David Gilmour Biography, Videos & Pictures
David Gilmour Facts
| Name: David Gilmour | Guitars: Fender |
| Born: March 6, 1946 | Amplifiers: Hiwatt |
| Origin: Cambridge, England | |
| Bands: Joker's Wild, Pink Floyd, Solo Artist | |
| Links: Official Website, Personal Blog | |
David Gilmour was born on March 6, 1946, in Cambridge, England. While attending The Perse School, a private secondary school for boys, he met fellow guitar player Syd Barrett. During school lunchtime, Syd and David practiced guitar together. During his time at the school, he also met a bass player named Roger Waters, who attending nearby Cambridgeshire High School.
In 1962, Gilmour began to play the guitar for a band named Joker’s Wild and continued to do so until 1966. At that time Gilmour and some friends left England and supported themselves by busking around Spain and France. The friends barely made a passable living busking, with things getting so bad that Gilmour once stated in an interview that he was treated for malnutrition during this time in his life. Realizing that they could no longer continue living under such conditions, the group stole some fuel from a building site and drove back to England in 1967.
Later the same year, Nick Mason, who was drumming in band called Pink Floyd with Gilmour’s school time friends Syd Barrett and Roger Waters, invited David to join the group. David accepted and shared lead guitar duties with Syd Barett. Pink Floyd was already a successful band, having released their first album, “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn” earlier that year, and Gilmour was promised a salary of 30 pounds a week. Steve O’Rourke, an assistant to the band’s manager, Bryan Morrison, gave Gilmour a room at his house to live in.
David was officially a fifth member of the band, but members of the band secretly considered him as Syd Barrett’s replacement. Tensions with Syd were mounting, and came to a head when the band decided not to pick Syd up while on their way to a show in Southampton . With Syd out of the band, Gilmour became the sole lead guitarist, and shared vocal duties with Roger Waters and keyboard player Richard Wright.
The lineup stayed the same and Pink Floyd enjoyed success, releasing several albums. Their big successes came back to back with the albums “Dark Side of the Moon” and “Wish You Were Here”, released in 1973 and 1975, respectively. After the release of these albums, Roger Waters began to take more control of the band. He wrote most of the next two albums, “Animals” and “The Wall” by himself. Tensions mounted between Waters and and the other members of the band as Waters began to think of himself as the sole writer for the group. Wright was fired during the making of their next album, “The Wall”
Gilmour was also dissatisfied with the amount input that he was being allowed recently on Pink Floyd albums and released a self-titled solo album in 1978. One of the songs that was intended to go on the album, but finished too late to make the cut became “Comfortably Numb” on “The Wall”. Despite Gilmour’s successful contribution to “The Wall”, Pink Floyd’s next album “The Final Cut” was viewed by members of the band as a virtual Roger Waters solo album. Gilmour, still left feeling unfulfilled creatively, released a second solo album, “About Face”.
In 1985, Roger Waters said that Pink Floyd was “a spent force creatively”. In 1986, David Gilmour announced that Waters had left the band and that he was taking control. Waters’ departure cleared the way for Wright to come back and contribute on the next record. Gilmour expressed his goals for that album:
“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.”
Wright re-joined the band full time for the bands final studio album, 1994′s “The Division Bell”. David and Wright both felt that the newest album was the best effort since the 1975 release of “Wish You Were Here”. “Marooned”, a track from the album ,won a Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental Performance.
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