The moment that made a 1972 Pink Floyd song David Gilmour’s favourite moment on stage
In December 1967, David Gilmour joined Pink Floyd to fill in for guitarist and co-founding band leader Syd Barrett. Sadly, the latter had become unreliable amid drug-induced mental health struggles.
In April 1968, Barrett was ousted from the band during its work on A Saucerful of Secrets. Initially, the band relied on Gilmour’s astonishing ability to mimic Barrett’s style, but he soon put his hand on the rudder to help steer the band from its psychedelic roots.
Over the late 1960s, Pink Floyd fell under the creative guidance of bassist Roger Waters, but Gilmour’s nuanced strings added a crucial ingredient. Following several uneven releases, Pink Floyd settled into a rhythm of marked consistency in the 1970s, beginning with the stellar albums Meddle and The Dark Side of the Moon.
Throughout the band’s most critical decade, Gilmour further established his associative style that valued perfect tone and emotional gravity over speed. He boasts some of the era’s most iconic lead solos, many of which left jaws on the ground during live performances. Picking out a categorical best is, of course, impossible, but it’s interesting to hear Gilmoiur’s two cents.
That philosophy became one of the defining traits of Pink Floyd’s sound. While many guitarists of the era were locked in an arms race of speed and technicality, Gilmour slowed things down, focusing instead on phrasing and space. Every note felt deliberate, often stretching across bars in a way that allowed the emotion to breathe, giving his solos a vocal-like quality that made them instantly recognisable.
It also meant that his contributions weren’t just embellishments layered on top of the music but central to the storytelling itself. In albums like The Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here, his guitar lines act almost as a second narrator, reinforcing the themes of isolation, loss, and reflection. By the time Pink Floyd reached their peak, Gilmour’s restraint had become just as powerful as any display of virtuosity, proving that sometimes less really does say more.
While speaking to Billboard in 2006, the guitarist was asked to name his favourite Pink Floyd song. Understandably, he replied, “There’s lots of them”. First, Gilmour showed his love for the 1975 album Wish You Were Here: “‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’ and ‘Wish You Were Here’ are standout tracks.”
After that, he pondered selections based on his own solos. Ultimately, Gilmour picked out the 1980 single ‘Comfortably Numb’ as his favourite solo, especially in the live setting. “It was a fantastic moment, I can tell you, to be standing up on there, and Roger’s just finished singing his thing, and I’m standing there, waiting,” Gilmour said, remembering Pink Floyd’s concerts in support of the song’s parent album, The Wall.
“I’m in pitch darkness, and no one knows I’m there yet,” he continued. “And Roger’s down, and he finishes his line, I start mine and the big back spots, and everything go on, and the audience, they’re all looking straight ahead and down, and suddenly there’s all this light up there and they all sort of—their heads all lift up and there’s this thing up there, and the sound’s coming out and everything.”
The crisp solo never failed to incite an arrested gasp of awe among concert attendees. “Every night there’s this sort of ‘[gasp!]’ from about 15,000 people. And that’s quite something, let me tell you,” Gilmour added.
Watch David Gilmour perform his favourite solo live during Pink Floyd’s 2005 concert at London’s Hyde Park below.
