Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour discusses the eight artists that changed his life
Like most British rock groups of the 1960s, Pink Floyd began as a rhythm and blues band under the creative leadership of the singer and lead guitarist Syd Barrett. David Gilmour was an old school friend of Barrett’s and Roger Waters’, but he wasn’t welcomed into the band until the autumn of 1967, when Barrett’s mental health issues had begun to take a severe turn for the worse.
Shortly after Gilmour joined the band, Barrett became so unreliable in his mental state amid his near-constant drug-taking that he was forced to leave the band. As Gilmour took over from Barrett, he brought a new style to their music, but initially, he earned merit in the group for his astonishing ability to emulate Barrett’s style after just a short period of time.
As a guitarist, Gilmour is an extraordinary learner by ear. While he picked up the fundamental guitar skills through a Pete Seeger guitar tutoring book, he sharpened his virtuosity by listening to some of his favourite guitarists and emulating their style and tone.
As Pink Floyd developed from the psychedelic rock sound of the latter Barrett years towards their early peak with 1973’s prog-rock sensation, The Dark Side of the Moon, Gilmour’s lead guitar style became a sonic integration of his most cherished forebears. This style was mostly rooted in folk and blues music.
In an interview with Guitar Classics in 1985, Gilmour listed some of his biggest influences as a guitarist: “I was a blues fan, but I was an all-around music fan. For me, it was Lead Belly through B.B. King and later Eric Clapton, Roy Buchanan, Jeff Beck, Eddie Van Halen and anyone you care to mention.”
Below, we visit eight artists David Gilmour has cited as the most influential in his career, both as a guitarist and a singer-songwriter.
Eight artists that changed David Gilmour‘s life:
The Beach Boys
In 2006, Gilmour was responsible for inducting The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson into the UK Music Hall of Fame. “The first band I actually formed when I was a young lad was with some like-minded souls from my hometown,” Gilmour began. “We wanted to sing harmony. So the harmony we wanted to sing was The Beach Boys’ harmony. Also, that love of singing harmony remains with me today. The man who is the main inspiration for that love is the man we are honouring here tonight, Brian Wilson.”
He continued: “Even in those very early days of The Beach Boys, songs like ‘In My Room’ and ‘Don’t Worry Baby’ were giving indications that Brian Wilson painted with a much more colourful palette than was offered by the Surf Music that he was so adept at.”
The Beatles
As with practically every rock musician emerging from the latter 1960s, David Gilmour was deeply inspired by The Beatles. Pink Floyd were especially inspired by the later psychedelic rock style of The Beatles’ catalogue and fashioned it into their own iteration, first with Syd Barrett and later with Gilmour on the strings. Speaking to Mojo in 2015, Gilmour said: “I really wish I had been in the Beatles; [They] taught me how to play guitar; I learnt everything. The bass parts, the lead, the rhythm, everything. They were fantastic.”
In a 2006 interview with the BBC on the Radio 2 feature Tracks Of My Years, Gilmour listed some of his favourite songs, and one of them was naturally by The Beatles: “I was an absolute mad Beatles fan. ‘You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away’ is, I think, John Lennon’s first moment of being influenced by Bob Dylan. It’s very much in the Bob Dylan vein. So it’s just one example of hundreds of things I could choose. Anything by The Beatles, really. Fantastic song.”
Hank Marvin
Hank Marvin was the lead guitarist of Cliff Richard’s backing band, The Shadows, in the 1960s. His pioneering style of electric guitar playing made his red Stratocaster nearly as iconic as himself. Marvin has been cited as an influence on numerous subsequent guitar heroes, including Mark Knopfler and David Gilmour. In an interview with Music Radar in 2006, Gilmour said: “The way I play melodies is connected to things like Hank Marvin and The Shadows. That style of guitar playing where people can recognise a melody with some beef to it.”
In another interview in 1981, Gilmour also listed Marvin as one of his key early influences, saying: “He was the first major electric sort of guitar hero for us Brits”. Later in the conversation, Gilmour revealed that he was lucky enough to see Marvin play live on several occasions and said he was one of the best he’d seen.
Jimi Hendrix
During his appearance on BBC Radio 2’s Tracks Of My Years in 2006, Gilmour also listed Jimi Hendrix’s ‘The Wind Cries Mary’ as one of his favourite songs and recalled when he first heard the guitar virtuoso: “Jimi Hendrix, fantastic. I went to a club in South Kensington in 1966, and this kid got on stage with Brian Auger and the Trinity and [held] the guitar the other way around and started playing. Myself and the whole place were with their jaws hanging open.”
He continued: “I went the next day to the record shops, and I said ‘You’ve got anything by this guy Jimi Hendrix?’ and they said ‘Well, we’ve got a James Hendrix’. He hadn’t yet done anything. So I became rather an avid fan waiting for his first release. Also, this is one of his beautiful ballads that I really love”.
Eric Clapton
It’s well known and attested in this list that David Gilmour is a big fan of the blues. Eric Clapton is one of the most accomplished blues students and is now seen, alongside Gilmour, as one of the all-time masters of the six-string. His dynamic and precise lead style brought vibrancy to everything he played on stage and in the studio, whether he was dabbling in psychedelia with Cream or blues-rock with Derek and the Dominos.
In an interview with Relix magazine in 2015, Gilmour explained that the John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers’ albums with Eric Clapton and Peter Green are the ones that inspired him the most: “All of those guys were incredible and I spent time trying to learn how to play their licks perfectly. I would suggest any young player should try to sit down and do that. You will wind up knowing how to play their stuff quite well, but eventually, you will find your own style from that. It forces its way out of the copying.”
B.B. King
In the 1950s, a host of prominent blues musicians rose the bar and wrote the script for the rock and roll of the 1960s and beyond. Within the realm of electric guitar blues, none were so prolific and influential as B.B. King. The icon certainly didn’t pass David Gilmour by in his formative years.
In an interview with The Guardian in 2006, Gilmour cited King as a significant influence. “He’s a lovely chap,” Gilmour opined. “His early stuff was stupendous, and he’s just kept going. I first met him in New York. He came up to me and said, ‘Hey, boy, are you sure you weren’t born in Mississippi?’ I’ve played with him a couple of times since, on a Later With Jools Holland session and on one of his albums. When he’s in the dressing room, he spends all his time writing lyrics. There are some guitar players who are instantly recognisable, and then there are all the rest.”
Bob Dylan
Speaking to The Guardian in 2006, Gilmour revealed his love for Bob Dylan both in his early years as an acoustic folk singer and after his electric transition in the mid-1960s. “I was never one of the people who thought Dylan was a monster for going electric,” Gilmour said. “I liked the change. But I must say the power of the young Dylan as the acoustic-playing protest singer – which he’s always denied.”
“Sorry Bob, you were a protest singer,” he asserted. “Just to get his guitar and play to a crowd of people and it’s like an arrow. His words come out, and the music. But people underestimate his actual musical abilities. The melodies and the words just shoot out like an arrow. I think he was unbelievable. And is”.
Lead Belly
When interviewed on BBC Radio 2’s Tracks Of My Years in 2006, Gilmour also included Lead Belly’s ‘The Rock Island Line’ in his tracklist. He explained the unparalleled influence of the folk and blues legend and his virtuosity with a 12-string. “Lead Belly, I loved him when I was very young, loved his 12-string guitar playing,” Gilmour remembered. “I always enjoyed the 12-string. His story, he was in prison, he got released from prison on a [attempted] murder charge because he was such a great singer.”
“But for me, ‘Rock Island Line’ was one of the first things I’ve learned. Also is one of the things that you can you can actually learn one chord, get your fingers on that guitar in one position and not move from there, you can do the whole song and sing this old song to yourself. So it’s a great thing, part of my childhood,” Gilmour concluded.
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