David Gilmour

compiled by Mike McInnis

Gilmour: I learned guitar off his Pete Seeger Teaches Guitar record. That was the first instruction I had. The first track taught you how to tune the guitar. That was pretty important. - Guitar World, February 1993

Gilmour: I had a very, very wide musical knowledge and I would learn things, you know. I mean, I would learn bits off West Side Story, written by Leonard Bernstein, and you know, he's not exactly a guitar player. But that's just as much an influence as someone else who's a great influence like Jeff Beck, or Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Howling Wolf, Leadbelly... - Australian radio, February 1988

Gilmour: I'm not a fan of many rock guitar players. Jeff Beck's my favorite; a damned fine player. ... Eddie Van Halen has done a few things that I like a lot. But for the most part, no, that kind of thing doesn't interest me. Guitar just happens to be the instrument I can best express my feelings on. I'm not very fast on it, but you don't have to be. You hear something like John Lee Hooker doing "Dimples". Between the vocal lines he just hits the bottom string on the guitar - boom! - that one note says it all. My guitar influences are people like Pete Seeger, Leadbelly, Hank Marvin, and Jeff Beck. But there hasn't been anyone recently that I've been turned on by. - Guitar World, February 1993

Gilmour: My sound is what it is because of the way my hands and fingers are made, and due to my musical taste as well. I can't sound like anything else. That's just how I sound. I've never tried to make it like that, it's just the way I am. The fact that it is distinctive to other people is something that at first--in the early years--I was kind of unhappy about. I wanted to sound like other people. I had my moments of wanting to sound like Hendrix, or Eric Clapton, or Jeff Beck. Eventually, I got to like the way I sounded, and I think things got better from that moment, really. - Guitar, September 1995

Bob Ezrin: You can give him a ukulele and he'll make it sound like a Stradivarius. He's truly got the best set of hands with which I've ever worked. - Guitar World, February 1993

Paul McCartney: Since then, I've seen people like Clapton, who I admire a lot, and David Gilmour. And there's just something there about what I'd call a real guitar player. They hold the instrument right, they play it right. They have the right attitude about it, and they've got something individual that each one of them that's special brings to it. - Guitar Player, July 1990

Gilmour: [Syd Barrett and I] were friends first, then we picked up guitars later on. I was playing professionally in groups before Syd. So technically speaking, I was a little better than Syd when we were at college. We sat around learning Beatles songs, Rolling Stones songs, R&B, blues songs... I can recall spending some time working on "Come On", the first Stones B-side or whatever it was, working all that out, playing harmonicas and stuff. He'd know something, I'd know something and we'd just swap, as people do in back rooms everywhere. He then left that college and moved up to an art college in London, which is when Pink Floyd got formed. - Guitar World, February 1993

Gilmour: Oh, and by the way, the band, when I joined, never ever said, "Play like Syd Barrett"... that was the very last thing they wanted. - New Musical Express, January 1975

Gilmour: They wanted me to play his parts and sing his songs. Nobody else wanted to sing them, and I got elected. That was my job--as far as live shows were concerned, anyway. Me and Syd played together only five gigs in Pink Floyd. Or maybe four. Maybe the Southampton was supposed to be the fifth one; I don't remember. While all this was happening, we were also trying to make the new album, A Saucerful of Secrets. But live, we didn't play the tracks from that, but virtually all Syd's stuff. Because there wasn't anything else to do. It was either that or back to Bo Diddley covers. - Guitar World, February 1993

Gilmour: But exploring live in front of an audience, the way we did in the 60's and very early 70's, you make as many mistakes as you get things right. A lot of it was awful, [chuckles] and I don't feel like being that person anymore. That was then, and that part is done. - Musician, August 1992

Gilmour: I had a large background in improvisation, but I didn't think a lot of it that the Pink Floyd were doing was very good. And yes, it took me a while before I understood where they were trying to get to, and it took a while for me to try to change into something I liked as well. It was a process working two ways after I joined: me trying to change it, and it trying and succeeding in changing me. - Musician, August 1992

Gilmour: The band felt we achieved something with the title track of A Saucerful of Secrets. I can't say as I fully understood what was going on when it was being made, with Roger sitting around drawing little diagrams on bits of paper. But throughout the following period I tried to add what I knew of harmony and bring it slightly more mainstream, if you like. And the way they worked certainly educated me. We passed on all our individual desires, talents, and knowledge to each other. - Musician, August 1992

Gilmour: I guess I was never particularly confident in my ability as a pure guitar player, so I would try any trick in the book. I'd always liked lap steels, pedal steels and things like that. ... The only thing I don't do is regular slide guitar with the thingie on your finger. I've never had any interest in that. - Guitar World, February 1993

"On 14nov74, approximately seven thousand people washed their hair and traveled down to the Empire Pool, Wembley, to witness the Pink Floyd live. Almost everyone, that is, except David Gilmour--his hair looked filthy there on stage, seemingly anchored down by a surfeit of scalp grease and tapering off below the shoulders with a spectacular festooning of split ends." - Nick Kent, in the New Musical Express, November 1974

Gilmour: When I'm standing there I'm conscious of trying to give the most I can. And I don't need to have clean hair for that." - New Musical Express, January 1975

Gilmour: Once in awhile I would find something uncomfortable to sing. The first lot Roger wrote for "Dogs", when it was called "You Gotta Be Crazy", were just too many words to sing. But most of the ideas were ideas I felt good about, and encapsulated a lot of the thinking that I had as well. I often wished I had been able to express them as well as he did. - Musician, August 1992

Gilmour: For me, Wish You Were Here is the most satisfying album. I really love it. I mean, I'd rather listen to that than Dark Side of the Moon. Because I think we achieved a better balance of music and lyrics on Wish you Were Here. Dark Side went a bit too far the other way--too much into the importance of the lyrics. And sometimes the tunes--the vehicles for the lyrics--got neglected. To me, one of Roger's failings is that sometimes, in his effort to get the words across, he uses a less than perfect vehicle. - Guitar World, February 1993

Gilmour: My view of what The Wall itself is about is more jaundiced today than it was then. It appears now to be a catalogue of people Roger blames for his own failings in life, a list of "you fucked me up this way, you fucked me up that way". - Guitar World, February 1993

Gilmour: It would take a book to tell what went on within our band, and Roger's later megalomanic years, and precisely what psychologically he was attempting to do to all of us. Because he is a megalomanic. He really is. His thirst for power is more important than anything else - more important than honesty, that's for certain. - Musician, August 1992

Gilmour: When Syd left he was the kingpin of the band before I joined, and the rest didn't say, 'Oh, we'll pack it in now that Syd's gone'. And when Rick left in '79, we didn't say, 'Let's not do it any more'--so when Roger left in '85, why should I not continue what I'd been doing for the last 17 years? I certainly saw no reason why I shouldn't continue my chosen career. - July 1990

Gilmour: I just happened to find this beautiful boat that was built as a houseboat and was very cheap, so I bought it. And then only afterward did I think I could maybe use it to record. The control room is a 30-foot by 20-foot room. It's a very comfortable working environment--three bedrooms, kitchen, bathroom, a big lounge. It's 90 feet long. - Musician, August 1992

Gilmour: And there's nothing within the Pink Floyd sound that I don't like. I'm not faking or having to do anything any different to do a Pink Floyd record. And we never sat down and said, 'God, this doesn't sound Pink Floyd enough--let's do this to make it sound more Pink Floyd.' - Musician, August 1992

Gilmour: There was a big row on the Venice council; some people there wanted to get others off, and they used this issue to discredit them. We were political pawns. Most of the residents just left town and hoped Venice would still be there when they came back Monday, and if anything had gone wrong, they'd blame us. And then there where the gondoliers--they came to us and threatened that if we didn't give them $10,000 immediately, they would fill the entire space up in front of the stage and blow their whistles all the way through the show. So we said, 'Fine--come back at the end of the show and we'll give you the $10,000.' And when they did, we said, 'Piss off, you missed your chance.' That's the story I was told by our manager, Steven O'Rourke. - July 1990