David Jon Gilmour, CBE (born 6 March 1946), is an English musician, singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. He is best known for his work as the guitarist and co-lead vocalist of the progressive rock band Pink Floyd. It is estimated that by 2012 the group had sold over 250 million records worldwide, including 75 million units sold in the United States.
In addition to his work with Pink Floyd, Gilmour has produced a variety of artists, for example the Dream Academy, and has had a solo career. In 2005, Gilmour was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for his services to music. He was awarded with the Outstanding Contribution title at the 2008 Q Awards. In 2011, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him number 14 in their list of the greatest guitarists of all time.
Rattle That Lock is the fourth studio album by British musician David Gilmour. It is scheduled to be released on 18 September 2015. Gilmour will undertake a short tour of Europe in September and October 2015 to support the album, and a similar tour of the US and Canada will follow in March and April 2016. The artwork for the album was created by Dave Stansbie under the direction of Aubrey Powell, who has worked with David Gilmour and Pink Floyd since the late 1960s.
“David Gilmour is finally giving a wide release to his first new song in five years, “Yes, I Have Ghosts.” Previously, the former Pink Floyd frontman released the tune via the audiobook edition of his wife and long-time collaborator Polly Samson’s novel, A Theatre for Dreamers.
Over a waltzing acoustic guitar line and harp played by Gilmour’s daughter, Romany, he sings about “specters of strangers” and fleeting faces in a crowd. “Yes, I have ghosts,” he sings, “Not all of them dead/Making dust of my dreams/Spinning round and around, around in my head.” With its folky textures and lilting melodies, the track bears strong echoes of the music of Leonard Cohen, who appears as a character in A Theatre for Dreamers. It also benefits from Romany’s backup vocals, which combine beautifully with her father’s soft crooning.”
– From Rolling Stone: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/david-gilmour-yes-i-have-ghosts-1023745/
2024: “The Piper’s Call” is the first single from Gilmour’s upcoming record, Luck and Strange, out September 6.
It was recorded over five months in Brighton and London and is Gilmour’s first album of new material in nine years. The record was produced by David and Charlie Andrew, best known for his work with ALT-J and Marika Hackman. Of this new working relationship, David says, “We invited Charlie to the house, so he came and listened to some demos, and said things like, “Well, why does there have to be a guitar solo there?” and “Do they all fade out? Can’t some of them just end?”. He has a wonderful lack of knowledge or respect for this past of mine. He’s very direct and not in any way overawed, and I love that. That is just so good for me because the last thing you want is people just deferring to you.” The majority of the album’s lyrics have been composed by Polly Samson, Gilmour’s co-writer and collaborator for the past thirty years. Samson says of the lyrical themes covered on Luck and Strange, “It’s written from the point of view of being older; mortality is the constant.” Gilmour elaborates, “We spent a load of time during and after lockdown talking about and thinking about those kind of things.” Polly has also found the experience of working with Charlie Andrew liberating, “He wants to know what the songs are about, he wants everyone who’s playing on them to have the ideas that are in the lyric informing their playing. I have particularly loved it for that reason.” The album features eight new tracks along with a beautiful reworking of The Montgolfier Brothers’ ‘Between Two Points’ and has artwork and photography by the renowned artist Anton Corbijn. Musicians contributing to the record include Guy Pratt & Tom Herbert on bass, Adam Betts, Steve Gadd and Steve DiStanislao on drums, Rob Gentry & Roger Eno on keyboards with string and choral arrangements by Will Gardner. The title track also features the late Pink Floyd keyboard player Richard Wright, recorded in 2007 at a jam in a barn at David’s house. Some contributions emerged from the live streams that Gilmour and family performed to a global audience during the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021; Romany Gilmour sings, plays the harp and appears on lead vocals on ‘Between Two Points’. Gabriel Gilmour also sings backing vocals. The album’s cover image, photographed and designed by Anton Corbijn, is inspired by a lyric written by Charlie Gilmour for the album’s final song ‘Scattered’. Of working with his family on ‘Luck and Strange’, David says, “Polly and I have been writing together for over thirty years and the Von Trapped live streams showed the great blend of Romany’s voice and harp-playing and that led us into a feeling of discarding some of the past that I’d felt bound to and that I could throw those rules out and do whatever I felt like doing, and that has been such a joy.”
Here’s the second single “Dark & Velvet Nights.” Written by David Gilmour and Polly Samson, ‘Dark And Velvet Nights’ came from a poem Polly hadwritten. David Gilmour ‘The music sprang out one day. It was so exciting to have come across this groove. Polly had given me a beautiful poem for our wedding anniversary, which was sitting on the desk right next to me, so I picked it up and sang it on the track, to hear what it would sound like with words. I played it to Polly, and she said, “Lovely, great, I’ll need to fiddle with it a bit. So she added a couple of verses, and there it was – very serendipitous.“