The “sublime” songwriter that shaped David Gilmour
When scouring the pantheon of rock and roll heroes, one figure will stand, axe in hand, as one of the finest sculptors of sonic structures the music world has ever known. As the guitarist for Pink Floyd, David Gilmour has been routinely regarded as one of the greatest ever to pick up the instrument. But while his musical ability certainly isn’t confined to his guitar-playing skills, it is his songwriting which is often overlooked.
As one half of Pink Floyd’s cantankerous duo, alongside Roger Waters, Gilmour can be considered one of the primary songwriters of the 20th century, helping to craft monumental pieces such as ‘Echoes’ and ‘Comfortably Numb’, infiltrating the lyrics of Waters with his unique guitar style. It’s a way of playing that Gilmour openly declares was copied from some of his heroes. “I copied – don’t be afraid to copy – and eventually something that I suppose that I would call my own appeared,” the Pink Floyd man famously claimed.
Over the years, Gilmour has paid similar tribute to some of his songwriting heroes too, with Paul McCartney perhaps the most famous among them. However, there was one musical maestro that Gilmour believed had “mastered” the art, broken out of the confines of genre categorisation and delivered an album that could truly be considered a masterpiece. Including his most famous work as one of his favourite songs of all time, Brian Wilson will always remain at the top of the bill for Gilmour.
The primary songwriter within The Beach Boys, Wilson and the band had a profound impact on a young Gilmour and shaped how he would begin his journey into music. “I love the Beach Boys,” Gilmour told BBC Radio 2 in 2006. “My early band in Cambridge when I was a teenager, we did a lot of Beach Boys songs. But I didn’t wanna play one of the the too surfy ones.”
For Gilmour, in the rainy streets of Cambridge, it wasn’t the Californian sunshine that enticed him but the beautiful tapestry Wilson was weaving: “I just love the place that Brian Wilson got to. (When he came out) of all that Surf Music. Some of these moments are just sublime. ‘God Only Knows’ is one of the best things. It’s so beautifully constructed. So meaningful as well.”
When inducting Wilson into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Gilmour expressed his sheer admiration for Wilson: “Even in those very early days of The Beach Boys, songs like ‘In My Room’ and ‘Don’t Worry Baby’ were giving indications that Brian Wilson wanted to paint with a much more colourful palette than was offered by the surf music that he was so adept at.”
For Gilmour and the rest of the world, Wilson’s brilliance was best shown on The Beach Boys’ mammoth release Pet Sounds, a record delivered with meticulous precision and helmed by Wilson: “His brilliance leapt from strength to strength over a very short period and in a little over four years, he mastered the art of songwriting, record production, orchestral arrangements and every form of studio trickery to culminate with the wonderful songs on Pet Sounds.”
Listening to the sun-soaked surf rock tunes of The Beach Boys and the mesmeric, and often bleak, tracks of Pink Floyd, it may not be easy to track a single line of influence. However, what Wilson showed Gilmour was that every single note, every layered line of melody and every instrumental inflexion was worth its weight in gold.
