David Gilmour’s one Pink Floyd regret: “It was an alarming time”
While David Gilmour has operated as a solo artist for longer than he was a member of Pink Floyd, the band remains an inescapable part of his career, and the two will forever be intertwined. The group took on a life more significant than he could have envisioned and continues inspiring each new generation.
With over 250 million records sold, there isn’t a great deal of regret in the Pink Floyd ranks when push comes to shove. The tragic loss of Syd Barrett might pain them, and the spat with Roger Waters may be a blemish, but otherwise, things have gone as swimmingly as the life and times of Michael Phelps.
On January 3rd, 1968, Gilmour’s life changed forever when he accepted a try-out to replace the ailing Barrett. A few weeks later, he was in the front row of a gig at the Imperial College in London, almost motionlessly watching his old college friend play his licks. Thereafter, Gilmour became a central influence in the band. With a love of the melodious songwriting and poetry of the likes of Leonard Cohen, he brought a depth of structural sensibility to their swirling sound.
It wasn’t until almost 20 years later that he would have his first major musical regret with the band. This instance came at the point when Roger Waters parted company in acrimonious circumstances. “It was an alarming time,” Gilmour once told The Sun. “It was a big thing to carry on Pink Floyd with Roger having gone.”
As a founding member, Waters was a brick wall in Pink Floyd’s construction. Moreover, he was an important counterpoint to Gilmour’s style and sensibilities. As Gilmour continued: “He was a big, big part of it. A major talent and our primary lyricist, So it was difficult. I would think of myself as more of a melodic type and Roger is more of an aggressive wordsmith. Different sides of us came together to create what we became.”
While the easy thing would have been to have left Pink Floyd in the past following the bitter exit of Waters, Gilmour felt compelled to carry on rather than let their story conclude under a dark cloud. Continuing with Waters also wasn’t a possibility as their relationship had soured to an untenable degree, and the duo couldn’t continue.
Waters’ parting fanfare of The Final Cut is a paradigm of what he brought and how Gilmour tempered it. Waters’ idea was grandiose, revolutionary and profound. However, it didn’t have much finesse or grounding structural familiarity. Thus, when Waters parted ways with Gilmour and the rest of the group, Pink Floyd wondered where their next big creative muse would wander. Sadly, a fad of zeitgeist would lead to folly by leading them up the synth-saturate garden path.
Although by this point, Gilmour already had two solo albums to his name, steering the ship on a Pink Floyd record was a new proposition for the English musician. His decision-making skills were yet to be fully honed, and ultimately, his crucial first step was regretful.
As Gilmour recalled: “In the eighties, there was a mass of new technology – new keyboards, synthesizers – and we were keen to make a record of its time.” Essentially, they wanted to be seen to be moving forward and not falling back on their laurels without the direction of Waters. However, this venture for the band’s 13th studio album, A Momentary Lapse of Reason, turned out to live up to the title of the LP.
Prince was a master of putting technology to work in this era, and he bestrode the decade like a little colossus as a result. As the Pink Floyd musician said himself, “Technology is cool, but you’ve got to use it as opposed to letting it use you.” In contrast, Gilmour regrets that Pink Floyd may have momentarily got this the wrong way around in search of a groundbreaking push.
As he later added: “We embraced this technology with massive enthusiasm. But it was a fashion and fashions go out of fashion.”
Continuing: “In the years after the album, there were moments when I thought that we hadn’t followed the timeless template that perhaps we should have done.” Therefore, for The Division Bell, Polly Samson became a big lyrical player and got back to the themes that proved fit for the sound of the Floyd and regrets begone.
Nevertheless, despite overcoming the setback in the next release, Gilmour’s experience making A Momentary Lapse of Reason was incredibly challenging as he wrestled with being the band leader in lieu of Waters.
During a conversation with The Sun in 2024, Gilmour claimed he was “thrust” into the position. While plenty of musicians dream of taking the creative reins, this wasn’t Gilmour, although he could get frustrated at Waters. With the benefit of hindsight, the singer-songwriter concluded that “a more collaborative approach is better for me”, which he’s proven with his work alongside Samson. He may have suffered road bumps along the way, but these all benefitted Gilmour in the long term.
