The album that allowed David Gilmour to create his ultimate band: “Different scale”
When David Gilmour initially went solo with an eponymous studio album in 1978, stepping outside of Pink Floyd’s psychedelic realm, he did so with the intention of amplifying his own musical talents.
The writing sessions for David Gilmour produced initial pieces of music that would, two years later, transform into the masterful ‘Comfortably Numb’, rounding out Roger Waters’ concept for his rock opera that defined the story of 1979’s The Wall. Though the achievement of ‘Comfortably Numb’ would lead to a career-defining opus, the completion of the song proved contentious, as the Gilmour-Waters creative duo frequently tended to lean towards.
As quoted in Mark Blake’s 2008 book, Comfortably Numb: The Inside Story Of Pink Floyd, Gilmour described the process as “the last embers of mine and Roger’s ability to work collaboratively together”.
Roughly five years after the sensational release of The Wall, Gilmour debuted his second solo effort, 1984’s About Face – this time, he entered the studio with a revived artistry, wanting to create the best record possible, and, with time on his hands, he set out to assemble a formidable lineup of musicians that would help him fully realise his next phase.
Gilmour wrote a list of his favourite musicians: “best drummer, best bass player, best keyboard player, and I’ll work through the list to see who I can get,” he detailed to Source. His list included the Welsh session bassist Pino Palladino, Ian ‘The Rev’ Quelly on the Hammond organ and piano and English musician Steve Winwood on keyboards – all of whom featured on About Face in some capacity.
At the top of his “drummers” list was Jeff Porcaro, because, while the co-founder and drummer of the American rock band Toto, Porcaro was also a prolific session musician. As Toto was assembled by musicians who also doubled as respected session players, Porcaro would continue to lend his talents to hundreds of albums across thousands of sessions, from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s, before his untimely passing at just 38 years old.
Porcaro first met Gilmour in the late 1970s, when he was hired to play drums on the track ‘Mother’ from The Wall, a song with a rhythm that was proving to be extremely difficult to play. Thus, they called in Porcaro, the only one who could crack the song’s code, and his inclusion on Gilmour’s solo work was a no-brainer.
Gilmour also enlisted Pete Townshend to write lyrics to two songs that appeared on About Face: the single ‘Love on the Air’ and ‘All Lovers Are Deranged’, the former being written in just a day. In The Who’s mastermind, Gilmour found a kindred spirit, seeing themselves as two musicians whose creativity often overflowed. From Gilmour’s perspective, Townshend’s supposed restrictions in The Who mirrored his own, while in Pink Floyd.
“I know he’s felt uncomfortable about certain things – things he could express in solo stuff,” Gilmour explained to Musician in 1992. “For me, the restriction was the scale of what Pink Floyd had become more than anything. It’s nice to get out and do something on a slightly different scale; go out and do theatres, which is not really a possibility with Pink Floyd until we get a lot less popular.”
With a regained sense of freedom, Gilmour conceptualised About Face with a radicalised emotion, as he commented on topics from the murder of John Lennon on ‘Murder’, his feelings towards Waters on ‘You Know I’m Right’ and former American president Ronald Reagan’s stationing of cruise missiles in Britain on ‘Cruise’.
About Face allowed Gilmour to break out of his usual mould, playing with a range of musicians that he held a deep respect for while expanding what he was assured he could achieve, creatively. The result is an extension of Gilmour’s artistry that shows one of rock’s most brilliant minds at work.
