When David Gilmour touches a Strat, the result is pure cinema. His distinct touch, both in and out of Pink Floyd, has spawned a shorthand for the soulfully psychedelic – from the four-note phaser motif that echoes into infinity on Shine on You Crazy Diamond to the arena-rumbling blues bends of Comfortably Numb.
But he’s never been a “guitar god” in the virtuoso sense – he’s an expert in atmosphere and dynamics, disinterested in showboat-y shredding and sophisticated scales for the sake of them. (“Well, I can’t really play fast, per se,” he told Guitar World in 1988. “Not like so many players today. I don’t have a very disciplined approach to practicing or anything… Generally, I’m not too ambitious about that sort of thing.”)
During a solo, he can attack one note with perfect sustain and vibrato, and you’d probably know who it is straight away. Less, one might say, is Gil-more.
If the sign of a great player is creating a signature, there’s no argument against him. Still, even if Gilmour is properly hailed as a tour guide of spaciness – he’s been on seemingly every “best guitarist” list since people started publishing them – he’s never gotten his due as a frontman or songwriter.
One reason is that Pink Floyd was always built on larger-than-life characters: first the psych-pop wizard and acid-era cautionary tale Syd Barrett (whom he inadvertently replaced in 1967) and, eventually, the outspoken concept master Roger Waters.
Despite singing Floyd’s most agile vocals (the sandpaper grit of Time, the soothing falsetto scatting of Wish You Were Here) and helping write many of their classic songs, he was never the obvious dominant personality in that band.
As a solo artist (and you might as well include his period leading Pink Floyd after their famously heated split with Waters), Gilmour seemed to achieve his Platonic Ideal in sound.
And with each subsequent album, his music seemed to grow increasingly… Gilmour-y: creamy Strat tones, pillowy vocal harmonies, ambient synth pads, musical drama prioritized over conceptual drama.
It’s easy to take Gilmour for granted because his music is so solid, so reliable, but that consistency isn’t easy to achieve. (That said, when you’re approaching 80, it’s probably easier to traffic in his brand of slow, sky-swallowing rock than, say, the knotty prog popularized by many of his peers.)
But we’ll take any excuse possible to rectify that slight. And in 2024, we have two: the 40th anniversary of Gilmour’s second LP, About Face, and the release of his new album, Luck and Strange. To mark the occasion, we will meticulously navigate through the man’s entire studio catalog, throwing in a couple of surprise detours.
David Gilmour (1978)
It was a prolific year: While Waters was baring his soul to write the foundation of Pink Floyd’s sprawling, conceptual double album, The Wall, his bandmates were off the main mothership working on their own, much less emotionally draining, material.
After years in a band, you feel you should try something on your own. And it was nice not to have to compromise. I mean I believe the whole process of compromise is vital for a group, but it was nice not to have everything vetted
Mason produced former Gong guitarist Steve Hillage’s electro-space LP Green; Richard Wright recorded his sax-heavy debut, Wet Dream; and Gilmour crossed that same solo bridge with his self-titled outing, which largely plays like high-quality Floyd without the lyrical sophistication.
The tracks are rock-solid from start to finish, partly because some of his friends were on hand – just not the ones you might expect: bassist Rick Wills and drummer Willie Wilson, who’d played with Gilmour in the pre-Floyd rock outfit Jokers Wild, bring swagger to both stewing rockers (the harmonica-heavy There’s No Way Out of Here) and daydreamy piano ballads (So Far Away, with Gilmour on the aforementioned keys).
The guitar playing is, naturally, phenomenal: clean arpeggios (Raise My Rent), enormously ringing chords (Short and Sweet), woozy pedal-steel (No Way), bluesy solos at every turn.
If the stakes feel lower than a typical Floyd record, well, that’s gonna happen when you’ve suddenly drained the Waters. But David Gilmour was also recorded “just for fun”:
“After years in a band, you feel you should try something on your own,” he told The Guardian. “And it was nice not to have to compromise. I mean I believe the whole process of compromise is vital for a group, but it was nice not to have everything vetted.”
GUITAR HIGHLIGHT: Opening instrumental Mihalis feels like it could be an outtake from the prior year’s Animals, and I mean that as a supreme compliment. The solo is a real powerhouse, full of twangy asides and huge sustain, as it builds and recedes in intensity.
Fun fact: As Gilmour highlighted in a 2019 interview with Rolling Stone, this track features his “Number One” Strat (with a 0001 serial number), which he purchased from his guitar tech in the mid ’70s. (The instrument also appears on the much more famous Another Brick in the Wall.) “He bought it, and then I strong-armed him out of it, really,” Gilmour said, noting that Mihalis includes a roundabout “tribute” to the Shadows’ Hank Marvin.
About Face (1984)
To say the very least, the sessions for 1983’s The Final Cut, Pink Floyd’s final album with Waters, were fraught with creative and personal tension. (Flash-forward to all the lawsuits and media mudslinging.) And given that Gilmour didn’t write a single song for that LP – and only sang one co-lead, on Not Now John – he probably felt he had something to prove on his next solo project.
“I’m not ready to retire yet,” Gilmour enthused in the tour documentary Beyond the Floyd, and the forceful About Face bears out that promise.
The guitarist aimed to craft a real statement with his second album, so he recruited both famous friends (the Who’s Pete Townshend, who wrote lyrics for Love on the Air and All Lovers Are Deranged) and renowned session players (including drummer Jeff Porcaro, bassist Pino Palladino and Steve Winwood on occasional keys).
Gilmour sounded reinvigorated with this all-star crew, churning out some of his most direct and commercial music: the slow synth-string balladry of Love on the Air (highlighted by a colorful fretless bass and his spanky, Mark Knopfler-like guitar fills), the brief detour into reggae on Cruise, the orchestral heft of You Know I’m Right.
The album’s catchiest moment has to be Blue Light – with its funky guitar delay, clanging percussion, hip-shaking tambourine and bright brass, it shares a lot of musical DNA with, yes, Phil Collins. It’s not like Gilmour abandoned his roots – there are powerful solos all over this thing – but it’s fascinating to hear him dabble with a bit more immediacy.
“It can not help sounding quite a bit like Pink Floyd if it’s got my voice and my guitar playing on it anyway,” he told Musician in 1992. “On [About Face], I was actually steering a bit away from it, a little more rock ’n’ roll.” Fun fact: The album art shows Gilmour posing with his ’55 Fender Esquire, which he nicknamed The Workmate.)
GUITAR HIGHLIGHT: Murder is a true epic, opening as a folky acoustic waltz with fusion-y fretless and ascending to a resounding climax with harmonized guitar leads. The guitars are all over the map; there’s some bluesy stomp, some growling tremolo-bar action, a generous portion of twang.
Various writers say the song was inspired by the killing of John Lennon, and the lyrics seem to make sense: “None of the tears that we cry in sorrow or rage,” he sings, “Can make any difference or turn back the page.”
On an Island (2006)
Setting aside all the legal confusion, there’s no artistic reason that Gilmour’s third album, On an Island, couldn’t be labeled under “Pink Floyd.” After all, the guitarist had been leading the classic-rock institution since the mid ’80s, piloting both 1987’s A Momentary Lapse of Reason and 1991’s The Division Bell. (Yes, Wright did co-write three songs from the latter.)
By this point, Floyd and Gilmour essentially referred to the same sense of grandeur. Even at his most hushed and intimate, his songs carry the enormity of a real event – like gazing up from your backyard to find a UFO breaking through the clouds.
By 2006 (12 years since The Division Bell, 22 years since About Face), fans were starved for new music – especially so, given the one-off reunion of Pink Floyd’s classic lineup for the Live 8 benefit show in 2005.
And while On an Island sticks to what Gilmour does best, it does lean more heavily on the peaceful side of his sound: For Red Sky at Night, the maestro plays a spitty alto sax solo over simmering strings, evoking the title phrase; during the title track’s sublime waltz, Gilmour harmonizes with Graham Nash and David Crosby over a hazily strummed acoustics; meanwhile, Then I Close My Eyes plays like his version of Fleetwood Mac’s Albatross, pairing clean arpeggios with reversed electric guitar birdsong and BJ Cole’s acoustic lap-steel.
“That’s my Weissenborn he’s playing,” Gilmour told Guitarist. “I played it on Smile. … Weissenborn’s a lovely thing. I always felt pretty good and comfortable on slide instruments. There are places between the notes where I really like to go, and you can go there on slide instruments.”
GUITAR HIGHLIGHT: The tranquil The Blue, like those other tracks, sways beautifully in a breeze of acoustic guitars and keys and vocal harmonies. But the real magic is Gilmour’s solo, utilizing a DigiTech Whammy for extremes in glissando pitch-bending.
Though he generally doesn’t like to reveal his studio secrets, he spilled them to Guitarist, enthusing about the effect.
“I love driving people crazy,” he said. “They come and say, ‘How the fuck did you do that? I’ve been working for months trying to get that.’ And I say, ‘It’s just a pedal!’ I used it on Marooned from The Division Bell. It gives a whole extra dimension.
“It had a flavor of that old album Songs of the Humpback Whale, where they recorded whale noises. It’s that floating thing. Both Marooned and The Blue are pieces of music that remind me of the sea.”
Live in Gdańsk (2008)
Given Gilmour’s high profile and overall consistency – zero of his albums are below average, and none are exactly curveballs – it’s easy to assume they’ve all been big hits. But that’s not quite true: David Gilmour peaked at Number 17 in the U.K. and Number 29 in the U.S., and About Face, which had even wider commercial appeal, came in at an even weaker 21 and 32.
The music-buying public, clearly craving Floyd-related material, really took to On an Island; it topped the charts in the U.K. and Europe, reached Number 2 in a handful of countries and peaked at Number 6 in the U.S., making it his first American Top 10.
Most artists would have capitalized on that momentum by touring for a year and a half, bleeding themselves dry in arenas across the world. Instead, Gilmour booked a compact 2006 tour spread over three legs in the U.S. and Europe – with the final date, August 26 in Gdańsk, Poland, captured for a live album and DVD.
As stage documents go, this one’s hard to top, from the who’s-who backing band with an array of Floyd alumni (including Wright on keys, Guy Pratt on bass and Dick Parry on saxophone, plus Roxy Music’s Phil Manzanera) to the presence of the Polish Baltic Philharmonic Orchestra (more on Take a Breath later) to the balance of stellar fidelity and unpolished rough edges.
The set list features On an Island in full – a bold move, given that half the people in attendance probably just wanted to hear Dark Side deep cuts. But he also rewarded Floyd fans’ patience: Time is particularly touching in retrospect, with Gilmour and Wright’s sweet (and just a hair out of tune) harmonies; meanwhile, the arrangement on Shine On You Crazy Diamond is fascinating, with the band playing with dynamics and the solo boiling over with an uncontrollable intensity.
Gilmour has always had a special place in his heart for Wish You Were Here: “For me, [it’s Pink Floyd’s] most satisfying album,” he told Guitar World in 1993. I really love it. I’d rather listen to that than The Dark Side of the Moon.
GUITAR HIGHLIGHT: Take a Breath, already the heavy centerpiece of On an Island, is even more menacing in this live version, with the tension in the guitar riff taking on more than a hint of King Crimson. (With a bit more bite in the rhythm section, you could picture this being on Red next to One More Red Nightmare.)
The track climaxes with a fiery Gilmour guitar solo that’s even more dramatic with its visual counterpart, as white lights flash vividly around him.
The Orb, Metallic Spheres (2010)
In a sunnier alternate universe, Pink Floyd’s brief set at Live 8 was merely the jumping-off point for a full-scale reunion tour, with Gilmour and Waters swapping smiles and stories on stage each night like long-lost brothers.
Instead, it was simply a historical moment for a charitable cause – and with Wright’s death in September 2008, one never to be repeated. There were other half-reunions over the years: Wright did join Gilmour and Mason in 2007 to play a couple songs as part of the Syd Barrett tribute show The Madcap’s Last Laugh; Waters and Gilmour played together during a small event for the Hoping Foundation charity in 2010; and Gilmour and Mason made cameos during a 2011 Waters show.
As a recording act, Pink Floyd appeared to be dead (spoiler alert: not exactly), and it took Gilmour a few more years to finish tinkering and release something of his own. Ironically, the exact opposite recording situation – a rapid-fire guitar session – resulted in Metallic Spheres, his collaborative album with electronic act the Orb.
Funny enough, the origins of this ambient-psych LP date back to Gilmour’s cover of the somber Graham Nash protest song Chicago, which was then remixed by the Orb. They recruited the guitarist to add some new parts – and when he over-delivered, a new idea arose.
“We spent a day with David at the studio with his guitar, and he just plugged in and started playing, and it became this 25-minute track,” the album’s producer, Martin “Youth” Glover, told Prog. “After Dave left, I thought, ‘There’s so many twists and turns in this jam, we could stretch it out, put a few things in and turn it into a 50-minute album,’ so that’s what I did!”
If you’re counting it as a proper Gilmour album, it’s by far his weakest, and not because of the stylistic change; it just sounds like an aimless jam cobbled together into finished pieces, with the rock legend’s soaring lines skittering around simple synths and techno beats.
GUITAR HIGHLIGHT: Black Graham isn’t riveting; the kick drum just kinda pounds along, and a synth-like tone wafts through like misplaced fairy dust. But the guitar collage is charming, blending trippy effects with plucked acoustic guitars that call to mind the folkiest stretches of Meddle.
Rattle That Lock (2015)
Gilmour finally put Pink Floyd to bed with the band’s 15th album, 2014’s The Endless River, assembled largely from instrumental pieces recorded (and then abandoned) during the Division Bell sessions. (Well, “put to bed” if you don’t count the 2022 single Hey, Hey, Rise Up! with BoomBox’s Andriy Khlyvnyuk.)
The project has a lovely ambiance, and it serves as a fitting memorial for the late Wright, who appears posthumously. But it naturally felt a bit slight next to their classic works – only whetting the appetite for Gilmour’s more song-oriented solo follow-up, Rattle That Lock.
There’s an interesting contrast between the two LPs, with the former nodding to soundscapes of yore and the latter pushing forward with new experiments.
The title track is groovy, low-key blues rock – nothing too fancy – but the core hook cleverly samples the frosty jingle of a French railway company. (I doubt anybody saw that one coming!) Faces of Stone is a carnivalesque waltz with horns and accordion and calliope keys.
And while Today initially scans as a signature grinding Gilmour rocker, listening on headphones opens up the uniqueness of its production: There’s a bit of funk in the mechanical electric riff in the left speaker, and the counter riff on the right sounds like a shorted-out amp sputtering to life. But the biggest head-turner is The Girl in the Yellow Dress, which ventures into slinky lite jazz.
“I don’t ever want to turn anything away when it arrives,” Gilmour told Guitar World, detailing the album’s tonal shift. “These songs kind of struggle and fight their way to the top of the pile. They present themselves to me and say, ‘Now is my moment.’”
GUITAR HIGHLIGHT: 5 A.M. is one of the album’s most subtle and conventional moments, but Gilmour thrives in this kind of gentle setting, soloing patiently here over a fingerpicked acoustic and trembling strings.
Live at Pompeii (2017)
Pompeii has loomed large in Pink Floyd history since 1972, when the band released an experimental concert doc filmed at the empty Roman amphitheater. Playing on that legacy, Gilmour staged his own live spectacle at the venue during the Rattle That Lock tour – except this time a massive crowd filled the ancient seats.
The reliably hi-fi Live at Pompeii, issued in audio and visual form, follows the same general format as Live in Gdańsk: tons of new material (almost all of the new LP) balanced out with Pink Floyd staples (Wish You Were Here, Money) and deeper cuts (the sun-streaked folk-rock of Fat Old Sun).
It’s a testament to Gilmour’s old-pro skill that, even at this peak of live-rock excess, he makes playing at freaking Pompeii feel as natural as a hardcore punk band crashing a basement.
GUITAR HIGHLIGHT: One of These Days is already one of Floyd’s most underrated tracks, a psych-prog epic driven by echoing bass and spacey effects. This version is particularly tasty, with Gilmour attacking his lap steel like a wild man. “Of course, we did One of These Days, which we hadn’t been playing on the tour,” he told Prog. “That’s the only song that we played there back in 1971.”
Luck and Strange (2024)
“It’s over 50 years now since The Dark Side of the Moon,” Gilmour told Prog, teasing his fifth solo LP. “My feeling is that this album is the best album I’ve made in all those years since 1973 when The Dark Side of the Moon came out.”
With all due respect, sir: No way. That would be a major slight to Wish You Were Here, Animals and The Wall, before even debating your early solo stuff. But you have to admire his confidence, and to his credit, Luck continues his streak of searching for new ideas.
Sure, there are plenty of vintage moves here: the slappy Strat strut of the title track, the nasty blues soloing at the end of The Piper’s Call, the floating-in-space tones of A Single Spark.
But the most thrilling moments are also the least expected, like the classical-folk vibe of Yes, I Have Ghosts and the acoustic-symphonic stylings of Between Two Points (a cover of a 1999 song by dream-pop act the Montgolfier Brothers), featuring a hypnotic vocal by the guitarist’s daughter, Romany.
GUITAR HIGHLIGHT: In the back half of Between Two Points, Gilmour elevates the dark, oceanic mood with one of his most soulful solos in many years – an expressive patch of stank-face funkiness and spine-tingling chromatic runs. As with Gilmour at his best, it’s hard to picture anyone else on Earth playing these notes with more naked emotion.
- Luck & Strange is out now via Legacy.
