Gilmour's Six Degrees of Separation
The music industry is a notoriously incestuous one. Everybody has been in a band with everyone else, and produced everyone else's albums, and slept with everyone else's manager's ex-wife's pool guy, ad nauseum.
Take this, for example: Ex-Beatle George Harrison played in the Traveling Wilburys with Bob Dylan, who has been touring in recent years with Paul Simon. Simon has been a frequent guest on Saturday Night Live dating back to the 1970s, when the house band was led by keyboardist Paul Schaffer. Schaffer's current role as bandleader for talk show host David Letterman brought him into contact with Hiram Bullock, who was the barefoot guitarist with the Letterman show band for several years. Bullock has in turn performed and recorded with Ringo Starr--another ex-Beatle, bringing us full circle.
David Gilmour is no exception to this principle. He has appeared as a guest guitarist on dozens upon dozens of obscure albums by rock and roll has-beens, and occasionally alongside genuine stars as they try to revitalize their sagging careers. By virtue of this, he has amassed a vast network of contacts in the music business, a strange (and sometimes unwieldy) 'Six Degrees of Separation' that connects him to major figures in pop music, Hollywood, the porn industry, and the Vietnamese mafia.
For example, David Gilmour can be connected to U2 frontman Bono thus: Gilmour produced recordings by Kate Bush, who once appeared on Peter Gabriel 's Games Without Frontiers album. Gabriel's 1986 So album was produced by Daniel Lanois, who in turn has collaborated with U2 on numerous occasions.
Here's a tougher one: can you draw a line connecting David Gilmour to guitar legend Eric Clapton? Well, Gilmour is married to writer Polly Sampson, who once attended a writing seminar led by poet Pete Brown, who was, of course, one of the chief lyricists for blues-rock supergroup the Cream, which featured Eric Clapton on guitar. See? What seems nearly impossible at first becomes simple once you piece it together.
Gilmour can also be connected to The Who's Pete Townshend. Prior to joining Pink Floyd, Gilmour played with a group called Bullitt, which featured John "Willie" Wilson on drums. When Wilson was at university, his dormitory roommate was one Bobby Yarmouth Wolverhampton-Lowestoft, whose first cousin (Randall Wolverhampton) once dated the woman who worked as a maid for The Who's Roger Daltrey. Just think: a few well-placed phone calls could put David Gilmour in touch with legendary guitarist Pete Townshend!
Gilmour's connections reach across the Atlantic, too. He played guitar on actress Grace Jones' album Slave to the Rhythm in 1985, just a year after she starred in the film Conan the Destroyer, playing opposite newly-elected California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Gilmour could be chatting about California's sagging economy and energy woes with Governor Schwarzenegger any day now! And the political ties don't stop there--Schwarzenegger's wife, journalist Maria Shriver, is the niece of President John F. Kennedy and Senator Edward "Ted" Kennedy. Why, maybe if Gilmour plays his cards right, he and young Charlie can join the Kennedy clan in one of their famed touch football games in Nantucket very soon!
But Gilmour's deep connections have a dark side as well. His long-time manager, Steve O'Rourke, had ties to a number of prominent figures in the Sudan, Liberia, and even Libya and Saudi Arabia. Sir Nicholas Montagu, chairman of the board of Inland Revenue, has quietly launched secret inquiries into irregularities in Gilmour's and O'Rourke's financial dealings and tax declarations, and have alleged that O'Rourke has been funneling large amounts of Gilmour's money to a Colombian drug cartel. There are also rumors that Saddam Hussein has hidden his stockpile of Weapons of Mass Destruction on Gilmour's houseboat recording studio, the Astoria.
Similar rumors and allegations tie Gilmour to the vast right wing conspiracy, Napster lawsuits, the Bolshevik revolution, and the fall of the Roman Empire.
And what does Gilmour himself think of this uncanny web of influence of which he finds himself at the center? He couldn't care less. Contacted at his Sussex home, the world's greatest guitarist (and third-greatest ocarina player) could hardly be bothered to answer questions on the matter.
 David and Polly Gilmour. |
"Frankly, I don't have time for such things," Gilmour stated. "My plate is already so full. With Polly concentrating on her writing career, and being stuck on the endless book-signing circuit, I am fully focused on my role as a father. Charlie is a teenager now, and he keeps us up at night worrying. He watches MTV, and thinks we ought to be like the Osbournes or something. And Joe, Gabriel, and Romany--our three little ones--keep me busy, what with all the diapers and feedings and naptimes and piano lessons and school plays and bake sales and so on. It never ends. But in so many ways, it is the most incredible thing I've ever done.
"I mean, playing the solo of 'Comfortably Numb' or the intro to 'Sorrow' in front of 100,000 screaming fans, each one of them hanging on every note--that's great and all. But it's all peanuts compared to the sheer thrill of hearing an 18-month old vomit all over himself at 3 AM and then shriek 'Daddy!' at the top of his lungs until you come to clean him up. Those are the special moments, the times you'll remember for the rest of your life. I should have given up on music years ago. This is what I was born to do."