“That was pretty important”: The artist who taught David Gilmour how to play guitar
No guitar god wakes up one morning with the fingers of a musical prodigy. Even though every music biopic claims that there is one magical moment where someone finds out they are going to have a higher calling in music, there are often a lot more hours that go into making a great artist rather than having some orchestral symphony being beamed into their heads. While David Gilmour has never been secretive about his love of blues, he admitted that he turned to pre-rock and roll to help him learn the ropes of guitar.
But even among the blues heroes of his time, Gilmour was always a bit of a one-off. Sure, he could make the guitar sing the same way that Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page could, but never before had a solo felt more important than when listening to tracks like ‘Comfortably Numb’ and ‘Time’, especially the former where he makes the guitar sound like it’s crying out in pain years after George Harrison merely suggested the idea on a Beatles album.
No matter how many times people swear by one genre, having that kind of musical ear comes from listening to many different genres, and that meant nothing was off the table for Gilmour. Although there were still legends of the day, like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, coming out of England, Gilmour was already paying attention to what was going on in the midst of the folk revival in America.
While many passive folk-rock fans attribute the genre to Bob Dylan, Mr Zimmerman was already walking in the massive shoes of Woody Guthrie. Despite the ‘This Land Is Your Land’ singer being considered the first punk for going against the grain, Pete Seeger was far more approachable for casual music fans, usually saying everything he needed with a few simple chords and one of the biggest hearts in the scene.
Although Seeger certainly knew his way around the guitar, he knew that his job was as much about sharing music as it was about playing it, and Gilmour was one of the many who picked up his guitar tutorial. And despite him being destined for the electric, Gilmour knew he had a solid foundation to work with when playing along with Seeger every night.
Outside of the pure lessons on how to hold the guitar properly and strumming basic chords, Gilmour couldn’t have asked for a better teacher, saying, “Pete Seeger’s a wonderful, fantastic human being. ‘America’s Tuning Fork,’ they called him at one time. I learned guitar off his Pete Seeger Teaches Guitar record. That was the first instruction I had. The first track taught you how to tune the guitar. That was pretty important.”
Even if all Seeger did was teach the basics of guitar to Gilmour on record, some of his philosophies ended up working their way into Pink Floyd’s best tunes. Compared to most progressive rock acts, Gilmour and Roger Waters understood the importance of keeping things simple, and listening back to how Gilmour approached a tune like ‘Fat Old Sun,’ he was much better equipped to play genres like folk than almost any of his peers.
And listening back to how Gilmour kept things clear and to the point with Waters constructing the political angle of Animals, it’s safe to say that they took some inspiration from tunes like ‘We Shall Overcome.’ It might seem hard for people to get to the point where they can show off on their instruments, but Gilmour understood the importance of being able to take the audience on a journey.
