I like David Gilmour. Well, his music. And what he says. Through his great website, www.davidgilmour.com, he puts to right things I agree on: ebay concert ticket profiteers (and really the time is now long overdue for ebay with their profits to at least do something to monitor third party ticket sales on their site); the plight of the homeless (and each and every one could be in that situation), for which by giving away the £3.6 million proceeds of the sale of his London home to the charity Crisis has done more than many of us can ever dream of doing. And the man has a CBE for bleedin' sake! He is officially a great guy.
So there is a lot to like about the man. Though I don't consider him to be the main muse behind Pink Floyd (Syd Barrett) or the reason for its mighty success in the 1970s & 1980s (Roger Waters), you can't say that he's not a great guitarist who, through his work with the band, has left an indelible mark on British music. Yes, you can say many things about Gilmour and they will all be good. And yet, I dunno, there is something that doesn't sit easy with me. I get the feeling from his site that he talks over me all the time, that he's saying: 'I'm David Gilmour and you're not". It's something that kind of leaves a bitter taste and doesn't really encourage one to go back to the site again. For that reason alone, it's not as pleasurable experience as it should be with such a great looking site.
I suppose what I'm trying to say is it's not what he says that rankles with me, just the way he says it. In a word, condescending. A classic Gilmouresque case in point: Gilmour's refusal to sign autographs. Now, I don't have a problem with that and when he says that one of the reasons he doesn't is because he sees them appearing on ebay selling for vast sums of money then his reaction is perfectly justified. But then he goes and ruins it is when he pompously states that he should be making music instead of signing autographs. So when he says that, is he saying that he is so important that anyone wanting a signed photo is less important for wanting it in the first place and in the process of asking is distracting the maestro from his path to the heightened plain of awareness where Gilmour exists, from day to day, when those devilish autograph hunters aren't bugging him, that is? He sounds, at best, heavy-handed and, I suspect, that this remark says alot more about Gilmour than he would care to otherwise reveal.
Vocalist as well as guitarist, David Jon Gilmour was born on March 6, 1946 in Cambridge, England. While attending the Cambridgeshire College of Arts and Technology he met Syd Barrett, but without him he played in the band Joker's Wild
in 1963. then, in 1966 some of the band members, including
Gilmour, formed Bullitt. They disbanded in 1968.
When Barrett left or was kicked out of Pink Floyd
(depending on who you believe) in 1968, Gilmour
joined the band. He co-wrote with Roger Waters,
and shared vocals with Waters and Richard Wright.
No-one can doubt his input was a important part of the band's
subsequent success but it was Waters
who fashioned the band and took more and more control.
As he did so, tension between the pair were
stretched to breaking point. Something had to give.
So it came as no surprise when Waters
announced in 1985 that the band were no more. Gilmour
disputed this, stating that he had the
right to use the Pink Floyd name. A bitter
legal battle ensured. I think Waters was right on this one when he
stated that the Pink Floyd name shouldn't be used
as three of the original band members were no
longer part of the band and that after the departure of Barrett it had
been he who had written most of the lyrics. Bizarrely, Gilmour
won the right to use not only the name but most of the songs as well.
Waters didn't go home empty-handed
though. He won The Wall and the pigs!
With Waters' departure, Pink Floyd
might well have been renamed the David Gilmour Band.
Nothing wrong
with that but the two studio albums that followed, A Momentary Lapse of Reason (1987) and The
Division Bell (1994), were, to these ears, tired and formulaic.
2005 saw the Live 8 reunion, with their biggest audience ever. Undoubtedly, their
four-song, 23-minute set was the highlight of what was a rather disappointing show otherwise. Noises of a full-scale reunion
were in the offing but these were shot down by Gilmour especially.
Gilmour showed what a good guy he was when after the Live 8 show and an huge temporary album sales rise of the Pink Floyd back catalogue, he declared he would donate these profits to charities ideologically in line
with the objectives of Live 8.
Away from the band, Gilmour has released three solo albums, the first imaginatively called David Gilmour (how lazy is that?) in 1978 and the
follow-up six years later, About Face.
It took another 22 years until 2006
for the third to be released, On An Island.
He is also an experienced session musician
and producer for artists as varied as Propaganda
and Elton John. Perhaps his biggest claim to fame
outside of Pink Floyd was him playing an
important role in the
launching of Kate Bush's career.
He has been married twice. First to Ginger
with whom he has four children. Ginger
was in the UK papers in 2005 moaning about Gilmour's
and his relationship with their children.
His second wife is Polly Samson. They have four children.
Gilmour and his family live on a 300-acre estate in Sussex. He is an experienced pilot with an interest in historical aircraft.
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