The earliest influences of David Gilmour: “The anti-purist”
Any budding guitarist will have always had their heroes growing up, and quite often, those will stick with time. If you grew up admiring the work of Jimi Hendrix, for example, that sense of nostalgia for when you were first exposed to his music and blown away by it is always going to be felt long into your adult years. Of course, anyone who is an avid listener of music will accumulate an even broader compendium of favourite musicians over time, but those earliest memories spent with the stars of your youth are ones that are so hard to ever truly shake.
For David Gilmour, who was born in 1946, he would have been in his adolescence during an explosion of blues, rock and roll and soul music, gaining exposure to a wide variety of new and exciting styles that he would have sunk his teeth into long before joining Pink Floyd in 1967. With popular music arguably being at its most varied during this time, it would probably be fair to assume that some of his earliest inspirations come from vastly different musical backgrounds.
Gilmour’s guitar playing would help define Pink Floyd’s exploratory sound throughout their career, and he has become a worthy claimant of praise for being one of the most technically impressive and influential guitarists of all time. However, due to how groundbreaking Pink Floyd were for their time, many of the styles of his personal favourite players would have been precursors to what Gilmour would go on to do, in essence serving as a foundation for his future innovations.
In a 2003 interview with Record Collector, Gilmour was questioned on his ability to “turn [his] hand to many different styles” and expressed a love for a wide variety of guitarists who helped shape his style early on. Defining himself as “a jack of all trades” for how he could effortlessly dip his toes into contrasting genres, the first guitarist he cited in response was BB King, but he was quick to note that he was “never going to dedicate my life” to being him.
He would go on to list the likes of Pete Seeger, Lead Belly, Bob Dylan and Hank Marvin among some of his personal influences, drawing from roots in folk, blues and early pop rock. When taking this into the context of what Gilmour would go on to create, there are clear elements of all the aforementioned artists that shine through at various points.
Songs such as ‘Wish You Were Here’, for example, delicately pluck from folk music archetypes in the gentle intro section before launching into a soft rock ballad, while the lead break in the 4/4 section of ‘Money’ is as down the line in its blues influence as you could possibly get before it reverts back to the proggier walking bass riff in 7/4.
“I saw no reason why all these influences could not co-habit reasonably,” said Gilmour, “and I still don’t.”
In the interview, Gilmour also discusses some of the experiences he had playing in bands prior to becoming a member of Pink Floyd. One of his previous bands, Bullitt, played soul influenced by the likes of Wilson Pickett and The Four Tops, with “one or two Beach Boys-type things” thrown in for good measure. He really was capable of it all, and that’s largely down to him being “completely the anti-purist” in his own words.
