“Pink Floyd was bigger than a band. It was more like church. They played A Momentary Lapse Of Reason in its entirety and I thought, ‘I want to be around this all the time’”: Why Billy Howerdel is glad he copied David Gilmour badly

Billy Howerdel.

When A Perfect Circle guitarist Billy Howerdel released his second solo album, What Normal Was, in 2022, it was a shameless indulgence into the British bands who first ignited his love for music. As he told Prog, Pink Floyd and David Gilmour were foremost among those influences.

Growing up in New Jersey, USA, Billy Howerdel discovered that his mother’s clock radio picked up a Long Island station that played all the groundbreaking music coming out of the UK. From loving Pink Floyd, he soon became entranced with everything from Elvis Costello to Siouxsie And The Banshees and Cocteau Twins.