Reviews of David Gilmour live, January 2002
The following reviews are
presented here from various UK newspapers, as not all will keep the
reviews available forever. So in the spirit of archiving, and to enable
you to find all the reviews in one place, they are included here with
the link to the original pages, on the original sites.
David Gilmour - Royal Festival Hall
 Last
week, it was reported David Gilmour had sold his London mansion,
donating the £4m proceeds to the homeless charity Shelter. This news
confirmed the suspicion that Gilmour is the nicest member of Pink
Floyd. Of course, being the nicest member of Pink Floyd is a bit like
being the most skilful football team in Antarctica - you're not exactly
over-burdened by competition.
Plenty of rock bands have
been snooty and aloof, but only Pink Floyd built a wall between
themselves and their fans. Their music made grand moral pronouncements:
war is bad, greed is bad. The grandiose solemnity of their presentation
suggested Pink Floyd thought they were the first people in history to
work out these gleaming philosophical nuggets. Their success proved
anything sounds profound if you dress it up with enough special
effects.
In context, Gilmour's decision to
perform two stripped-down, largely acoustic shows is startling. The
term "stripped-down" is used relatively here: Gilmour performs with a
backing band, a nine-piece choir and special guests including Floyd
keyboardist Richard Wright. But there are no flashy lights, films or
inflatable pigs hovering overhead. By Floyd standards, it's a skiffle
gig in a school hall.
It's also more challenging and
intriguing than anything Pink Floyd have done in decades. Gilmour
performs Shine On You Crazy Diamond solo on acoustic guitar. Condensed,
stripped of its self-consiously epic synthesized noodling, it is gently
affecting in a way Pink Floyd never were: a sad smile rather than a
furrowed brow.
Rendered in similarly stark fashion, Atom Heart Mother's Fat Old Sun is revealed as a fantastic song, rich with melody.
Guest Robert Wyatt, whose voice
could make a Chinese takeaway menu sound heartbreakingly sad, works his
magic on the horrid, self-pitying lyrics of Comfortably Numb. A version
of Syd Barrett's idiosyncratic Dominoes captures the song's curiously
languid menace. A balding man with a paunch, more like an affable
chartered surveyor than one of the richest rock stars in the world,
Gilmour is self-effacing and charming - not adjectives usually
associated with Pink Floyd.
He occasionally fluffs
notes, to the delight of the many balding, paunchy men in the audience.
They go as wild as the sedate environs permit. Every time Gilmour
launches into a solo, lusty male voices shout "Gowaaaaan Dave!" as if
he's about to beat the keeper at Old Trafford.
Roger Waters still carries the
banner for Pink Floyd's pomposity. Adverts for his forthcoming London
Arena dates modestly describe him as "Roger Waters, creative genius".
Meanwhile, Gilmour's unpretentious live show has done something quite
remarkable: uncovered a warmth and humanity in the music of rock's
least lovable megastars.
David Gilmour - LiveReview
Despite Royal Festival Hall
almost being shrouded in the shadow of Battersea Power Station (the
London landmark that appeared on the cover of Pink Floyd's "Animals"
album), there was thankfully no sign of inflatable pigs prior to Pink
Floyd guitarist David Gilmour's solo performance in the city last night
(Jan. 16). Indeed, with the usual distracting paraphernalia synonymous
with Pink Floyd gigs entirely absent, it left nothing but Gilmour's
distinctive vocal and guitar talents in the spotlight.
His decision to play three
nights at the Royal Festival Hall was less then surprising. Gilmour
obviously enjoyed the intimacy of his gig at the venue last June, when
he headlined the Meltdown festival as a guest of Robert Wyatt, the
event's curator and former drummer/vocalist with seminal psychedelic
rockers Soft Machine.
Gilmour looked every inch the
relaxed family man (not too many miles from his West Sussex home) as he
took to the stage, but the reception that met his arrival was one only
a world renowned rock star could dream of expecting. Amongst some
overzealous yells that included "You are God," Gilmour maintained his
relaxed demeanor, calmly playing the opening notes of "Shine on You
Crazy Diamond" on acoustic guitar.
The concert closely mirrored the
Meltdown gig, with Gilmour being joined by a progressively larger
support band that included a choir, cello and double bass, and guests
such as Pink Floyd's Rick Wright. Beautifully performed and extremely
diverse, the set was based on personal choice rather then any desire to
quench the audiences thirst for Pink Floyd's back catalog.
Alongside tracks by early Pink
Floyd leader Syd Barrett and Richard Thompson, there were some
remarkable additions, including a beautiful reading of Bizet's "Je
Crois Entendre Encore" and an extremely bizarre last encore of
"Hushabye Mountain" from the 1970's British film musical "Chitty Chitty
Bang Bang."
Arguably the best, but certainly
the most popular moments, included a new track "Smile," and old Floyd
favorites "Wish You Were Here," "High Hopes," and "Comfortably Numb"
(on which Wyatt provided the vocals to the verses despite not making it
on to the stage).
But the evening's definitive peak
came as the main set closed just as it had begun, with "Shine On You
Crazy Diamond" reprised by the full band and Gilmour on electric
guitar. It offered a powerful juxtaposition and a reminder of just how
unique Pink Floyd were. Gilmour may be uncomfortable with the rock star
tag, but he's going to have to try a lot harder than this to remove it.
Chamber rock and roll
HE has never been the most
prolific of musicians - the last album by his group Pink Floyd was
released eight years ago - but now, at the age of 55, David Gilmour
seems to have invented a whole new genre. Best described as chamber
rock, it's a form of music that uses predominantly acoustic instruments
and vocal harmonies to create a sound that is warm, richly textured and
genuinely different.
Gilmour first presented the
concept at last year's Festival Hall Meltdown season, curated by Robert
Wyatt; now he has reprised it with three shows at the same venue, of
which this was the first. And the experience is best summed up in a
single word: tingly.
The dramatic peaks achieved by
some of Floyd's finest moments may not have been matched, but this was
a show that was about delicacy and understatement rather than bombast
and flashbombs.
Indeed, it began with Gilmour
attempting - and pulling off - a wholly implausible feat: a solo
acoustic version of Shine on You Crazy Diamond. How could that epic
four-note motif possibly come across as anything other than utterly
feeble on an acoustic guitar? And yet what came through was not so much
the motif as the song, stripped down to its essence and laid bare.
Next, and rather less radically,
came Fat Old Sun from the great Atom Heart Mother album (inexplicably
ignored on the recent Echoes - the Best of Pink Floyd compilation), on
which he was joined by the rest of the band: double bass, drums,
acoustic guitar, piano, cello, and a nine-strong vocal ensemble (later,
Gilmour also introduced fellow Floydist Rick Wright on keyboards). The
song's aura of dreamy torpor was perfectly suited to the arrangement.
Among the highlights of what
followed were a gorgeous arrangement of Je crois entendre encore from
Bizet's The Pearl Fishers, and an exquisite Comfortably Numb, with
vocal contributions from Wyatt.
A couple of times when Gilmour
strapped on an electric guitar there were cheers from sections of the
crowd who seemed to be anticipating some kind of rock-out, but they
were missing the point: his Gibson was mostly just another instrument,
another element in the delicately woven tapestry of sound.
Having said that, he did deliver
a piercing solo in A Great Day for Freedom, but overwhelmingly this was
ensemble music of the highest order. And I suspect that it is something
that Gilmour, an endearingly diffident performer who has never looked
truly comfortable in an arena-rock setting, has wanted to do for a very
long time.
Little innovation, but still ready with the surprises
If Pink Floyd's guitarist David
Gilmour should bear more resemblance to a country GP considering
retirement to his holiday home than a fantastically wealthy rock star,
then it's hardly surprising. Quite wonderfully, Gilmour recently sold
his rarely occupied London home for several million pounds (reportedly
to Earl Spencer, no less), and is in the process of donating the whole
whack to a charity for the homeless. But then, he is the man who,
troubled by his good fortune, once admitted to rushing off a few
cheques to good causes each day (which would have made a fine white
blues song - "Woke up this morning, wrote a cheque to charidee..." and
so on.).
Unsurprisingly, he cuts a benign
figure on stage, as he leads a large band, including a nine-piece
choir, none of whom are likely to appear on Pop Idol anytime soon,
through a crowd-pleasing collection of some of his best known works,
and some more recent offerings from the late Floyd catalogue. If
innovation is what you crave, this is not the place.
"Shine on You Crazy Diamond"
bookends the set, the first acoustic version sounding like a man
avoiding his dinner party guests by noodling on an acoustic in the
kitchen until he finds what he's been struggling to place (cue whoops
from the middle-aged crowd), but, overworn by familiarity, much of the
performance, especially the numbers from the Floyd's final album The
Division Bell, are almost parodies of a once innovative style, their
one-time seamless soundscapes now reduced to a set of stylistic tics.
There are a few unexpected
treats. Syd Barrett's "Dominoes", originally pieced together by Gilmour
from some notoriously fragmented sessions, possesses more swing than
the rest of the set put together, its lurching, simple changes still
potent. And Gilmour's plaintive rendition of Bizet's "Je crois entendre
encore" certainly pleases him.
But denuded of the extravagant
stadium staging of the past, songs like "Comfortably Numb" - here
graced with the presence of Sir Bob Geldof, a man of many talents but
none of them musical - and the horrible "High Hopes" have to stand on
their inconsiderable merits. "Wish You Were Here" remains as drably
lovely as ever, enhanced by Gilmour's acoustic soloing, but too often
his patented guitar style does little more than punctuate tunes which
wouldn't even pass muster as soundtracks to tampon adverts these days.
Yet why should any of this
matter? The audience get to see an aged Richard Wright join his old
band mate on organ, while enough of Gilmour's idiosyncratic approach
remains to surprise occasionally - he encores sweetly with "Hushabye
Mountain" from the soundtrack of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Let the old
folks have their fun. It's not as if the sizeable ticket price is going
up anyone's hooters any time soon.
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