In 1991, David Gilmour took some time out from Pink Floyd duties to play guitar for the band All About Eve. The collaborations are part of a retrospective release coming out in a couple of weeks, and with much thanks to their singer and keyboard player Julianne Regan, we've got full details of the collaboration, along with an excerpt of David with the band for you to download!

All About Eve - Keepsakes

We asked Julianne how the collaboration with David came about...

"It was some time in around 1989 or so and we were signed to Phonogram / Mercury and had been recording demos for our third album, the rather crassly entitled ‘Touched By Jesus’.
 
Having loved Pink Floyd from about the age of 13 or so, then having bought the albums I’d missed and falling in love with them retrospectively, and being blown away by subsequent album releases, (especially WYWH and Animals) and also being a big fan of David Gilmour’s solo work (specifically songs like ‘I Can’t Breath Anymore’ and ‘No Way Out of Here’, I had the idea that it would be just wonderful if David could produce our third album. And so I wrote a rather nice ‘Dear Mr Gilmour’ letter to him via his management company to accompany a demo tape, but alas, had no reply. (But then he was and still is a very busy man).
 
Some months later, when we were recording our album at a residential studio called Ridge Farm, with Warne Livesey (Midnight Oil, Deacon Blue etc) at the controls, I got a phone call. I did in fact think it was a wind-up when I was told there was a ‘David Gilmour’ on the phone for me.
 
He said that although he was too busy to produce the album, he was in the mode where he was looking to do things that ‘might be fun’ and said that he could ‘easily be persuaded to come and do some playing on a couple of tracks’.
 
I said that that would be fantastic and ‘yes please’.
 
And so, the following week, he turned up with his guitar technician, his Strat and, if I remember correctly, a Galleon Kruger amp. I made him a cup of coffee and died with embarrassment as I shakily handed it to him with the cup rattling in the saucer due to my over-excited puppy demeanour. This was a big deal to me. The band gathered round the large round dining-room table and we had a chat, with us asking very silly ‘fan’ questions about Syd Barrett, Roy Harper, Cessna planes and the like. He was very gracious, friendly and relaxed.
 
He’d said that the two tracks he felt he’d had an affinity with were ’Wishing The Hours Away’ and ‘Are You Lonely?’ and that he’d be happy to have those tracks run at him and he’d improvise over them. And that’s exactly what happened. He set up in the studio space downstairs, while we sat upstairs in the galleried control room and took peeks through the sliding glass doors at him. We couldn’t help ourselves. We were fans!
 
As he got into his stride, and that only took a matter of minutes, he seemed to have such an intuitive handle on the tracks and just dovetailed himself into them.
 
I deeply cringe when I look back, I truly do, when I remember that after one take he said ‘How was that? Was that alright?’, and I had the gauche audacity to say, ‘Yes, that was brilliant, but could you do one that’s maybe a bit more, erm, just a bit more... erm...’? And, gentleman that he was, he put me out of my agony by finishing the sentence I’d left hanging in the air, with ‘a bit more David Gilmour? Yes, sure, no problem.’
 
I think he did about 2 or 3 takes from each song and after he’d left, the producer made a ‘comp’ of the best sections. And there were many to choose from.
 
When I now hear the tracks he played on, they remain, and always will be, my two favourite songs from that album. He added a subtle majesty to them, and added a yearning and pathos to what were already rather emotionally charged songs.
 
What he did to ‘Are You Lonely’ inspired us to take that particular song into Air studios a few weeks later and add a full string orchestra. David Gilmour made it that worthwhile.
 
When Universal / Mercury Records approached me in December 2005 about their releasing a retrospective AAE collection due out in March 2006, I guided them over which tracks from our 4 album career to include and there was no way those two tracks were going to be omitted. I even persuaded them to include our cover of See Emily Play.
 
I am ever grateful for what David Gilmour did for us. He bothered to come and play on a little band’s album. He didn’t have to, there was nothing in it for him other than it was something he felt like doing, and in the process, he made me delighted with, moved by and very proud of those songs forever.
 
I love Pink Floyd and I love David Gilmour and can’t wait to hear his new album. Genius.

Our thanks to Julianne for taking the time to share her memories of her work with David. If you'd like to hear a short excerpt from one of the tracks - Wishing The Hours Away - click here to hear or download it (around 1.3MB in size). There is also a video montage of clips to promote the DVD that will be available with the limited edition of the album Keepsakes. Click here to view it and look for the clip of their previously unreleased version of See Emily Play right at the end.

Our thanks to Julianne for her generous help!

The limited edition double CD and DVD set can be ordered, at time of writing at a discount, through the following special links, for delivery upon release: Amazon US/International, Canada, UK/Europe, France, or Germany.

You can also order the double CD-only set through these links: Amazon US/International, Canada, UK/Europe, France, or Germany.