“We will not do it again”: The one moment David Gilmour felt like he sold out
Every musician has to deal with those tough choices whenever they start to hit it big. The idea of playing music with your friends seems like a lot of fun at the time, but once people start coming into the picture asking you what you’re going to do with all that money, a lot of middlemen often drive a wedge between what’s supposed to be a fun job. While David Gilmour has tried time and time again to make the kind of music he wants to, he knew that there were moments when he felt things became too manufactured.
Granted, there’s already a massive contingency of Pink Floyd fans who think that any version of the band that Gilmour worked on without Roger Waters was already a sell-out. A Momentary Lapse of Reason has constantly been cited as one of their weakest efforts, but listening back to the album, there are still some decent pieces that could have been welcome on any other Floyd release, like ‘On the Turning Away’ and ‘Dogs of War’.
Then again, it was easy to see why fans were upset. There was always a tinge of regret knowing that they were never going to see the band make another album like Dark Side of the Moon, but looking back at the Gilmour-led era of the group, records like The Division Bell were far more interesting than many people liked to give them credit for.
Since Waters had started to make his own solo masterpieces like Amused to Death, this was the first time that Gilmour was able to make a conceptual piece that worked from top to bottom. The entire theme of miscommunication was extremely pertinent given their constant spats with Waters, but given that this was intended to be the final Floyd album, songs like ‘High Hopes’ do a great job at closing up shop on the band’s creative output.
Once they got on the road, they even had massive plans to revamp their live show. Outside of living up to their usual standards of massive light shows and graphic imagery, the band would play Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety for what would become Pulse. Some of the songs would become legendary from those shows, but when talking about working with sponsorships, Gilmour felt uncomfortable when Volkswagen came into the picture.
Seeing how the car manufacturer was sponsoring part of the tour, Gilmour didn’t hide that he felt like a sell-out making that deal, saying, “I confess to not having thought it through entirely and I was uncomfortable with it. Meeting and greeting Volkswagen people. I was not a popular chappy with Volkswagen. I don’t want them to be able to say they have a connection with Pink Floyd, that they’re part of our success. We will not do it again. I didn’t like it, and any money I made from it went to charity. We should remain proudly independent.”
It was also far from the best look for a band looking to keep up that everyman mentality. After all, Waters had already felt that the band were only trying to make money at this point, and now that they had taken out a massive sponsorship with one of the biggest motor companies in the world, it only served to prove him right.
But going forward, Gilmour knew that anything he would make on his own or with Pink Floyd would be made for the right reasons, whether that was working on ‘Hey Hey Rise Up’ for charitable efforts or flying on his own on records like On an Island. He had spent years honing his voice on his instrument and as a lyricist, and he was never going to give that up for the sake of a big paycheck.
