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- [00:00]
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- [00:16]
Robin Hilton
All right, it's All Songs Considered. I'm Robin Hilton and if you don't already know it, these are the opening strains to Pink Floyd's 1975 album Wish youh Were Here.
- [00:32]
David Gilmour
Sam.
- [01:27]
Robin Hilton
The album Wish youh Were Here, it's celebrating its 50th anniversary, 5O. There's a big deluxe version coming out with a bunch of demos and outtakes. There's a bunch of live recordings from that time that are all included in it. So this week we've got Pink Floyd guitarist and singer David Gilmore in to talk all about it, to share memories and stories from the making of the album. But this isn't just a nostalgia trip. Gilmore has a lot cooking right now. He turns 8, 80 years old in March, and I don't think it's a cliche or a throwaway line to say he isn't slowing down. He had a new solo album last year he co wrote with his wife and longtime collaborator Paulie Sampson. It's called Luck and Strange. He just released a concert film from his tour for the album and he has a live album version of it coming out called the Luck and Strange Concerts. So when David Gilmour and I sat down to talk, I was in dc, he was in his home studio south of London in and we started off with the new stuff. The Luck and Strange concerts, which opens a lot like Wish youh Were Here, opens with this slowly blooming and super calming song called 5:00am.
- [02:54]
David Gilmour
It is a recording of the sound outside my bedroom window at 5am One morning. And that moved on into inspiring a piece of simple music that suited a bit of guitar playing. These things are hard to explain quite how they come to pass, how that inspiration strikes you, but it's a lucky moment when they do.
- [03:38]
Robin Hilton
Yeah. I was going to ask you if you are. If you wrote it at 5am Are you morning person?
- [03:42]
David Gilmour
Yes, I am actually. I mean, I didn't write it all. No, I was, but I was leaning out of the window with the recorder just recording the atmosphere of the early morning, the birdsong and the other noises and atmosphere, you know, some of which almost inaudible, but it adds to the thing.
- [04:04]
Robin Hilton
Do you play around with sampling? Do you like run that into a sampler and then play around with the sounds or. No, not really.
- [04:11]
David Gilmour
Yeah.
- [04:11]
Robin Hilton
Just straight up, I don't want to.
- [04:13]
David Gilmour
Don't want to mess with it. You know, just obviously there are, you know, you record an hour of that thing and. And you can edit those pieces together invisibly within pro tools and concentrate the bits about that, that time that inspired you.
- [04:34]
Robin Hilton
Well, opening the show at 5am I was just talking with a friend about first time I saw you play in 88, how you opened with Shine on youn Crazy Diamond Part one through five. And I. There's something counterintuitive about it because I think most bands come out, they just want to hit with their hardest thing right out the gate.
- [04:53]
David Gilmour
Yeah. And I want to create an atmosphere that is not your classic rock and roll atmosphere. I got nothing against that. And we get. We get down to some of them more rock and roll areas of it as the concert goes on. But I want to set people sitting back in their seats and thinking and relaxing and letting themselves move into the music. And I'm, you know, it's not all about rhythm or hard rock.
- [05:23]
Robin Hilton
Let's talk about the title cut that you perform to Luck and Strange Shadow.
- [05:34]
David Gilmour
Snake in my peripheral Mesmerize me Bring it on Heart beats with fear Here in the theater of my soul, you see I hope it will go on.
- [05:59]
Robin Hilton
And on and when.
- [06:08]
David Gilmour
Morning always comes it's the luck of being a post war baby boomer generation. Our prime minister in the early 60s, Harold MacMillan said, you've never had it so good. That was a generally considered thought. And how strange some of these things are that you can look back and consider in life, you know. And that song was a jam track that I recorded in my barn farm here with Guy playing and Rick Wright, of course, the year before he died, jamming with us and Steve d' Estaing as well. And it's a jam that just came. A little riff that I had in my head that we played for about 20 minutes in fact on the album. Somewhere amongst the extras, there's the original Jam track in its full 20 minute glory. And I played around with that track, cut it in bits, put in bridges and middle eights choruses using the original drum track. It's something you do when you've got a lot of time on your hands.
- [07:27]
Robin Hilton
I like thinking about Luck and Strange together because I always think of life as being very beautiful and very, very strange.
- [07:34]
David Gilmour
Yeah.
- [07:35]
Robin Hilton
But I like invoking the idea of luck.
- [07:38]
David Gilmour
Yeah. Well, we were a lucky generation. And it is very strange to look back at time from a perspective of right now with the world's problems. Your problems over in America or your problem, I should say. And all the problems in Russia and Israel and you know, it's the world is a mess at the moment. It's a scary mess. And we thought all those things were passed in the 60s and 70s. We thought we were moving towards a world of peace and prosperity and equality for all races and nations and sexes. It hasn't really borne quite the sort of fruit that we hoped.
- [08:28]
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- [09:03]
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- [09:28]
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- [09:58]
Robin Hilton
So you also included this really surprising cover song in your performance for the Luck and Strange, a song called Between Two Points.
- [10:11]
David Gilmour
Holly and I have known that song since the 90s, late 90s I think, when it must have come out and Beautiful Lovely lyrics by in the Montgolfier Brothers are just beautiful but they're too fragile for me. So Holly suggested we get our daughter Romani to try it and five minutes in in this room where she's saying did the trick there's no no reason to look further Broken early promise put trust in an unknown Fell headlong into the arms of the F that stirred me unsteady to steady heart and took me to a place I've never been A place I've never been since it just obviously was going to be a cracking addition to the Song, and I'm very happy to do it. The occasional cover. I mean, you. You have to make it your own, but you don't want to be too close to the original. Not that this is too far either.
- [11:34]
Robin Hilton
Yeah. I have to say, I listened to the album blindly. I didn't read any credits or read much about it. I just put. Put it on, hit play and listen to see where it took me. And when I got to that and I heard this woman's voice singing, I thought, oh, who is this? Yeah, it just made me stop everything.
- [11:53]
David Gilmour
Yeah, she's got. I mean, I've been. She's been singing things with me since she was three. We do lots of children with lots of the songs. Lots of the hits that, you know, we do do backing tracks and then the children sing them. I could put out an album those One of these days.
- [12:10]
Robin Hilton
Oh, yes, please. I'd love to hear that.
- [12:13]
David Gilmour
So she's. She's an experience hand in the studio, you know, say, there's the mic. Put your cans on. Here's a piece of paper. Sing. And that's more or less what we did with that song. And 95% of the singing in that song was the first take.
- [12:31]
Robin Hilton
What does it mean for you to be on stage with your daughter? I mean, your heart must just feel like it's about to explode.
- [12:38]
David Gilmour
Yeah, it does. It's just amazing. You know, there's a thing. You know, it's a commonly spoken idea that voices in a family tend to blend nicely together. The Everly Brothers are good. Case in point. There's many, many more. And, you know, we. Actually, in 2020, we were doing. Polly was. Had written a book, her last novel called A Theater for Dreamers. And we. She wanted to promote the. That launch and all those sort of things, but Covid hit us and we were locked down and we decided to start doing some lockdown sessions or a lockdown book launch, basically from our barn online, which we did. We called ourselves the Von Trapped, because we were. And we got a very good audience the first week. And week after week we seemed to continue and we. We would read bits of book and talk about things and chat and have a glass of wine, maybe one or two too many on occasion. And. And I would sing a song and Roman Benny would join in with me. You know, most of the songs we started with were Leonard Cohen songs, because he's actually is a character in Paulie's book. So we were doing his songs and Romani joined in with those. And she plays the harp. Gosh, it was quite an experience. So the idea that her voice might be something we'd use at some point came to us.
- [14:18]
Robin Hilton
Well, we can't get to every song on this album, but I did want to talk about your performance of A Boat Lies Waiting.
- [14:26]
David Gilmour
It's like going into the sea there's.
- [14:29]
Robin Hilton
Nothing.
- [14:33]
David Gilmour
Something I never knew in silence I'd hear you and the waiting still your cloud flaming that old time easy feeling. It's a song that I had written music and Polly wrote words. I guess the words are. I think they were sort of a gift to Rick Wright. It came out in 2006 and he's actually singing on it a little bit on the record. But it's just one of those songs that has a real emotional feel to it that, that I love. And the little moment in the middle of our show of a great gig in the sky and a boat lies waiting where all the singers gather around the microphone, around on their microphones, around a piano and sing those two songs is a killer moment for me. I have to thank Polly again for that.
- [15:54]
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- [16:21]
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- [16:52]
Robin Hilton
Podcast well, I know our time is limited, so I do want to ask you some about the Wish youh were here 50th anniversary as well. Yeah, I mean, my gosh, we could spend all day just talking about the history of the album and how it came to be. And I know a lot of those stories have been told a million times before, but I would love it if possible if, if you could just take me back to that time and what you remember. It's the top of 1975 and you, you're coming off the incredible success of the Dark side of the Moon. You Guys go into the studio, you've to follow up this. Followed up with this new project. Do you remember like what the mood was, like, how you were feeling or what you were all thinking?
- [17:34]
David Gilmour
We had one or two start points, which is we had Shiner and you, Crazy diamond. We had two other tracks because in late 74, I think we convened in a rehearsal room in King's Cross in London and worked up some material there. The two other songs became Dogs and Sheep on the Animals album and Roger didn't want to have all three of them on the album we were currently working on, which became Wish youh Here. And he suggested we split Shining on youn Crazy diamond into two and having them as bookends of. Of a whole album, which I wasn't over keen on at the time, but I grew to love that idea. Funnily enough, the other day I was at a. A book launch. Jill Fermanowski, a famous rock and roll photographer who's an old, old friend. And it was in number three studio at Abbey Road, the launch and. And it was on the day of the. The anniversary of the release of Wish youh Were Here in the room that we recorded Wish you Were Here. When the thing was over, they started playing tracks from Wish you were here in the room where we recorded them. That was a very, very odd but lovely feeling. Yeah.
- [18:52]
Robin Hilton
Do you remember?
- [18:53]
David Gilmour
I can remember sitting in that control room to number three there and starting to play the beginning of Wish you were here. And discipline remains massively. Yes. And neither would you, Derek, this star nonsense. No, it is. We went out into my car in the car park outside the front door of Abbey Road with a. With a microphone and I just sat there with the thing on and with a microphone recording the radio. And you know, in the old days you didn't press a button to get a new channel. You actually tuned from one to the other. So you'd turn a knob round clockwise or anti clockwise and come across these strange mad sort of sounds. That is all a live moment that just happened while I sat in my car. All of that background radio noise is.
- [19:53]
Robin Hilton
That you clearing your throat and stuff that we hear at the.
- [19:55]
David Gilmour
Almost certainly. There was a lot of lethargy in the studio, a lot of sitting around trying to G ourselves up into getting back to work properly. And it took quite a long time. And that is part of what the. The title of the album and that song is about is Roger's view that some of us weren't really there a lot at the time.
- [20:42]
Robin Hilton
Because I think at least My assumption was always, oh, you're saying you wish Sid was there or something?
- [20:47]
David Gilmour
Well, wish you were here is about a much broader wish you were here thing. I'm sure there's elements of Sid in it. Shine on, you Crazy diamond is more specifically about Sid.
- [20:58]
Robin Hilton
So when you entered the studio, did you have kind of a mission statement in mind for what you wanted to do apart from these, the framework of these songs? Like, did you think, I want to. I want this to be this. I don't want to do Dark side again. I want it to be this thing.
- [21:11]
David Gilmour
Well, there were a number of thoughts about those sort of issues about what we were trying to do and how and why. But we were in a place which is a very strange place to be. You know, this. The, the difficult second album thing springs to mind. It wasn't our second album or our difficult second album or anything, but it's this, the second album after having the knock your socks off, fulfill all your dreams sort of album.
- [21:44]
Robin Hilton
Right.
- [21:45]
David Gilmour
The Dark side of the Moon was. And, you know, you think you've done everything at that point. You're not sure what you're doing it for. You know, are you doing this for more fame? Do you want more money? When you've done rather well at that moment, all of those things that you, you dream of when you're a teenager in a. Your first little band were realized by that album. And you have to then think, do I really love music? Or is it the fame that I really love, or is it the money that I'm after? Or is it the other benefits that go with it?
- [22:25]
Robin Hilton
How'd you end?
- [22:26]
David Gilmour
I think I got to the conclusion that I really was there for the music more than anything else. Everything else obviously comes into it.
- [22:34]
Robin Hilton
One of the most surprising moments in these outtakes and alternate versions and everything is a version of Wish youh Were Here that features the French jazz violinist Stephane Grappelli.
- [23:09]
David Gilmour
Well, he was in again on another occasion at the same time. He was in there working on some. An album, I think, with Yehudi Menu, probably within the Big orchestral or Number one. And I guess maybe somehow when you're all together in this huge sort of club that is Abbey Road recording studio, people sort of wander into other studios and say hi to people, you know, I walked through the door of Number two once, and John Lennon was sitting on a chair with a guitar doing this, and he just turned around and glared at me. I just quietly shut the door and left. Anyway, I, I. My assumption is that Stefan wanted to meet us, so Someone brought him in to meet us and we said, why don't you play on this track? And he said, sure. And he grabbed his violin and. And played some stuff. It was pretty out there. Yeah.
- [24:03]
Robin Hilton
I was going to ask you what led you to swap it for. For the version that ultimately got released with your solo. And honestly, maybe my favorite part, which is you singing in unison with the guitar solo at the end of the song.
- [24:15]
David Gilmour
Sort of scat thing. Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't quite us. I don't know. We weren't brave enough to put it on at the time. Everything you do, you're constantly adding and taking away. You're throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks. So, yeah, you add things and then you listen back to them, you know, Then you leave them for a few weeks and come back to them and reassess them and say, maybe that doesn't quite work. There's a constant process of reassessment going on when you do those things. And what makes the final cut is how you're feeling about it at the end. When you've added and subtracted for months.
- [24:54]
Robin Hilton
So many different outtakes and demos. We could play here. But this anniversary edition of Wish youh Were Here also has an alternate take of the song have a Cigar.
- [25:04]
David Gilmour
I haven't checked all of the extras on it. I know there's a welcome to the Machine on there.
- [25:10]
Robin Hilton
There is a have a Cigar.
- [25:12]
David Gilmour
I haven't heard it.
- [25:13]
Robin Hilton
Okay. I can play a little bit for you.
- [25:16]
David Gilmour
Go on, then. Nick's playing good. Yeah. It's really got a groove going there.
- [25:41]
Robin Hilton
I'm just going to scooch ahead here to the vocals because they're. They're the part that's really different here. They're slower. And.
- [25:57]
David Gilmour
You'Re gonna fly high. You're never gonna die. You're gonna make it if you try. They're gonna love you.
- [26:06]
Robin Hilton
Is that before Roy Harper was brought in or.
- [26:09]
David Gilmour
Yeah. Yeah. That's Roger singing the top line. I think it's me singing the lower line at a guess sound. Just judging from a couple of little things that I recognize in it. I don't really remember for some reason. And I can't remember the reason why exactly. Roger didn't want to sing it and I didn't really want to sing it. And Roy was making an album in the other. In another room in number two or something. We were. Maybe. We were in. We were in number three at Abbey Road. There's three big rooms there. Number one is like an aircraft hanging. And Roy was Often, like us wasted in his time and would come into our studio and pass comments on what we were doing and where we were going. He's a. An old, old friend and I think he was there at a moment when all of us were arguing or someone was. Was saying, david, you do it, and something. Roger saying, I don't want to do it. I was saying, I'm not sure I want to do it, you know. And Roy said, well, I'll do it. This is my memory. Of course, there are many different. My memory is. Roy piped up and said, well, I'll sing it. And we said, ah, okay. Yeah, I think Roy's version of it's great.
- [27:29]
Robin Hilton
You mentioned welcome to the Machine. There is an early demo of that on here as well, included on the album. It's called the Machine Song.
- [27:37]
David Gilmour
Welcome, my son.
- [27:41]
Robin Hilton
Welcome.
- [28:05]
David Gilmour
I don't think it's all Roger's home demo. It's a long time ago. Yeah. A lot of an old person's memory.
- [28:15]
Robin Hilton
Well, one of the things that was interesting is somewhere near the end is a little bit of guitar soloing. It's kind of buried in it. But it sounds like you're using the Talk Box, which I don't really think of appearing in your work until Animals quite.
- [28:30]
David Gilmour
When the Talk box arrived, my sort of music, musical vocabulary, I. I can't remember at all. But there was quite a bit of it on. On. On Animals, which is the couple of years after this. I might well have had it around, but I just. I don't remember. I mean, I'll. I'll have a listen to this demo again and see what if I can hear it.
- [28:50]
Robin Hilton
You want me to play it?
- [28:51]
David Gilmour
Yeah, sure. Yes, I hear it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No memory of doing it. Can't help with why it's on there. Not on the final one.
- [29:19]
Robin Hilton
That's.
- [29:19]
David Gilmour
It sounds like it's me playing.
- [29:21]
Robin Hilton
Yeah, well, that's the thing that's so cool about hearing some of these demos and alternate takes is that you get to kind of be a fly on the wall and hear you stretching and pushing in different directions and trying different things out. One of the things that. Well, there are lots of things that I think are super distinctive about the way that you play and that I've always loved. But one of the things that I really love is your use of space in your soloing.
- [29:52]
David Gilmour
I just don't really think about it. I've got a. There's a music going on, you know, it's hopefully lovely music and hopefully just that music that you're listening to. Maybe it's something you wrote, like Comfortably Numb in my case, or Wish you were here, you know, where you inspire yourself. The thing that you've composed inspires you a little bit, and you just have a go. I don't pre think things very often, not trying to work out what would be new and excitingly different. I just. I'm just hunting for an emotion in the moment. And, you know, I'm not that fast on the guitar, so I. I don't want to be going. Even if I could, I don't think I'd be wanting to go that much faster than I can.
- [30:35]
Robin Hilton
Well, you've got a fastball ready if you. If you need it. I've heard it.
- [30:39]
David Gilmour
I don't know, I'm just looking for a tune, you know, to stick a tune on top of the bed that's been made there. Something that is a melody and has a melodic form and thought.
- [30:51]
Robin Hilton
Yeah, melodies always seemed really important to you. I mean, I've noticed even when you play live, like on a song like Comfortably Numb, you mentioned. And going back to the Luck and Strange concerts, you did that song on the tour and for the new live album, it has this instantly recognizable melody that feels like it was very composed for the album. And you are playing it live as you wrote it for the album.
- [31:30]
David Gilmour
Well, yeah, I've got a. I've got a start point for the soul of Company now, but that was just what came out on one particular day in 1979 south of France. And I use that as my liftoff moment. So, you know, I pretty well always do the same thing for the first half a dozen bars.
- [31:51]
Robin Hilton
Yeah.
- [31:52]
David Gilmour
Then I'll either fall into some routines that are familiar or, depending on how brave and weird I'm feeling, you know, move off into other directions a little bit from time to time and then come back. It is what I love. It is what I've spent my whole life doing. I was. I started out playing music in bands when I was 16, 17, and I've never stopped. And the writing thing gradually came on me creating my own pieces of music until I realized, you know, I had got a knack for a nice tune once in a while. What can I do, you know, just follow. Follow where I'm led.
- [32:57]
Robin Hilton
So that's guitarist and singer David Gilmore Talking about the 50th anniversary of the Pink Floyd album Wish youh Were Here, and about all his latest solo work, Luck and Strange, the concert film. It's out now. The live album is due out October 17th. The 50th anniversary edition of Wish youh Were Here is not out for a while. It's not out until December 12th. But there are a handful of cuts from it out now that you can listen to. If you'd like to revisit parts of this conversation, you'll find edited highlights on our website, npr.org allsongs and for NPR Music, I'm Robin Hilton. It's ALLSONS Considered.
- [33:52]
David Gilmour
Sa it.
- [34:57]
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- [35:26]
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