The Pink Floyd member Alan Parsons said is the “most technically minded”
In 1978, Pink Floyd were approaching a crossroads. In December of that year, the group set about recording an album many fans deem their finest, The Wall, which would arrive to much fanfare the following year. Internally though, things could have been much better. Roger Waters was tightening his grip on proceedings, with keyboardist and co-founder Richard Wright departed during the recording sessions. In short, the band was splitting at the seams.
It became apparent over the creation of The Wall that Pink Floyd was heading for a crash, and after completing their subsequent album, 1983’s The Final Cut, Waters would be out of the band too. This, of course, was a significant sea change that brought its own problems.
It was demonstrative of the members’ changing appetites that across February and March of 1978, David Gilmour set about recording his eponymous debut solo album. Vocalising his sentiments at the time and why he sought to make a record on his own, the Pink Floyd legend explained that he needed to do it “in terms of self-respect” and to step out of the band’s “shadow”.
He told Circus Magazine in 1978: “This album (David Gilmour) was important to me in terms of self-respect. At first, I didn’t think my name was big enough to carry it. Being in a group for so long can be a bit claustrophobic, and I needed to step out from behind Pink Floyd’s shadow.” A busy year for the English musician, he also served as co-producer for two tracks on Kate Bush’s hit debut album, The Kick Inside, a body of work that features songs such as ‘Wuthering Heights’ and ‘Moving’.
It’s telling that David Gilmour felt compelled to leave Pink Floyd’s shadow in 1978. It says a lot about the nature of the power structure emerging in the band and what it was doing to him personally and creatively. His revelation also suggests a humble character, as every fan of the group and those who had worked with him were acutely aware of his vital importance to their operations.
As quoted in that same 1978 Circus article, Alan Parsons, the audio engineer on Pink Floyd’s 1973 ultimate masterpiece, The Dark Side of the Moon, admiringly labelled Gilmour as “the most technically minded” of the quartet before issuing some insider knowledge of the level of prowess with which the guitarist works at.
“I think he’s the most technically minded of the four,” Parsons said. “He actually knows what’s going on technically inside the control room, and he would often come up with ideas of his own for production of a track. One instance was the cash register sounds for ‘Money’. Originally we were timing the beats with a click-track (a taped series of finger snaps used to set a song’s meter). But we weren’t getting it right. David came up with the idea of actually measuring out pieces of tape with a ruler.”
Even five years after creating the multiple-platinum-selling album, Parsons still marvelled at Gilmour’s talent. He even claimed that he was actually the “force” behind the masterful production of The Dark Side of the Moon. “David was very much a force behind the production of Dark Side of the Moon,” he asserted.
