBT community is OK. On the other hand, I’d love to be back on stage with [late Pink Floyd keyboardist] Rick Wright, who was one of the gentlest and most musically gifted people I’ve ever known.
Can you get Kate Bush back on stage soon? fakeycakemaker
Kate Bush is the only person who can get Kate Bush back on stage. I think the shows she did in 2014 at the Hammersmith Apollo were some of the best I’ve ever seen. We went several nights. I’ve tried persuading her recently, actually. Gently.
Polly [Samson, Gilmour’s wife and collaborator] has said that mortality is one of the recurring themes on [new album] Luck and Strange. How do you feel about mortality and immortality? Dmitry_S
It’s sad that I don’t believe in a higher power. There’s a song on the album called A Single Spark – Polly’s words, my feelings – that comes from a line on the first page of Vladimir Nabokov’s book Speak, Memory, and that says it all. I can’t remember quite how he put it, but he said that life is a single spark between two eternities.
Do you believe that music is a product of the mind alone, or is there an element of inspiration that is somehow received directly from a higher consciousness? PhilipCologne
I’m an atheist, so I hate to say it out loud, but there are times when it feels like music is channelling itself when I’m writing. It doesn’t always feel like it’s something I’ve done – it’s somehow just comes through me.
As a guitar player myself, I’d like to ask you about your opinion on the key element(s) to improve my solo technique. Thanks in advance. SantiA85
I would advise forgetting technique! Don’t worry about it. Just play notes and melodies that appeal to your heart and mind and let them out.
What were some of the best lyrics you think Roger ever wrote? evermost
Gosh, let me have a think about that. How about a song called Walk With Me Sydney? [CL: I’m not familiar with those lyrics.] I’m not surprised [laughs]. I don’t think it’s officially recorded.
How do you feel about the current state of music, and are there any bands right now whose music you really like or feel inspired by? Edcott
I don’t really listen to an awful lot of modern music. But the band I have been listening to is Alt-J, and they are what brought me to Charlie Andrew as a producer for this album. The work that they do with his help, I have found inspiring. He showed a massive lack of respect for my past and what I’ve done and, believe me, that is something one needs in life – to have people that come at you on a level playing field!
Do you miss any of your guitars or amps from the Christie’s sale back in 2019? If so, which one(s)? bobbiediamonds
To be perfectly truthful, I kept a few guitars back which are my real favourites. But I generally think of guitars as tools of the trade. I don’t have a massive sentimental attachment and what cushions any of that loss is the good that was – and is being – done by the money that was raised by that auction, which went to ClientEarth.
Would you like to travel into space? blipvert
I have been invited to travel into space, funnily enough. We’d played in Moscow – back when one wasn’t ashamed to – and they asked me if I wanted to go up into space. But I had seen their rockets and their capsules in the space museum in Moscow, and I nearly shit myself and said: “No, thank you.” They were rickety and held together with nuts and bolts.
Whose music do you listen to when you want to switch off? Miningbird
These days I find myself listening to audiobooks a lot, not listening to music so much. Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad by Daniel Finkelstein is one. The Escape Artist [by Jonathan Freedland] is one. Martin Amis’s book [Inside Story] that he wrote in the couple of years before he died is an extraordinary piece of work. I think he tries to cover a bit of all his obsessions of the moment, and one suspects that each one of those obsessions would have been the subject of whole books if he had had more time. It’s a tragedy that he died so young.
You were part of some of the greatest albums of all time. Is this daunting or inspiring? SwindonNick
Mostly not daunting. Definitely inspiring. The feeling of listening through my new album in the control room, when it was all finished and tied together, was not unlike the same moment of listening through The Dark Side of the Moon at Abbey Road in 1973. The thrill I got is very similar.
What remaining ambitions do you have in terms of music creation? JohnAlexF
My ambition is to keep going. As soon as this tour is finished, I’ll get back to work in my studio creating more music. I don’t have higher ambitions than that.
