BBC Radio 4's "Desert Island Discs"

Transcribed by Brain Damage; please ask permission before posting on other sites. Thanks.

Sue Lawley: My castaway this week is a rock star. In his mid-fifties, wearing jeans and a t-shirt, and an acoustic guitar, he can still pack out the Royal Festival Hall with an intimate, romantic performance. It's all part of the long, enjoyable, downhill run from the height of rock star popularity where he's spent the last three decades.
 
As the lead guitarist and vocal in Pink Floyd he was an integral part of the albums which made the group so famous - Dark Side Of The Moon, and The Wall, which continued to sell millions of copies a year. The son of Cambridge academics, he's never been a "celebrity" showman, but he says: "We made some music that was pretty damn wonderful. In our finest moments, I think we were greater than the sum of our parts". He is: David Gilmour.
 
Long, enjoyable downhill run - that's my phrase, my take on what you do. Is that how it feels?

David Gilmour: Mmm. It's fair enough. I try to make life a little simpler. I don't lust after those huge audiences and that acclaim that I've had about enough of, I think.

Sue Lawley: Enough of? But when you go out there as you have done in the Royal Festival Hall they still come!

David Gilmour: They still come. It's very rewarding, for people to still come and see me, enjoying myself in a slightly different way to the way I've been used to doing...

Sue Lawley: In a totally different way, because when you get out there it's not the big light show, the big spectacular, not the inflatable pigs with enlarged testicles or not, flying over the stage! It's just as I said in the introduction - you, standing there with, quite often, just an acoustic guitar, singing presumably the songs you want to sing?

David Gilmour: Well, there's quite a few others there with me, a little gospel choir, a bassist, a cellist, a few other bits and pieces, but...

Sue Lawley: But there are no flying pigs!

David Gilmour: No flying pigs, nothing in the way of a light show, it's quite quiet and it's been a really lovely experience doing these concerts, the way that I did them.

Sue Lawley: And I wonder if it's more- or less- nerve-racking than when you used to go out there with Pink Floyd, because the difference now is you can see the audience, can't you?

David Gilmour: Yes, it's definately more nerve-racking by a considerable factor. You can see every face, you can see the whites of their eyes, right there in front of you. It's [laughs] much much more nerve-racking!

Sue Lawley: Well, also, you can't make any mistakes, can you?

David Gilmour: Yep. Every sound that you make is very crystal clear, so every wrong 'un that you do is just as crystal clear!

Sue Lawley: But therefore is it more pleasurable? Because the acheivement is that much greater, the test of yourself is that much greater?

David Gilmour: I don't think I could honestly say that it was more pleasurable, than some of the other things that I've done within Pink Floyd, but this is just as enjoyable.

Sue Lawley: But what you're not doing, which a lot of, forgive the phrase, "aging rock stars" do do, is try to recreate what you did before, what you originally became famous for. You don't get Mick Jagger, Rod Stewart, going out there doing the stuff they did before. The market wants it, that's fair enough, but...

David Gilmour: Yes, whatever they want to do, but I sometimes wonder about their motives, with some of these people.

Sue Lawley: What motives are you suspicious of?

David Gilmour: "Love Is A Drug" as they say, and those massive audiences are a drug. And it's very nice to be loved that much. I think a lot of people are kind of addicted...

Sue Lawley: Hooked on their own success? Can't let go?

David Gilmour: Yeah.

Sue Lawley: But you've let go...

David Gilmour: I'm... letting go. You know, the temptations are always still there! [laughs]

Sue Lawley: The market's still there, that's the amazing thing. Let's talk about your first record, that you want to play on your desert island:

David Gilmour: The first record is Waterloo Sunset by The Kinks, and on a lovely warm beach, to listen to this in a "somewhere else" sunset, and missing London, would be a wonderful moment...

-- 1. 'Waterloo Sunset' by The Kinks

Sue Lawley: What you managed to avoid, David Gilmour in Pink Floyd, is the personal. Unlike the Stones, and the Beatles, we never really knew you as individuals, did we? You were the "Pink Floyd". Did you do that on purpose?

David Gilmour: It didn't really start off being on purpose, we just had a huge aversion to having our photographs taken...

Sue Lawley: Why?

David Gilmour: It just seems silly, and we had the chance to put "artistic" sort of things on the fronts of our albums...

Sue Lawley: Like the pig flying above Battersea Power Station or whatever!

David Gilmour: Yes, but...! Much much earlier than that, the first one or two that came out like that, it seemed to work very well for us. We got the best of both worlds, without affecting our own personal lives.

Sue Lawley: But the mood generally, and the image that you conjured up... they were pretty bleak, weren't they? Someone once said that you "became rich by selling alienation, madness, misery and death"!

David Gilmour: Well, all the great artistic themes are pretty hard, pretty miserable...

Sue Lawley: But was that born of you, were you part of that, in the artistic sense, or were you... that mood itself, or were you more interested in the music than the lyrics that created that mood?

David Gilmour: Well, I was more into the music, and Roger certainly got well stuck into the alienation, and he was our lyricist; our best, only lyricist really, after a while.

Sue Lawley: This was Roger Waters?

David Gilmour: Mmm.

Sue Lawley: But I mean DSOTM is very much about madness, and the last three tracks are about paranoia and mental breakdown. Is that something you said "Oh yes, that's good, let's do that!" or did you just play it for the music, or were you committed to the mood? It's difficult to imagine!

David Gilmour: No, we were all committed to the mood, and we all found that melancholy or very down words about madness and alienation, coupled with uplifting music, made a very interesting mix.

Sue Lawley: And that's very much what you brought to the party, those guitar solos, which if you like, rose above melodically, that kind of backcloth really of quite heavy melancholy...

David Gilmour: Yeah. That has always seemed to me, to be the idea behind it, that sort of counterpoint of different moods being complementary to each other.

Sue Lawley: Not a barrel of laughs being in Pink Floyd then?

David Gilmour: Ooo - being in Pink Floyd there were lots of laughs! But, they are not overly evident on the records! We had many many years of artistic satisfaction, great joy and a lot of pleasure in each others company. But, you know, there comes a time when things get a little sticky, differences of opinion become insurmountable, and things change. But that's pretty common in all walks of life.

Sue Lawley: Record number two:

David Gilmour: Bob Dylan, and Ballad In Plain D. I've lived through a lot of his heavy protest stuff, but this was another side I'm very keen on, this sort of love song approach...

-- 2. 'Ballad in Plain D' by Bob Dylan

Sue Lawley: He's also still performing, but not doing what he used to do, so much.

David Gilmour: No, he's on his neverending tour... fabulous!

Sue Lawley: But he's got new art to give, he's not just harking back...

David Gilmour: He's wonderful...

Sue Lawley: So you were born and brought up in Cambridge but I gather that unlike both Syd Barrett and Roger Waters, two of the founding members of Pink Floyd, who were also from Cambridge, you went to the posh school...

David Gilmour: I went to a posher school than them, yes! Rather against my will, but...

Sue Lawley: The posh school, the Perse Preparatory School For Boys?

David Gilmour: The Perse School For Boys...

Sue Lawley: Your mother and father were both academics. What did they want you to be? What did they want for you?

David Gilmour: My brothers and sisters all went on to universities... I'm sure that's what they wanted from me, and they pushed it fairly heavily when I was young until it became a fait accompli that it wasn't what I was going to do, and I was going to do my music, and they'd utter eternal lines that every parent tells their children at these times. "Why don't you finish your education - have something to fall back on...", which I promptly ignored.

Sue Lawley: How early on did you get hooked on the guitar?

David Gilmour: My next door neighbour was given a guitar when I was about 13 or 14. He really wasn't terribly interested in it, and I borrowed it from him, and I don't think I ever gave it back!

Sue Lawley: What sort of guitar was it?

David Gilmour: It was a Spanish thing - sort of nylon strung guitar, a Tatai. Still got it, I think!

Sue Lawley: And you taught yourself to play?

David Gilmour: I taught myself to play with the help of a record my parents got for me, which was the Pete Seeger guitar tutor record, the first band of which is just tones played on a pitch pipe, to tune your guitar with. So, he taught you how to tune it first, and that is a major, and underestimated part of learning how to play the guitar! [laughs]

Sue Lawley: And then on you went, you were in numerous bands; give me some of the titles of the bands...

David Gilmour: I was in a band called The Newcomers first, and then I started a band with some other guys called Jokers Wild, and when that had run its natural course, after a couple of years, I started spending time in London where I met some people who wanted to help me with my career so to speak, and they got me a gig in Marbella in Spain. Then came back, then went off again to St Etienne in France to a club residency for about three months...

Sue Lawley: So you were making some money. You were paying your way...

David Gilmour: Oh yes!

Sue Lawley: But then suddenly you came back to this country, aged 21, and these guys that you knew, called Syd and Roger, have got this group called Pink Floyd and they've released an album - Piper At The Gates Of Dawn - you must have been incredibly impressed!

David Gilmour: I was very impressed. To have a record contract in those days was really something. My band Jokers Wild had played with the early incarnations of Pink Floyd a few times. I think Nick Mason sidled up to me at a concert they were doing at the Royal College of Art in London, and said Syd might be leaving one of these days, or would I be interested in any way, in coming in on it, and I whispered "well, obviously!" [laughs] A couple of months after that they rang and asked if I would join...

Sue Lawley: And this was because, and the story is well known, Syd was really losing it, wasn't he? He was deeply into LSD?

David Gilmour: He was losing his ability to function, within that sort of pop group set up, yeah... I concur it probably was too much drugs that helped to get him to that position, but, who knows?

Sue Lawley: The famous story of him thinking his face was melting on stage, when in fact he'd OD'd on the Brylcreme I think, melting under the lights... [laughs]

David Gilmour: Yeah [laughs] it's one of those stories! You never knew quite how much truth there is in them!

Sue Lawley: But he just couldn't cope, couldn't hack it?

David Gilmour: Nope. He couldn't.

Sue Lawley: I just wonder how sad that was for you, because he was a guy you'd admired, and you thought was brilliant, and was creative, and original, and at the end of the day it was his demise that meant that you got into the group and began what was...

David Gilmour: Well, you're young, cruel and ambitious, and the depths of his problems and unhappiness became more apparent as the years rolled by, and one realised that one should've tried a little bit harder to help him, but, I think these days, things that can be done with the help of modern psychiatric help and medicine, would've done him a lot of good. But it wasn't the prevailing fashion at the time.

Sue Lawley: Record number three:

David Gilmour: This is "I'm Still Here" by Tom Waits. It's from a recent album called "Alice" which I think was some songs he'd done for a theatrical production in Germany about 10 years ago, but he's only recently recorded the music. I love this song.

-- 3. 'I'm Still Here' by Tom Waits

Sue Lawley: Your Pink Floyd success of 1975, Wish You Were Here, was unofficially dedicated to Syd of course, and that Shine On You Crazy Diamond was about him. A lot has been said about him since, and people have said really he is... well, the afficionados have said he's the lost leader of British pop. Do you think there's something in that?

David Gilmour: Mmm... well... he certainly had the ability, and great talent, a wonderful way with words, and could write words just so easily that always had a poetic sort of edge to them. We went off on holiday, must've been '65 I think; we learnt songs from the Beatles Help album and some Bob Dylan songs, and we went off busking in St Tropez, and both promptly got arrested and chucked into a cell, and grilled for a while before they let us go and told us to clear off, and not come back again! [laughs]

Sue Lawley: And you did try to help him later, because you tried to help him produce a couple of solo albums, didn't you, in the early 70's?

David Gilmour: Yes, right after... the year after he actually left, Roger and I produced one album with him, and Rick and I did another one, shortly after that.

Sue Lawley: But it wasn't to be, eh? He just couldn't do it, could he?

David Gilmour: It was very very hard work, and they were painful to make for him and for me, and I think that's fairly audible. [laughs]

Sue Lawley: How much do you think then, because he was this very small piece of Pink Floyd history, but I mentioned that Wish You Were Here was kind of unofficially dedicated to him; how much do you think he WAS the inspiration behind this kind of melancholy we were talking about earlier on, this dealing with madness?

David Gilmour: He is in there, in the inspiration for a lot of things, in those earlier years...

Sue Lawley: He's bound to be in some form, but people do overstate these things in the end, don't they? It's the guys who dig in there, who dig...

David Gilmour: It does sometimes become irritating that he casts this shadow that lasts so long, and so wide over us, but...

Sue Lawley: Makes a good story...

David Gilmour: It makes a good story! He was a lovely guy.

Sue Lawley: Record number four:

David Gilmour: Well I'm gonna need to... I don't do it very often, of course, at my hugely advanced age, but... I need a little bit of Tamla Motown sort-of "dance" music to accompany me on this beach, wherever I am, so this is Martha and the Vandellas, and "Dancing In The Street". Not "Dancing On The Beach".

-- 4. 'Dancing in the Street' by Martha and the Vandellas

David Gilmour: Now that's what I call dance music!

Sue Lawley: It is, it's real dance... now that you really can move to, huh?! [both laugh]

David Gilmour: Sad...

Sue Lawley: We talked about Pink Floyd's aloofness and mystery, and of course, as we mentioned, you did eventually build a wall... was it at Earl's Court, or in various places?

David Gilmour: Various places.

Sue Lawley: - huge polystyrene wall -

David Gilmour: Cardboard wall, it was originally. Great big cardboard blocks, yes.

Sue Lawley: - kind of like, tiles, that eventually got demolished, but I read it was 200 feet or so wide, and 35 feet high.

David Gilmour: Something like that, yeah! [laughs]

Sue Lawley: Now it's a very peculiar thing to do, David! Where did that come from?!

David Gilmour: Oh, this is our Rog who came up with this idea, and his original idea was just to build it and then leave it there, with us having disappeared as a sort of modern art installation I suppose...

Sue Lawley: But did you "get it"? Did you think this is "a good idea" or were you just indulging Roger?

David Gilmour: I never felt that I suffered to the same degree, the problem of alienation that he seemed to have, and this distance between him and his audience, or us and our audience supposedly. I didn't feel that I was that far distant from them, as he did, so I think possibly it's a little self-indulgent, in the end. [laughs]

Sue Lawley: Well, what's that kind of rock concert about, if you can't indulge yourselves a bit, I suppose?

David Gilmour: Absolutely! I mean the blinkered vision is an essential element of artistic endeavour, I think.

Sue Lawley: But in the end, the split came. It was kind of inevitable, wasn't it, between you and Roger? He always says it would've happened a lot earlier, that you were kind of flogging on, but in fact you were growing apart...

David Gilmour: Yes, it became more difficult as we both vehemently and passionately argued our corners for every little note, every little piece of music. It just sort of tore apart eventually, but still we worked very well, and very effectively together, right through 'til The Wall album was completed.

Sue Lawley: So you got the creative tension, as they say.

David Gilmour: Yeah, certainly did! [both laugh]

Sue Lawley: But in the end, he sued. And he lost, and you got...

David Gilmour: It never got to court, it was a lot of bluster and a lot of lawyers made some money while they all argued, but in the end, he sort of climbed down and we made a "deal", and...

Sue Lawley: And you and the other two went on as Pink Floyd, and he didn't. But essentially, and this is the interesting thing, that the argument was about, ultimately when it had got to that point, was, where is the heart of a group? Where are the brains? Where is the soul?

David Gilmour: Mmm.

Sue Lawley: And as I quoted you saying in the very beginning, in a sense a group - that's exactly what it is, it's greater than the sum of its parts.

David Gilmour: No, but in the end its just a pop group, isn't it, and one person leaving... it had happened before. Syd had left, Roger left; we carried on. Didn't seem to be a major decision to make for me.

Sue Lawley: But that's an interesting point, because some people have said that that's like losing Mick Jagger from the Stones twice!

David Gilmour: Yeah.

Sue Lawley: You could argue!

David Gilmour: Mmm. One could. [pause. laughs] It's too long ago to remember!

Sue Lawley: Too long ago and as you say, only a pop group! But what comes out of it for me, reading about it now, is that you were kind of looking after everybody in this - not Roger - I mean you and he were obviously deeply estranged, but the other two, Rick and Nick, you kind of nursed them. This kind of parenting that you do, and you've parented a lot of things - and we'll talk about those in a minute - but... has that always been your role, are you a kind of someone who brings people together, who likes to keep it calm?

David Gilmour: My friends call me "Big Daddy" [audible smile/laugh]

Sue Lawley: Well there you are you see - you nursed the other two round because they were pretty bruised by all of this weren't they?

David Gilmour: I think they were both pretty bruised; it was a... not a very pleasant period in the early eighties, and they needed to be helped a little bit, to regain their confidence and enthusiasm.

Sue Lawley: Record number five:

David Gilmour: This is "Anthem" by Leonard Cohen. He's one of my favourite artists. This one's the anthem which I think has a slightly Islamic thing to it, of the inperfection that all Islamic art has to have in it, otherwise... Nothing can be seen to be perfect in the eyes of Allah.

-- 5. 'Anthem' by Leonard Cohen

Sue Lawley: So let's hear more about David Gilmour the parent. As I say there's a lot of parenting gone on, you nursed the boys in the band a bit, you tried to look after Syd for a while, and in a way, the Pink Floyd albums have been your babies - the bits of music, what you and Waters tried to discuss there really was kind of "custody of the kids", wasn't it?

David Gilmour: Yeah. [both laugh]

Sue Lawley: And you've also got EIGHT children! I understand, from two marriages; what's the age range?

David Gilmour: Well my eldest daughter is 26 (Alice), and then I've got a 23 year old and a 21 year old, and a boy of 17, from my first marriage; and we've got a 13 year old lad, a 7 year old lad, a 5 year old and an 11 month old baby.

Sue Lawley: This is with your second wife, Polly Samson?

David Gilmour: Oh yeah. Yeah.

Sue Lawley: And she helps you write the lyrics, I gather?

David Gilmour: She helps me with everything! Lyrics included, yeah... [laughs]

Sue Lawley: There's a track on your album, The Division Bell, called Coming Back To Life: "I knew the moment had arrived, for killing the past, and coming back to life". That's your tribute to Polly, isn't it?

David Gilmour: Yes, sort of dedicated to Polly, yes. Definately. She was a great help.

Sue Lawley: But it is, I suppose, kind of your achilles heel isn't it David, that your lyric writing isn't as strong as your music making, huh?

David Gilmour: I'd have to concur, yes. [both laugh]

Sue Lawley: But you don't mind!

David Gilmour: I wish I was more of a ranconteur but... you get what you are given in life. I wouldn't swap.

Sue Lawley: Wouldn't you?

David Gilmour: Mmm. No.

Sue Lawley: You prefer to be the musician?

David Gilmour: The ability to pluck emotions out of a musical instrument, is something that I try to encourage all my children to learn how to do, 'cos it is an incomparable feeling.

Sue Lawley: Record number six:

David Gilmour: Mmm. "A Man Needs A Maid" by Neil Young.

Sue Lawley: Mmm? It's deeply politically-incorrect, but...?

David Gilmour: Mmm. Well, I'm being non-gender specific, of course, when I'm on my desert island. It could be a Man Friday.

Sue Lawley: But this is just Neil Young and you like him?

David Gilmour: It's Neil Young and it's very beautiful and it's got a particularly beautiful instrumental, orchestral passage in the middle, which is the bit we're leading into...

-- 6. 'A Man Needs a Maid' by Neil Young

Sue Lawley: Now, the other recent thing that people know about you is that you gave away your house, your London house, which was worth in excess of £4million. You GAVE it away, to a charity for the homeless. Was that a sort of sudden whim, or... what made you do that?

David Gilmour: We moved out of London a few years ago, to a lovely house in the country, and we'd clung onto, because of my affection for it; this huge house, in the middle of London, and after a while, it seemed rather daft, coming back to this huge, empty cold house that we really didn't need, and rather than just giving it as it was, to a homeless charity, and letting it be filled with homeless people, we thought we'd sell it and the money would do more good.

Sue Lawley: What's the feeling of giving that much money away? It's an extraordinary thing...

David Gilmour: Well, I have more than I need. Quite frankly. It's one of those things one spends one's life struggling with, these strange inequalities that happen through chance. Yes, I think it's a good idea for me to get rid of a little bit of the excess, to causes that could use it.

Sue Lawley: I presume you've been through the kind of excesses of rock. You've owned the yacht in the Med, and the fleet of Ferraris, have you?

David Gilmour: Mmm 'fraid so! Yes... done a bit of all that! I've simplified a little now.

Sue Lawley: You've offloaded all of that?

David Gilmour: Mmm. Yes.

Sue Lawley: So you're living a simpler life...

David Gilmour: Not in theory - doesn't feel much like that! [both laugh]

Sue Lawley: Why not?

David Gilmour: It's hard work bringing up children. Getting them up in the morning, feeding them breakfast, taking them to school...

Sue Lawley: That's what you've chosen to do now... you don't want to employ armies of people to look after these things, you want to do it yourself. So you've come full circle, really.

David Gilmour: Yes. Hopefully.

Sue Lawley: So we should hold our breath for a reunion of Pink Floyd in whatever form?

David Gilmour: Mmm. Yeah. I wouldn't hold your breath!

Sue Lawley: Market still there, as I said.

David Gilmour: Mmm. They tell me that, once in a while.

Sue Lawley: What, you get nagged?

David Gilmour: Yes! [laughs]

Sue Lawley: And you always say a definitive "no", or... do you kind of think about it sometimes?

David Gilmour: I don't really think about it, it's not something that's in the forefront of my mind, really.

Sue Lawley: But you haven't quite ruled it out, I hear...

David Gilmour: No... you're right. I haven't quite. Somehow, maybe that's just a sort of "attachment" thing that I need to get stronger about, and deal with, but I haven't quite dealt with it yet.

Sue Lawley: Record number seven:

David Gilmour: Ah. Yes. This is Joni Mitchell with "For Free". This is a song about the same kind of struggle, that I have been talking about. This is Joni Mitchell's struggle with her wall, if you like. Struggle with her conscience, with being a rich person but still being an artist.

-- 7. 'For Free' by Joni Mitchell

Sue Lawley: So, off we send you now David Gilmour, to this uncomplicated, simple life on a desert island, but I suppose you prefer to be where you are really? Pater familias in Sussex, with all these kids, no?

David Gilmour: Mmm, yes, of course!

Sue Lawley: Do you make music there every day?

David Gilmour: Well, yes, I'm there, there's a piano and a guitar, and I'm learning the saxophone with my boy Charlie, and Joe's starting the piano, and sings just divinely.

Sue Lawley: So you're making music as a family?

David Gilmour: There's music all the time, yeah.

Sue Lawley: So there's lots of snippets and bits and pieces around presumably that you're writing, or that you're playing... if you never appeared again, you could certainly make a record, couldn't you?

David Gilmour: Oh yes, I have every intention of making a record again but I haven't got round to it yet. To be frank. [both laugh]

Sue Lawley: By yourself? With the family? With whom?

David Gilmour: Well, I'm leaving that open. I'm sure that'll present itself to me and become clear before too long. I've already made promises that I haven't kept in one way or another - when this record's gonna be made, when it's coming out, but...

Sue Lawley: But whatever it is, by the sound of it, it won't be full of anguish and misery will it?

David Gilmour: Oh. Ooo, well I wouldn't rule out a bit of anguish and misery, who knows?

Sue Lawley: Oh really? I thought we'd now arrived at -

David Gilmour: These powerful emotions, these powerful things that...

Sue Lawley: I just get the impression as you "downsize" and simplify life, what you're finding is a kind of... happiness and a kind of contentment.

David Gilmour: Happiness and contentment are there, absolutely, which... you can't put too much happiness and contentment into music. It's... you don't want to turn into John Denver, do you? [both laugh]

Sue Lawley: Last record, which is NOT John Denver!

David Gilmour: The last record is by The Lemonheads. It's called "Rudi With A Flashlight". It's about sitting out in your garden, round a nice campfire, which is something we do at home in the summer, a lot, and pointing torches to the sky, would just be a lovely thing. Don't know if I'll have a flashlight or a torch, as we call them, on this desert island, but that's what I'd do with it, if I had one...

-- 8. 'Rudi with a Flashlight' by The Lemonheads

Sue Lawley: Well, now, if you could only take one of those eight records with you David, which one would you take?

David Gilmour: It's a tough choice, isn't it?

Sue Lawley: Mmm.

David Gilmour: I think I'd just have to take Martha and The Vandellas, just for the dancing really.

Sue Lawley: Dancing on the beach?! Wow, you need a bit of that... What about your book? You've got the Bible, you've got the complete works of Shakespeare...

David Gilmour: I think I'll take a translation of the Koran with me. Try to better my mind and understand other peoples of the world better.

Sue Lawley: And your luxury?

David Gilmour: Well, to me it's not a luxury, it's an essential. I NEED to take my guitar with me, an acoustic Martin D35 guitar, 'cos life is impossible without a guitar.

Sue Lawley: David Gilmour, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

David Gilmour: Thank you!