“There’s no room”: The one tour that David Gilmour got bored playing
Playing any rock show should feel like the biggest thrill of anyone’s life. Most people only dream of stepping on those gigantic stages, so when a band actually is able to fill massive theatres or stadiums full of people, it feels like all of that hard work from years of playing in empty pubs finally paid off. But that can only come when someone enjoys what they’re playing, and David Gilmour was afraid to talk about when he considered some tours to be an absolute slog to get through.
By the time Pink Floyd reached the stadium setting, though, they were already starting to feel uncomfortable. It was clear that they were never going to go back to the fantastic light shows that they had when Syd Barrett was around, but the connection between the band and the audience was always going to be a little bit testy when they started to get singles for the first time since the 1970s.
Look no further than one of their most impressive live performances, Live At Pompeii. Every band member is at the absolute top of their game and making some of the greatest music that the early 1970s ever produced, and considering the fact that there is no audience to speak of, it’s clear that they felt a lot more comfortable making music for themselves rather than play to the music equivalent of a football match.
At least, that’s not what they signed up for. Roger Waters envisioned having a communal experience whenever they played onstage, but when people started lighting off fireworks and screaming for them to play tunes like ‘Money’ halfway through their shows, Waters couldn’t take it any longer when he started drafting the concept for The Wall. It was all meant to be a rock opera, but there was a lot more truth to it than most people realised.
Since the band didn’t envision the album having singles, their idea to perform the album live from front to back was a stroke of genius. It wasn’t going to be easy laying all the bricks onstage or bringing in different people to act as a surrogate band for them on the first few songs, but what they created became one of the best live shows of all time. Waters’s vision had been realised, but Gilmour admitted that he didn’t enjoy it as much as he should have.
“After you’ve done it 20 or 30 times, playing the music can get a bit boring, because there’s no room for flexibility. Everything is timed, tapes have to be run, everything is like precision, like a theatrical production.”
David Gilmour
The theatres were packed whenever they played, but Gilmour felt that there was no room for him to stretch out like he wanted to, saying, “There are problems in doing a show of that sort, like, you have to say to yourself ‘we are doing theatre here,’ and theatre comes first. After you’ve done it 20 or 30 times, playing the music can get a bit boring, because there’s no room for flexibility. Everything is timed, tapes have to be run, everything is like precision, like a theatrical production.”
Even if Gilmour had his promises, that didn’t stop Is There Anybody Out There from being one of their finest live records. In many respects, the live versions heavily elevate what they were doing on the original record, from bringing in an emcee to kick everything off to adding in different pieces to fill out the story like ‘What Shall We Do Now’ or ‘The Last Few Bricks’.
Gilmour may have been pissed, but all of his grievances with the show illustrated the main creative difference between him and Waters. The guitarist was interested in making bold adventures with music, but Waters wanted to be the kind of visionary who sets up scenes in the mind of every fan who walked into the venue.
