DAVID GILMOUR 35 min interview by Director John Edginton

well i came back to england in i guess about september of 67 and started living in london and worked i was working as a van driver in the daytime and trying to work out what i was going to do musically um from that point how to get into something so i was going out to gigs and pubs and god knows what all over london constantly and i would be seeing a fair bit of sid and of the other group of friends that we had at that time um and i went to all all their gigs that one could go to locally and so i ran into him a little bit more than i had done and i got to know the others nick and rick and roger a bit better and they did a gig at the royal college of art just by the albert hall in possibly probably november and at that one nick sidled up to me and and told me that things were getting pretty desperate and they were i was to keep it under my hat but they were thinking of making some sort of a change and would i be interested so and um what were your thoughts um well it wasn't exactly the sort of musical thing that i wanted to get into at that particular point it to be honest and uh but the fame that they had achieved was obviously very enticing um but um i didn't think that it was this way i didn't think it was that serious and um i didn't know whether it would become a reality so i just sort of forgot about it i think after that time until until just after the new year when they rang up and actually made me a specific offer um which obviously was the start of a very difficult and and strange time with both sid and i turning up together to to rehearsals and going out and doing shows with five of us where i would be playing i would be learning and playing sid's parts and singing sid's songs while siddi be sort of standing there and sometimes singing a little bit and sometimes playing a little bit and very odd was it understood at that point that you were coming in to replace him um i th that was it bigger than that it was vaguer than that it was it was you know there was discussion you know of you know the old discussions of that that he would eventually sort of stay home being a brown wilson sort of writing character and we would still continue using his material and uh i would be the the front man on stage but um it wasn't really workable that notion passed quite quickly i think there were only five gigs as i remember it where we the five of us played together before um we ceased to go and pick him up um how did it feel i mean this was this was your friend who was going through something kind of personal hell and uh there was also this pressure to keep the show on the road well all of those things uh came into it um but you're i mean i was 21 and i think am i you know one's fairly ambitious when you want to get on with stuff and uh that sort of offer is very hard one to turn down and logically speaking it wasn't working you know the sid was not performing at all on stage and it was kind of tragic um i i didn't suppose i saw any option but uh just do the best that i could but um i'm sure we were all sort of full of some sort of guilt and remained that way for a long time so you it was a tragic thing you know it's as you say it's a it's a a very upsetting thing but you we didn't know what to do about it none of us knew anything about uh schizophrenia or any sort of mental illness at the time and it's very easy with hindsight to look back and think well we could have done this or we could have done that but at the time we just got on with the job in hand yeah i mean didn't i guess you're right with with hindsight it's a wonderful thing i know what were were there thoughts of sid needs professional help um in the the group of friends i mean within i mean the pink floyd um thing with the with the management peter and andrew and the you know four people and sid slightly outside of it by that time person there was not much discussion of whether in my memory it wasn't much discussion of what one could do for sid in that way but in the flat that he lived in at around that time at edgerton court or all of the old friends of ours that discussion did go on quite a lot and there are stories of taking him to see ronnie lang and but i wasn't party to that i didn't actually know i couldn't you'd have to ask storm or someone or the people who are present at that exactly what happened to do with all that how was he i mean we were fantastically busy as well i mean we were just out and doing stuff all the time and i think to be honest we just sort of dropped dropped him and hit how was he on stage with you in those those few gigs well he was not on occasions he seemed quite happy i don't think he it's very hard to tell and you know he communication with him was so difficult and everything you said to him sort of seemed to be on one level one plane of existence and his reply sort of came back from a different plane of his existence and it's very hard to know what he was thinking he certainly didn't show any upset at the thought of being pushed out and we've got a little bit of film of him somewhere um in a dressing room um at that time in one of those first five gigs i can't remember western super mario or something like that and he's tap dancing you know dancing around on with with one or two of the others like and seems perfectly jolly and he had to go on stage and not play yeah i guess the other thought i had was when you talked about being very busy was um i know i was staggered when i read that that pink boy did something like 70 gigs in six months that sort of relentless up and down motorways you know lousy food all that i mean every other day was in the studio i think nick kept a sort of his own before they made the wonderful sasco year planners i think nick made his own type of year planner which which had uh you know recording dates in one color gig dates in another promotion things in another and during it he had one of those on his wall for 66 and 67 and there just wasn't a day there wasn't a spare day anywhere it was just relentless as soon as he'd left pink floyd or been ousted from pink floyd whatever you want to call it um he became surrounded by this sort of coterie of rather unpleasant hangers on as opposed to the friends he'd had previously there were a lot of people who wanted to be imbued with the magic and the charisma that sid had and had had and seemed to still have for them and they thought that by providing him with more drugs of every different type that um they would become his friends and that seemed to be what was happening in the period that sid lived in in else court square it was a period of yeah as you say you know mandrax was definitely around quite substantially and uh was was one of he was seemed to me to be on something like mandrax during most of the sessions for um for the madcap last album we had so little time to do it and um half the days we had in the studio we were doing other things we had gigs those nights and we'd have to shoot off at five in the afternoon and jump in a van and trundle off up the m1 um it was just you know trying to get anything down at all it was a sort of desperation thing did he did he walk in with his plan for the day no no no i mean i'd usually go and pick him up around the corner his place and we'd go off down there together and we would either sit him down in front of a mic and just try and get him to to do something um just as a to hear the things um some we've done a little bit of research sort of listening to stuff at home getting him to sing songs at home but mostly it was all just done there and then in the studio and so that there were songs that he had in his head already uh he had them written down on paper had the words written out on paper for some of them but not all of them but he wouldn't do them the same twice you know that you'd do take one it'd be one version take two would be a different tempo different time signature the words would change obviously making it impossible for one to really rehearse it with musicians and then perform it together that didn't work and and putting musicians on something as loose as these recordings would be afterwards as was almost impossible we did that with with some things dominoes and i think was there a distinction between the mad cap sessions and the barrett sessions or were they we had more time in the barrett sessions um i think we were more able to give it a little bit of polish but even so we still had the same problems and i don't think the remaining songs were quite as good um as many of them it it came out with more polish sid was more pleased with it than he was with the madcap laughs he did he did actually in the lift going up at uh to else court square he did say did once say thank you for the job that was done once in a year or something i mean you must you must have thought long and hard before plunging into barrett after the no cap last i didn't think so i don't think i thought i thought we'd just crack on and do it roger didn't want to do it and rick came in to help out on that one um and i just got in some of my friends and people to help out at any point where it seemed appropriate like it's a long time ago it's it's hard to remember was there did you have a sense maybe that he was slipping away from you that there was this talent but it was you were losing it i don't know if i thought that anymore on on barrett than i did on the on on the madcap last nothing really seemed to have changed um i think possibly on on on the barrett one he didn't seem to be physically on the day on mandrax or anything like that as much as he had on the madcap laughs but it seemed like the psychosis was as ingrained embedded in him as as as ever and felt more permanent which must have been incredibly difficult to communicate well all the way through both communication was impossible it's um it's a very hard thing to describe what the way conversations would go because they all everything he said seemed to make sense but i couldn't for the life me understand what it was he was saying it would come back on a different plane and uh whatever question you would ask him it seemed sort of a meaning seemed to resonate slightly but i couldn't quite ever manage to work out what it was so he would subvert everything he said in a way yeah i don't think he i don't think he was deliberately trying i think that's just the way his mind was working and he would just say whatever came into his head in response to whatever you had said to him but it seemed like he was answering a slightly different question to you were asking your guitar style was obviously rather different from sids when you joined pink floyd yeah the whole sound of the band very different from your band yeah how did you ration did you adapt to that or did they adapt to you i mean both but at the beginning i had to very quickly adapt to them and play stuff that maybe i hadn't got a clue what i was doing it's probably dreadful i um it was also excruciatingly embarrassing um to the extent that i used to mostly play with my back to the audience and i was in a really really very embarrassed and very nervous about what was what i was doing i didn't feel at all sure of myself i didn't know what to play you know i had to try and play on these songs and on these sort of templates that sid and the band had been playing on for some time um and i was conscious that i needed to at some point try and make it more my own but at the very outset it was just really learning lots of stuff and then learning sids parts and then playing guitar sailors that i thought fitted at the time but uh it was it wasn't it wasn't a lot of fun i have to tell you it's been very difficult were you doing things like interstellar overdrive yeah interstellar overdrive power talk h um these very sort of strange very i mean they were very loose bases for psychedelic jams basically and as i hadn't done any psychedelic jamming really before then that sort of veered more towards jimi hendrix did you pick up on techniques from sid and sort of feedback techniques and so on i must have done some yes i don't really i think i mean i consciously learnt some of his licks and his parts right at the beginning but um his style was fairly radically different to mine and i think they probably mostly went by the buy after a little while i mean i guess as you developed floyd developed with you there was a new kind of sound emerging gradually wasn't it well it was as soon as we got into the studio and started putting down new stuff particularly with doing the actual track source full of secrets i suppose it started becoming more clear to me where we were we were going and what i could be doing within those frameworks and it gave us a whole set of new frameworks which sid hadn't been a part of which obviously releases one from this spectre a little bit and yet i you know i i'm tempted to say the spectre continued to haunt you in a way well yes i mean quite how much um the spectre of sid haunted us subsequently i mean obviously we went back to it you know with wish you were here um in a major way i had um expressed my view after we had done dark side of the moon that uh we were in danger of of not getting the balance quite right of between the words and the music and making the the vehicles as powerful on their own as the words were to in order to make the two things fit together so um i was pushing from at that time to try and make the music and carry itself roger was um when i did that little daddy thing you know in a rehearsal room somewhere it's slipped out somewhere roger was very taken with that very quickly as a sort of emotional little cry and that it all started coming together from that little thing i believe of course there were two other pieces which surfaced on on the animals album subsequently which we were rehearsing and putting together at the same time and i wanted to ought to make all three into an album at the time but um glad to say that roger disagreed and wanted to lose those two for the time being and and extend the one piece shine and uk diamond to make the whole record he was definitely right about that the was it was it conscious between all of you that this was an album about sid uh yes yes as soon as i mean a lot of the music was just sort of being created we were sitting in a rehearsal room ghastly little room in king's cross putting that all together and i can't really remember it the exact time when um it must have struck roger that the emotional impact of the beginnings of this piece of music we're going to involve sid and be about sid i can't hide but my memory is just not quite that good i mean other things like the song wish you were here didn't surface out of those sessions at all that happened in the studio when i was um plonking that riff on the twelve string but by then i think it must have been very established already what's your feeling now about the wall um what's that got to do with sid barron and i when i look at that movie of the wall with bob gerdoff and there's pink in the hotel bedroom knocked in you know watching tv it's difficult to not to think of sid barrett yeah yes well i'm obviously yeah he's he's in there too yeah gets in everywhere um oh did you i'm not sure i can be bothered with the wall really talking about it i should say it's not uh i think we did a damn good job on it but um sort of slightly lacked soul for me it had sort of run its course maybe i mean maybe you said all you needed to say and wish you were here um you know our personal problems in the band by that time were sort of becoming more dominant um roger was becoming more dominant and it was less easy to to argue um that the music had to stand on its own before you added the extra weight of lyrics and uh i don't think that um i had no real disagreements with what was being said on which you're here for example or on dark side of the moon but um you know once it's established that roger is the lyricist it becomes harder and harder to say well do you think we need to go down this road anyway that's a different story i suppose you could say that we haven't done quite as many concerts as people like the stones have or someone we've so my performances are i wish you were here still numbering sort of three or four hundreds i suppose there's another thousands or some people i do but it always it still resonates it still has has its meaning it means that to me every time i sing it it's it's a brilliant which is a very very good combination of music and words that seems to be seems to capture something does um performing something like that does it actually bring back the moment of creating it in a way the memory of creating it i remember the moment of creating it quite often yeah i did have a guitar around it i played it originally i think the guitar is somewhere in this room well the one that did the lead stuff on is there this is still the same one it sounds exactly [Music] doesn't it you can tell it's the same one i haven't got the under the 12th century should be here [Music] played that in the um in the control room of number three studio at abbey road and um it's just something i've been strumming at home and roger immediately said what's that elsa and we had to sort of immediately get on with that and work it up and write the rest of the music and stuff so that just arrives it's you know one bit of riff from another bit of riff it's you know there's hundreds of different ways you can do something almost the same as that but some work and some have a little bit of magic to them and it's and some don't and the ones that do have that bit of magic to them it's obvious you know to people around they even just that piece of music has an emotional pull to it that's what we're struggling to find all the time does it get i was going to say does it get more difficult as you get older i mean this is i don't think it does get more difficult i think it um i think you have to have brakes and you have to have um that the old cliche of recharging the batteries is very apt and if you are a workaholic person this may be just self-justification you understand that some of the people who seem to work and work and work and work get very very proficient but less and less inspired and you have to try and stop for periods of time and and let inspiration come through you i really believe that fallow periods are good for one could you just show us again that little that distinctive accidental moment [Music] where you came from as i said i might have been just playing an a minor chord [Music] boring old and just moved my fingers to the wrong position it could just be an accident but but it did seem to sort of have a sort of haunting calling sound to and i can remember plonking it me thinking and then playing it again and then playing it again and repeating it over and over and while it sort of called out hauntingly to me and everyone else [Music] that um we're just talking about that that sort of the mystery of creation which all yeah um you were just saying that the the root is almost it's like your fingers are doing something like your brain hasn't caught up with in a way yeah well you have to yeah you get a certain facility with it and uh the fingers move far too easily to certain it becomes like doodling sort of meaningless plunking away and it's it's good to put yourself in unfamiliar territory by playing an instrument that's tuned differently or an instrument that you can't play sometimes and you often find little moments of inspiration that way but i mean you were already a very prolific and very able guitar player before you joined pink floyd reasonably my report how did how do you rate um see it as a guitarist um i think i had a greater facility on the guitar but sid was more inventive he had his own very distinctive particular style when you when you um when you stop um imitating and start liking your own sound that's when you sort of start getting somewhere i find um i mean i spent a lot of time trying to be eric clapton jimi hendrix pete seeger led belly all sorts of other people on the guitar and there was a moment i actually liked something that i played myself and started realizing that uh what i saw as my deficiencies actually could be turned into my qualities and sid certainly turned his deficiencies into qualities and much earlier than i did and became a very original innovative sort of player can you when you say inventive and what was the can you give us a sense of that i can't really it's it's because he'd have to do it for you and um i can't do six things i had to do a few of them at the beginning there are moments that take your breath away almost on the sailor stuff actually yeah thinking of is it baby lemonade where there's a long sort of just a solo guitar picking away piece yeah before the song starts proper i can't remember how it starts it is impressive yeah especially he was he was very good i mean he just stuck on the old telecaster and plonked away and it was always interesting anything else you can tell us about your here and we're just uh looking around did you see this one this circle look as i said let's just leave stuff on once you're here this is my my very first guitar old spanish thing which i had when i was about 14 or [Music] something sounds quite nice really what about another thing what not a bad sound actually isn't it yes i've never used it on a record yet because i gave it to my sister actually for years and years and then got it back off her at some point other than that do they have a particular memory for any of these or um not really this which is a particular tuning it's not special it's just an old ovation acoustic with a different string set up it's the same one since the middle seventies awful guitars but because it's the one that um i wrote that particular tune on it's remained tuned the same way and strung the same way ever since that was a that was one of the songs that would have gone on to wish you were here comfortably known as that is that right no no that was that came that was after that was on the wall yeah sorry well that was your was it was it your favorites as well no my music is lyrics yeah it's quite a lovely song yeah it's that's i mean one of the last pieces of um sort of of truly good collaboration that we managed i think you

Channel: JOHN EDGINTON DOCUMENTARIES

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Rating: 4.9356351 out of 5

Keywords: DAVID GILMOUR, PINK FLOYD, SYD BARRET

Id: hDxwuby7mpg

Length: 35min 48sec (2148 seconds)

Published: Mon May 24 2021