The Elvis song David Gilmour “always loved”
When you stand back and consider it, the breadth of what we define as rock and roll is almost limitless. Considering its first breakout in the 1950s, transforming in such a short space of time to the psychedelia of the 1960s, perhaps no other genre is so chameleon-like in its tendencies in terms of evolving its sound. No one is more acutely aware of paying homage to that ever-sprouting path than David Gilmour.
While Pink Floyd could never be said to have embodied some of the older crooning sonic hallmarks of their rock predecessors, this wasn’t to say that they – and particularly Gilmour – didn’t revel in its influence just as much as anyone else trying to break through the scene. Of course, there was one supreme ruler they all bowed down to because, ultimately, they all knew that no one could do it better than Elvis Presley.
The fact that Presley’s songbook nearly single-handedly shaped the entire modern history of music is one thing, but in Gilmour’s case, there has always been one song that stands out above the rest. To that end, when it came to his chance to perform at a tribute concert for legendary rock songwriters Leiber and Stoller – who penned many a Presley hit – Gilmour knew there was only one song he was taking on.
He said in an interview for BBC Radio 2 in 2002: “It was a Lieber & Stoller tribute, and they gave me a long list of Elvis songs, and I looked through them. I always loved ‘Don’t’ and I just thought I could do it slightly differently. And I thought the chances were that everyone else would be doing ‘Yakkety Yak’ and all these drrp-drrp-drrp great things that Lieber and Stoller were very good at writing, and I thought if I did something that was a little bit different to everyone else, it would come over well, and it was really…I enjoyed doing that.”
The combination of Leiber and Stoller lyrics with Presley’s swooning vocals scored the King of Rock and Roll his 11th number-one hit, winning the hearts of the masses, as well as a future rock prodigy, in the process. There’s no point in trying to pretend that there’s any real sonic similarity between the song and anything at all that Pink Floyd produced, but nevertheless, those crooning swells invigorated something in Gilmour’s spirits.
By almost ten years after the release of ‘Don’t’ when 1967 rolled around, Gilmour and his gang were ready to carry the baton for the next chapter of rock and roll with their first album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. It may have embodied entirely different musical qualities to that of Presley, but it’s still clear that without one, the world wouldn’t have the other.
To be fair, it would be a sight to behold if Elvis Presley were to come back from the dead and take on a massive Pink Floyd hit like ‘Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2’. In that sense, it’s maybe just as well that the times do keep moving on because some things ultimately are just better left in the past.
