In a new interview, the Pink Floyd guitarist reveals he no longer wants to perform songs from the Roger Waters era of the band
David Gilmour is planning to promote his upcoming solo album, Luck and Strange, with a rare tour. Just don’t show up expecting to hear Pink Floyd hits like “Wish You Were Here,” “Comfortably Numb,” or “Money.” In a new interview with Uncut, Gilmour said he has an “unwillingness to revisit the Pink Floyd of the Seventies” and would rather focus the set around his new album and other periods of Floyd’s history.
“[Other decades] might be better represented,” he said. “I mean, at least one from the Sixties. The one we’ve done in the past is 1967’s ‘Astronomy.’ That’s always entertaining and fun and gets people off to a happy start. There’s songs from [1987’s] A Momentary Lapse of Reason and [1994’s] The Division Bell albums. I mean, I think ‘High Hopes’ is as good as anything we ever did at any time.”
Gilmour didn’t articulate a reason for omitting material from Pink Floyd’s most successful decade, when they released beloved albums like The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, and The Wall, but it could be related to his estranged bandmate Roger Waters largely controlling the band at that time. They’ve had a volatile relationship for decades, to put it mildly, but things reached a new low in February 2023, when Polly Samson, Gilmour’s wife and longtime lyricist, blasted Waters on Twitter.
“Sadly @rogerwaters you are antisemitic to your rotten core,” she wrote. “Also a Putin apologist and a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching, misogynistic, sick-with-envy, megalomaniac. Enough of your nonsense.” Gilmour shared the Tweet, adding “Every word demonstrably true.”
Waters fired back during a show at London’s 02 Arena. “There’s a lady who lives, I think, somewhere in London tweeting appalling things about me,” he told the audience. “She talked about me being an antisemite to my rotten core, and I was really upset. It may have been contributory to the whole enthusiasm the Israeli lobby has developed since that time to have me wiped off the face of the Earth … All I have to say about Polly Samson is imagine waking up to that every morning. Come on! You can do better than that.”
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Waters has toured heavily over the past 25 years, but Gilmour’s only solo tours since Pink Floyd quietly dissolved in 1994 took place in 2006 and 2015-16. On the final two legs of the last tour, he replaced the majority of his backing band with new players.
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“I changed the band around last time for a number of reasons, one of which was it was all too robotic, and some people would have been better off in a Pink Floyd tribute band,” Gilmour told Uncut. “So I thought we’d get people who are genuinely creative and give them a little more space. That’s the plan. So we’re going to have some of the younger guys alongside [longtime bassist] Guy [Pratt] and the Webb Sisters, who sang with Leonard Cohen on his last tours.”
There’s no word on when Gilmour plans on launching his Luck and Strange tour. It’s quite possible he’ll change his mind by opening night and decide he simply can’t get away with skipping “Comfortably Numb,” which has been the climax of basically every solo gig he’s ever played, but that’s far from a safe bet. He’s spent quite a number of years “revisiting the Pink Floyd of the Seventies.” He’s ready to move on.
