Classic Rock Presents…Prog presents this archive David Gilmour interview!

David Gilmour

Why are you releasing a live version of ‘The Wall’ now?
Well, there’s been a lot of fan interest. And the tapes have been sitting there for all these years. We didn’t, at the time, want to bring out another album – I don’t think the record company would have let us bring out another album in competition with the original studio album.

But life moves on, we were making ‘The Wall’ film, we were making ‘The Final Cut’, Roger’s leaving, and we’re continuing Pink Floyd without him…

Life goes on and that kind of stuff gets forgotten about because it’s not right at the forefront of what’s important. We listened to one or two of the tapes at the time when we were making ‘The Wall’ film because we were going to use some of the live tracks in the film instead of the studio versions – which we did, in fact. The band was very tight, it was really good exciting stuff and we had it all properly recorded on multi-track analogue recorders.

And it’s always been sitting there waiting to be put out. It’s now got to the point where everyone agrees it’s a good idea to do it and wants it, so it’s finally being done.

How major were those shows for you? Did it feel big?
It did. It was kind of iconic wasn’t it? A fantastic thing, this bloody great wall onstage. We knew when we were making it that it was a great record, and that it would make a fantastic show.

What are your memories of the shows themselves?
Hard work. Very, very technically demanding. At the beginning, I had great piles of cue sheets hanging over my amps because every different song needed different settings for four different people on the stage. There were a number of different cueing systems, I had to have a click coming up through my monitor speaker and I was having to make sure that everyone on the stage knew when to do what.

At the beginning and end of every number everyone was looking at me waiting for their next cue. To be a musician, a guitar player, a singer and to keep ahead of all that technology was not an easy job. My memory is of being nervous and hoping that everything would go right. But I loved the shows.

What was it like appearing on top of the wall for ‘Comfortably Numb’?
What do you think? Fantastic. The whole audience is down there focussing on Roger and suddenly this goes on. I was sitting up there already in the pitch black and I could see everything going on looking down over them. When I opened my mouth to start singing and the lights hit the whole audience gasps upwards going, “ooh!”. It was fantastic.

The making of ‘The Wall’ wasn’t the most comfortable of times.
No, it was fine. There’s a lot of misconception about the start of major hostilities between myself and Roger. We had a highly productive working relationship that operated pretty well through ‘The Wall’. There were some pretty major arguments, but they were arguments on artistic disagreements. The intention behind ‘The Wall’ was to make the best record we could.

Roger talks of a power struggle from ‘Wish You Were Here’ onwards between yourself and him?
That’s life. There was a power struggle all the way through. It had been going on for years. Roger wanted to be the leader and the boss and in charge – which he, de facto, was. But that didn’t prevent me, who did not want to be the leader, from thinking that I had a better knowledge or music sense in musical terms, than he did. A better musical judgement.

So my side of the supposed power struggle was to stubbornly try to cling on to certain musical values through all of this. But it certainly didn’t become an unworkable relationship. Rick’s relationship with all of us, but certainly Roger, did become impossible during the making of ‘The Wall’.

Roger claims you suggested that Floyd should also drop Nick when Rick was fired – true?
Roger and I had lots of discussions because we used to drive to the studio together in France. Rick had been asked if he had any ideas or if there was anything that he wanted to do. We would leave in the evening and he basically had the whole night to come up with stuff, but I think he was going through some other traumas throughout his life at the time and he didn’t contribute anything really, just sat there and drove us fairly mad. Nick was working very hard. He learnt how to read drum music and was putting down the tracks with Bob Ezrin and doing a very good job. Nick has his limitations as a drummer. Roger says that, but I don’t have any memory of that apart from joking about off-loading and getting away with it.

I can remember driving with Roger one day towards the end of our time in France and he said to me “God, we must never stop working together, we make a great team.” And I can remember being in Ireland in our break period between finishing in France and going to Los Angeles a month later, I was in Dublin and I phoned Roger because I’d heard he was throwing Rick out of the band. I called him from a phone box in Chapel-Lizard, just outside Dublin, because the flat I was staying in didn’t have a phone, having this conversation about throwing Rick out the band and me saying “You can’t do that. He’s been in the band all the way along. If you don’t like it your choice is to leave, it isn’t to throw someone out.” I said “You’re letting this get very persona aren’t you?” I won’t quote what he said.

Later, in Los Angeles, Rick asked me to go out for a drink. He said, “What do you think about all this?” and I replied, “Well, you haven’t pulled your finger out at all, you haven’t really done anything to say why you should stay within this band. You’re a founder member of it and as far as I’m concerned it’s sacrosanct for you to stay in it as long as you want to be in it, but you have to make up your own mind about this.” He said “Do you still want me to be in the band?” I said, “Not particularly, because you’re not doing anything, but I’ll support your right to be in it till the end.” I was never a part of a movement to throw Rick out, or Nick. It’s not my position.

So there was no rift between you and Roger during ‘The Wall’?
I can tell you categorically that’s not true. We had arguments, the worst of which was about ‘Comfortably Numb’. There was one version, just a drums and bass backing track that Roger and Bob really liked. I thought it was too loose, too sloppy. We did another one, done to the same click track and guide track and I thought it was better. Roger and Bob had dug their heels in and didn’t think it was as good. We argued about this. All these tapes went off to Los Angeles and we went out and had dinner in an Italian restaurant. Me, Bob Ezrin and Roger shouted at each other all night about this fucking stupid point that I don’t think I could tell the difference about today. We would up making some feeble compromise. You get over-obsessed by ridiculous things at times. It was quite a major argument we had over that. But the point where Roger and my relationship became unworkable was during the making of ‘The Wall’ film, some considerable time later.

What happened there?
That was due to Alan Parker and Roger rowing so badly during the making of the film that Alan Parker walked out. We had to persuade Alan Parker to come back onto it, there was very big money invested in this thing, and as the entire film company worked at Pinewood they were going to remain loyal to Alan Parker because he’s a film maker, not to Roger Waters.

In my view then, and now, it wasn’t workable. We had to go through this ridiculous power thing which I suspect Roger Waters has never forgiven me for. It became really unworkable and then with the making of ‘The Final Cut’ the relationship deteriorated entirely.

What do you think of the film?
Well, really the film is the least successful of the three ways of telling that particular story; the album and the shows are the other two. Roger might have been right in as much as it wasn’t going as well as it should have done but that doesn’t alter the fact that it was unworkable to stop it and for Roger to take over the making of the rest of the film.

Did you have more to offer ‘The Final Cut’ than Roger would allow you to put into it?
Um, Roger thought that the opinions that I expressed about some of the material were driven by something other than musical integrity. He felt that I was just being obstructive to what he wanted to do.

My view of it is that, as always, my views on what should and should not be done were for what was the best for the making of a record. At the same time, there were all sorts of arguments over political issues – the Falklands War. Roger was a pacifist and I didn’t share his political views. But I never, never wanted to stand in the way of him expressing his story of ‘The Final Cut’ or any other album, I just didn’t think some of the music was up to it

What do you think of ‘The Final Cut’ now?
Troll out the usual answer – three great tracks, the rest of it not so great.

Which are the three tracks you like?
‘The Final Cut’, ‘The Fletcher Memorial Home’ and , um… I can’t remember now. It’s been a long time since I listened to it. There’s two of them anyway.

What happened when Roger quit?
He sent a letter to the record company. Ever since the end of ‘The Final Cut’, Roger had been saying, ‘Let’s call it a day. Let’s pack it in, and say we’ve had a jolly good run, fantastic.” And I’d say “I don’t wanna pack it in, I haven’t had enough.” He went on like this, getting more and more frustrated and we would discuss different scenarios. He said , “You’ll never fucking get it together to make a record.” And I said, “We will make a record, we’ll do something.” He said, “Well, I’m not leaving, I will just sit at the back of the studio and criticise,” and stuff like that. But my absolutely consistent response was that I was not prepared to quit. I think he got so frustrated with my stubbornness he decided to see if he could force the issue by sending this notice of resignation to the record companies. What you do when you do that is that you invoke the leaving members clause which is what allows you to take up a solo artist’s career under a section of the same record contract.

Frankly, for the rest of us, having him leave was a relief. It meant that we could get on with plans. That was impossible with Roger sort of in it and sort of not. He could have held us off from doing anything for years simply by saying he wasn’t leaving.

This must have been a particularly hard time for you?
Well, the start of the work on ‘A Momentary Lapse Of Reason’ was, because the phone would be going every five minutes with this lawyer and that lawyer wanting to know this and that. It was very tricky. With Nick, there was a period from the end of ‘The Wall’ to ‘The Final Cut’ where he was very dispirited. We were all made to feel like very value-less people and that affected Nick and Rick, who wasn’t even in it then to a very major degree. They were practically catatonic and unable to take much part in the start of recording, so it was damn hard work starting to put all that stuff together, which we did mostly with computers and sequencers on the boat.

In fact, when we got to Los Angeles to do drums, it was fantastic because office hours are not even in sync, so the lawyers couldn’t call in the middle of recording unless they were calling in the middle of the night.

At what point did you decide to bring Rick back into the fold?
I might have some trouble with the time scale, but I was in Greece before we even started and I think I had a visit from Rick’s then wife saying “I hear you’re starting a new album, please, please, please can Rick be a part if it?” I left it for a while during the early part of the recording before I asked him to come down because I wanted to be sure that I knew what I was doing before I got anyone’s hopes too high. The first month was just me and Ezrin mucking about with a lot of demos. It was really only at Christmas of ’86 that I realised that it was going to work.

What was it like for you, as reluctant leader, to take that role?
Difficult, you know? It’s tough not having Roger there to talk to, to say shall we do this or this? I had Bob Ezrin there who’d taken a large part in ‘The Wall’ album – but it was a slow process. Each day you’d do something that sounded good it would build your confidence.

How pleased are you with ‘A Momentary Lapse Of Reason’?
It’s got some really good stuff on it. I like it. When we started the rehearsals, I’d got these extra guys in. A keyboard player to do Rick and another drummer largely to do Nick. On tour, it was such fun. Even through the rehearsals they needed that support. There was a point in the first two months of the tour where suddenly Rick and Nick, with a lot of praise and stuff, started getting back their confidence, and the second drummer could become a percussion player again. There were some moments where it really became apparent that this was turning back into something good.

I remember you looking emphatically pleased at the end of the Wembley show in August 1987.
It’s understandable. The press and everything we were doing, even within our own management and record company there was not a huge amount of confidence that we would be able to achieve what we did achieve. And it did give us that feeling that we had succeeded in something that was an enormous amount of work. I’m very pleased with it, I’m very proud of it.

It’s interesting to note that twice in Floyd’s lifetime the have lost a major member and gone on to even greater commercial success.
It’s justification for their actions and the feeling that everyone’s replaceable, even me! [laughs.]

Why the lack of new Floyd recordings of late, though?
Um, you know, I mean… We like to spend a long time in between things. To be honest, I just don’t know myself what I want to do and I’m afraid the others will just have to wait for me. It’s a bit unfair, but that’s life really.

Do you find it difficult to motivate yourself into a Floyd frame of mind?
It’s quite hard. It’s a lumbering great behemoth to rouse from its torpor. ‘The Division Bell’ was better than ‘A Momentary Lapse…’, and it had Rick and Nick working properly together again, and the jam sessions we did in January ‘93 were fantastic. All that stuff worked out really well.

Maybe that’s proved all I needed to prove, I dunno. I don’t have any hard and fast ideas about it. I haven’t got myself in the mood for doing another one yet. I don’t know if I want to do all that again. Certainly I will make another record, but hat it is, whether it’s Pink Floyd or me, I don’t know.

Why did you ask Roger to perform ‘Dark Side…’ at Earls Court?
I’m not a person who holds deep anger for many years and it would have been a good thing for the fans. There’s a vast different between having to sit in the studio and having someone come on as a guest with a minimum of rehearsal and play a bit of bass and sing. There was the safety cushion of knowing he wouldn’t do it, but it was a genuine offer.

What would you consider your finest achievement with the band?
I’ve got lots. Putting it all back together, making it all work and resurrecting Nick and Rick is what I’m proudest of. There are moments of ‘A Momentary Lapse…’ and ‘The Division Bell’ that I’m just as proud of as anything that went before. Every album that we’ve made since ‘Meddle’ has something to it that makes me very proud and happy to be a part of this.

Check out the Roger Waters portion of this interview.