DAVID GILMOUR INTERVIEW



QUESTION: Can you tell me just a little bit, I guess coming from Cambridge,  what first got you interested in, 
in music?

DAVID GILMOUR: It's very hard to remember. I think the first sort of rock  'n' roll thing that turned me on 
was Bill Haley and the Comets with his  "Rock Around the Clock" when I was ten years old, in 1956. But I was 
very  much into blues music like Lead Belly and all that stuff, and also folk  music. In fact, I started playing 
guitar with a Pete Seeger guitar tutor  record. That's where it all came from.

QUESTION: Tell us about "Dark Side of the Moon." How did that begin? Who  created the album?

DAVID GILMOUR: "Dark Side of the Moon"? It began in a little rehearsal room  in London. We had quite a 
few pieces of music, some of which were left over  from previous things. The "On the Run" sequence came in at 
the very last  minute when we were nearly finished recording. We replaced another "On the  Run" sequence 
which was more of a guitar jam thing, and the little  synthesizer piece came along when the synthesizer arrived 
(LAUGHS). Someone  turned up with a synthesizer and showed us how to work it, and that came  from that. 
The rest of it, like I say, we were in a rehearsal room and at  some point during the proceedings, I don't 
remember exactly when it was,  Roger came up with the idea of making it a piece about madness and all the  
other things that it's about. We did have it fairly completed a long time  before we recorded it and in fact, 
performed it live in America and in  England under the title "Eclipse" long before the record came out...long  
before it was all recorded.

QUESTION: Where did you record it?

DAVID GILMOUR: It was done at Abbey Road Studios, mostly.

QUESTION: Can you give me an idea of the roles that were being played in  the recording studio? What were, 
perhaps, Roger's strong points that he  brought to a song, and what things do you believe you brought to it?

DAVID GILMOUR: I think I tend to bring musicality and melodies. Roger was  certainly a very good motivator 
and obviously a great lyricist. He was much  more ruthless about musical ideas, where he'd be happy to lose 
something if  it was for the greater good of making the whole album work. So, you know,  Roger'd be happy to 
make a lovely sounding piece of music disappear into  radio sound if it was benefiting the whole piece. 
Whereas, I would tend to  want to retain the beauty of that music. We often had long bitter arguments  about 
these things.

QUESTION: Do you, do you remember writing "Run Like Hell"?

DAVID GILMOUR: I had the music for "Run Like Hell," I guess in 1978 or  something. It was one of two 
pieces that I put in into "The Wall." Bob  Ezrin was very keen that we should put them in. He liked them and 
we worked  on them, and Roger wrote words for them. But it's hard to decipher from the  very original demo. 
There wasn't an awful lot to it. There was just one  guitar plunking away and that became the body of the song.

QUESTION: What about those voices in "Dark Side of the Moon"?

DAVID GILMOUR: Again, this is Roger's idea. He wanted to use things in the  songs to get responses from 
people. We wrote a series of questions on cards  and put them on a music stand, one question on each card, and 
got people  into the studio and told them to read the first question and answer it.  Then they could remove that 
card and see the next question and answer that,  but they couldn't look through the cards so they didn't really 
know what  the thread of the questions was going to be until they got into it. We  interviewed quite a few people 
that way, mostly roadies and roadies'  girlfriends, and Jerry the Irish doorman at Abbey Road. But we also  
interviewed Henry McCullough 'cause Paul McCartney and Wings were recording  in the other studio at Abbey 
Road at the time. We did that in number three  at Abbey Road, and they were in number two. We also had Paul 
and Linda  McCartney interviewed but they're much too good at being evasive for their  answers to be usable.


QUESTION: What were some of the questions?

DAVID GILMOUR: Things like, "When did you last hit someone?" and then the  next question would be 
"Were you in the right?" and "Would you do it again  if the same thing happened?" Another question like, 
"What does the dark  side of the moon mean to you?" Of course, understanding that the "Dark Side  of the 
Moon" was not yet the title of the album as far as anyone was  concerned. So they were actually asking people, 
what does the other side of  the moon mean? And Jerry the Irish doorman said, "There is no da'k side o'  de 
moon really, it's all da'k." And stuff like that, when you put it into a  context on the record, suddenly developed 
its own much more powerful  meaning.

QUESTION: Were you happy with that?

DAVID GILMOUR: Oh that was a terrific thing to do! I mean, we've still got  the original tapes somewhere 
and we should dig them out and have a listen  to them one day just for fun to hear all the different responses to 
all the  different questions by all these different people.

QUESTION: "Dark Side of the Moon" went on to become, what is it now, like  the fourth biggest selling album 
of all time? Does this boggle your mind?

DAVID GILMOUR: Yep, yep. Constantly.

QUESTION: What sort of effect did that success have on your subsequent  work?

DAVID GILMOUR: It was kind of immediate, but nothing like the proportion  it's achieved now. It came out in 
March '73, and by early '74 we were  starting to work on the next album. By then, it had been a monster success  
as far as we were concerned. But I don't know quite how many it sold, but  certainly nothing like what it's done 
today 'cause it has been selling sort  of fairly copiously ever since. But it does put you in a position of having  to 
rethink what you're in it for, because you have suddenly achieved all  your goals in that...in your career if you 
like. I mean, all your childhood  dreams of pop-star success...suddenly you've got them all and it's done and  so 
you're sort of left wondering, well..."What do I do now?" And I guess  that is largely what the theme of the 
"Wish You Were Here" was about. It  was about us coming to terms with our success and the fulfilment of all  
those dreams and working out what we were actually in it for. And I have to  say that my conclusion is, I'm in it 
for the music more than anything else.  There are a lot of other things that I'm in it for as well, or was in it  for 
and to some extent still am, but I think the music is still the prime  motivator.

QUESTION: A lot of people say the music in the 70s was too safe. What is  your opinion on that?

DAVID GILMOUR: Music in the 70s was too safe. Punk was in the 70s, the Sex  Pistols, they were played 
pretty safe, you know. Lots of people say that it  was all crap in the 70s. Fleetwood Mac put out "Rumors," and 
we put out  "Dark Side of the Moon," and "The Wall," in the 70s, and I think the  criticism of the 70s followed 
after the euphoria of the 60s, where people  were saying how wonderfully new and exciting a lot of it was. I 
don't think  people who criticize the 70s really have looked at the great stuff that  came out. The Eagles put out 
really good records in the 70s.

QUESTION: What did you think of Punk when it came out?

DAVID GILMOUR: I thought it was quite lively. I don't think it's had a  particularly lasting significance...it 
wasn't the first time it happened,  either. I mean, people being incredibly rude and playing music incredibly  
badly and being incredibly obnoxious has always been a teenage sort of  thing.

QUESTION: You're very well known for your stage show. How do you feel about  the theatrics of Rock 'n' Roll 
in terms of what you've done?



DAVID GILMOUR: I suppose what we try to do in our live performances is  create an environment for a whole 
evening which includes the audience,  rather than being in front of them and them being out there. We like to  
surround them with sound, with our quadraphonic system, which the band had  before I joined in '67. We tend 
not to have support acts and we run a tape  of noises and sound effects to try and get people in the right mood 
for a  whole evening. So we create an environment which only includes us on the  periphery. That's what we're 
trying' to do.

QUESTION: A few final questions: If rock 'n roll were a car, what car would  it be?

DAVID GILMOUR: It would be one of those post insurance wreck ones which is  joined together after two or 
three old wrecks and welded together and fun  to drive on a Saturday night.

QUESTION: When you first saw or heard Elvis Presley, what'd you think?

DAVID GILMOUR: Absolutely brilliant! I mean, my first, first record I ever  bought was "Rock Around The 
Clock," Bill Haley. The second was "Jailhouse  Rock." Elvis, in his very early years, was staggering. He went 
down hill a  little bit...I suppose, under the influence of the good colonel. I don't  know what went wrong, but it 
certainly did.

QUESTION: Do you think Rock 'n Roll has changed the world?

DAVID GILMOUR: I'm sure it has a little bit. I'm sure we all get very high  faluten ideas about how much it's 
changed the world. Certainly, in early  60s. I don't know what you wanna describe as Rock 'n' Roll, but I 
certainly  thought that 60s stuff, Bob Dylan and the Beatles, changed the world a  little bit. But the effect seems 
to have retreated. I think it's harder  than we think to change the world. These things go in cycles. It doesn't  
seem to have done an awful lot of good, does it? You know, all the talk of  racial harmony and equality in the 
world...we haven't got a long way since  the 60s.



               (c) TLV & T & WBDTD 1995 All rights reserved