David Gilmour
@ David Gilmour
David Jon Gilmour, CBE was born on 6th March 1946 in Cambridge, England, the second child of Douglas Gilmour, a senior lecturer in Zoology at the University and Sylvia, a teacher. Best known as guitarist, vocalist and writer with Pink Floyd, he is also renowned for his solo work and collaborations with other artists including Kate Bush, Paul McCartney,
and Pete Townshend.
David Gilmour and Roger 'Syd' Barrett met as children in Cambridge and later, whilst studying at the Cambridgeshire College of Arts and Technology, began playing guitar together. In 1965 they spent a summer hitchhiking and busking around the South of France before Syd joined Roger Waters, Nick Mason and Rick Wright to form Pink Floyd, and David continued playing with his own band Jokers Wild, subsequently touring Europe with Flowers, and later Bullitt.
David was asked to augment the Pink Floyd line up as the singer and guitarist in 1967, only for Syd to leave the group five gigs later, struggling with mental illness.
David's guitar playing and song writing became major factors of Pink Floyd's worldwide success during the 1970s, including his distinctive vocals and guitar playing on Dark Side Of The Moon, the third most successful album of all time.
As a side project, David released his first solo album David Gilmour in 1978. Featuring Rick Wills on bass and Willie Wilson on drums & percussion, the album charted in the UK and the US.
David's second solo album About Face was released in 1984, again hitting the Top 20 in the UK.
David assumed control of Pink Floyd in 1985, after Roger Waters' departure, creating the new Floyd album A Momentary Lapse of Reason with Nick Mason and Rick Wright. The Division Bell followed in 1994. Both albums charted at number one on both sides of the Atlantic and were supported by sell-out world tours. A live album and video, Pulse, followed in 1995. In 1996, Pink Floyd were inducted into the US Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, followed by the same honour in the UK in November 2005; in 2005 David Gilmour was made a CBE for services to music.
In July 2005, Pink Floyd reunited with Roger Waters for a one-off performance at Live 8 in London's Hyde Park, which was regarded by many as the highlight of an astonishing show.
In 2002, following a concert for Robert Wyatt's Meltdown Festival, three semi acoustic concerts were performed by David Gilmour and friends at London's Royal Festival Hall, with one critic remarking that a "reinvented rock god shines on as 21st century folk hero".
In 2003, David donated the £3.6 million proceeds of the sale of his London house to Crisis, the charity for the homeless of which he is a vice-president.
David Gilmour's position in the canon of rock guitar players can be construed from his headline billing at the 2004 Wembley concert celebrating 50 years of the Fender Stratocaster guitar. He was also voted 'Best Fender Guitar Player Ever' in a poll in Guitarist magazine, beating such greats as Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton.
On 6th March 2006, David released his third solo album, On An Island, which entered the UK Charts at Number One, subsequently hitting the top position in the pan-European Charts, as well as hitting multi-Platinum around the world, including countries as diverse as Canada and Poland.
On An Island was accompanied by tour dates in the US and Europe, performed by a stellar list of musicians including Pink Floyd's Richard Wright, Roxy Music's Phil Manzanera, and regular Floyd musicians Dick Parry, Guy Pratt, and Jon Carin.
Summer concerts in Europe included a one-off performance in front of 50,000 in Gdańsk's historic dockyards, featuring a 40-piece orchestra conducted by noted Polish composer Zbigniew Preisner, who had written the orchestrations for the On An Island album.
The live show at London's Royal Albert Hall was filmed in High Definition by award-winning director David Mallet for a DVD, planned for release in 2007. =>>>>>>>>>>>
David Gilmour @ You Tube
David Gilmour - On An Island @ You Tube
David Jon Gilmour CBE (born March 6, 1946 in Cambridge) is an English guitarist, singer, and songwriter best known as a member of the band Pink Floyd. In addition to his work with Pink Floyd, Gilmour has also worked as a record producer for a variety of artists. Gilmour has been very active in many charity organizations over the course of his career. In 2003, he was appointed CBE for this work. Gilmour was also voted No. 1 in Fender's Greatest Players poll in the February 2006 issue of Guitarist (UK) magazine.
Early life
Gilmour was born and grew up in the affluent Grantchester Meadows area of Cambridge, England. His father, Douglas Gilmour, was a senior lecturer in zoology at the University of Cambridge and his mother, Sylvia, was a teacher.
Gilmour attended The Perse School on Hills Road, Cambridge, and met future Pink Floyd bandmate Syd Barrett who attended Cambridgeshire High School for Boys, also situated on Hills Road. He took modern languages A-Levels, and along with Syd, he spent his lunchtimes learning to play the guitar. They were not bandmates however, and Gilmour started playing in the band Joker's Wild in 1963. Gilmour left Joker's Wild in 1966 and busked around Spain and France with some friends. They weren't particularly successful, living a hand-to-mouth existence. Indeed, Gilmour ended up in hospital being treated for malnutrition, as he confirmed in an interview with Nicky Horne on BBC radio in July of 1992. In 1967, they returned to England, driving a van with fuel stolen from a building site in France.
Pink Floyd
Gilmour was asked to join Pink Floyd late 1967 making Pink Floyd briefly a five-piece. He was used to fill in for Barrett's guitar parts when the front man was unable to take a consistent part in Floyd's live performances. When Syd Barrett "left" the group (when the band chose not to pick him up one night for a gig due to his increasingly LSD-induced unresponsive behaviour on stage), Gilmour by default assumed the role of the band's lead guitarist and shared lead vocal duties with Roger Waters and Richard Wright in Barrett's stead. Gilmour's guitar playing and song writing became major factors of Pink Floyd's world-wide success during the 1970s.[citation needed] However, after the back-to-back successes of first Dark Side of the Moon and then Wish You Were Here, Waters took more and more control over the band, writing most of Animals and The Wall by himself. Wright was fired during The Wall sessions and the relationship between Gilmour and Waters would further deteriorate during the making of The Wall film and the 1983 Pink Floyd album The Final Cut.
In 1985, Waters declared that "as far as he was concerned Pink Floyd was over". However, in 1986, Gilmour and drummer Nick Mason issued a press release saying that Waters had quit the band and they intended to continue on without Waters. Gilmour assumed full control of the group and created A Momentary Lapse of Reason in 1987 with some contributions from Mason. Wright rejoined the band for a lengthy world tour and helped create 1994's The Division Bell as well. Gilmour explained:
“I had a number of problems with the direction of the band in our recent past, before Roger left. I thought the songs were very wordy and that, because the specific meanings of those words were so important, the music became a mere vehicle for lyrics, and not a very inspiring one... Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here were so successful not just because of Roger's contributions, but also because there was a better balance between the music and the lyrics than there has been in more recent albums. That's what I'm trying to do with A Momentary Lapse of Reason; more focus on the music, restore the balance. ”
In 1986, Gilmour purchased the houseboat Astoria which is moored on the River Thames near Hampton Court, and transformed it into a recording studio. The majority of the two most recent Pink Floyd albums and Gilmour's 2006 solo release, On An Island, were recorded there.
On July 2, 2005, Gilmour played with Pink Floyd — including Roger Waters — at Live 8. The performance caused a temporary 1,343% sales increase of Pink Floyd's album Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd.[citation needed] As a result, Gilmour vowed to donate all of his resulting profits to charities that reflect the goals of Live 8 saying:
“Though the main objective has been to raise consciousness and put pressure on the G8 leaders, I will not profit from the concert. This is money that should be used to save lives. ”
Shortly after, he also called upon all artists experiencing a surge in sales from Live 8 performances to donate the extra revenue to Live 8 fundraising.
On February 3, 2006, he announced in an interview with the Italian newspaper La Repubblica that Pink Floyd would most likely never tour or write material together again. He said:
“I think enough is enough. I am 60 years old. I don't have the will to work as much anymore. Pink Floyd was an important part in my life, I have had a wonderful time, but it's over. For me it's much less complicated to work alone. ”
He said that by agreeing to Live 8, he had ensured the story of Floyd would not end on a sour note.
“There was more than one reason, firstly to support the cause. The second one is the energy consuming an uncomfortable relationship between Roger and me that I was carrying along in my heart. That is why we wanted to perform and to leave the trash behind. Thirdly I might have regretted it if I declined. ”
On February 20, 2006, Gilmour changed his stance on Pink Floyd's future when interviewed by Billboard.com stating "Who knows? I have no plans at all to do that. My plans are to do my concerts and put my [solo] record out." The tone of that statement seems to imply that either he has not ruled out any more one-off gigs or a farewell concert. Also 2007 will mark the 40th anniversary of Pink Floyd as a professional recording and touring band and reports are out that some big occasion will go down to celebrate Pink Floyd's 40th anniversary although as things stand there are no plans to reactivate Pink Floyd at the moment.
In December 2006, Gilmour released a tribute to Syd Barrett, who had died in July of that year, in the form of his own version of Floyd's first single "Arnold Layne". Recorded live at London's Royal Albert Hall, the CD single featured versions of the song performed by Floyd keyboardist (and Gilmour band member) Richard Wright and special guest artist David Bowie. =>>>>>>>>>>>
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