“I felt I couldn’t do it”: The Pink Floyd song David Gilmour could never play right
Every music legend tends to have those few moments where they have been knocked down a couple of pegs. Not everyone is meant to be able to play every instrument that comes their way, and even if they have the chops to play a song doesn’t mean that they have the same feel that another person might bring to the table. And despite David Gilmour being known as the almighty king of emotional guitar playing, he had the foresight to realise when someone was better suited to take a guitar solo.
Then again, that collaborative mentality is usually what made Pink Floyd’s records so exciting to listen to. It wasn’t out of the question for Gilmour to end up playing bass on a track like ‘One of These Days’ to flesh things out, but was there ever anyone arguing that Roger Waters take a guitar solo on a track like ‘Time’?
Because listening to any of Gilmour’s greatest solos, he seems to get the most emotion out of every single bend he makes. Most people can spend their time looking like absolute imbeciles making elongated guitar faces when they bend notes, but Gilmour always felt like a craftsman putting together a fine musical piece whenever he got behind the fretboard, whether that’s the solo in ‘Comfortably Numb’ or half of the showcases on The Division Bell.
When Waters came up with the concept of The Wall, though, the rest of the members of Pink Floyd had to deal with becoming backup musicians. This was Waters’s vision, and if someone either didn’t agree with what he was working on or didn’t have their chops together for the right song, it wasn’t out of the question for him to bring in a session musician in their place or fire them on the spot.
Even throughout that era, though, Gilmour was still too important to boss around. His tracks on the record are still among the best he ever made, like ‘Young Lust’, but ‘Is There Anybody Out There’ was totally alien to what he had been used to. Despite his bluesy chops, the classical style of acoustic playing that was needed was enough for him to take a step back in the studio.
According to Gilmour, he knew that he was too out of practice to play the song properly, saying, “There was another guy, whose name escapes me, who played the Spanish classical guitar part on ‘Is There Anybody Out There?’ because I felt I couldn’t do it quite cleanly enough or well enough for the record. Onstage, of course, I ended up doing it, and it wasn’t a problem.” But even though Gilmour isn’t on the song doesn’t mean it isn’t still beautiful.
A lot of the heart behind Floyd was always Gilmour’s guitar, but this section of the story is better served to be stoic and cold. The protagonist Pink had locked himself away behind his wall, and having that lone acoustic guitar be the soundtrack is a lot more ominous than any bluesy solo could have been, almost like you’re looking into Pink’s mind as he contemplates whether he’s really alone for the rest of his life.
Still, the fact that Gilmour had to relinquish control here didn’t do anything to dissuade everyone from seeing the writing on the wall. Even though The Final Cut gets the tag of being a Roger Waters solo album in disguise, this is the first time that one of the band’s albums earned that moniker, even if Gilmour collaborated for a few tracks.
