David Gilmour on Pink Floyd's moon-landing jam
Written by Matt   
Wednesday, 01 July 2009

Under the heading, "My moon-landing jam session", David Gilmour talks at length in today's Guardian (UK) newspaper of Pink Floyd's atmospheric tune "Moonhead", performed live on July 20th 1969 in a BBC TV studio.

In the article (also online), David notes that "there was a panel of scientists on one side of the studio, with us on the other. The programming was a little looser in those days, and if a producer of a late-night programme felt like it, they would do something a bit off the wall. Funnily enough I've never really heard it since, but it is on YouTube [see below]. They were broadcasting the moon landing and they thought that to provide a bit of a break they would show us jamming. It was only about five minutes long. The song was called Moonhead - it's a nice, atmospheric, spacey, 12-bar blues.

"I also remember at the time being in my flat in London, gazing up at the moon, and thinking, "There are actually people standing up there right now." It brought it home to me powerfully, that you could be looking up at the moon and there would be people standing on it".

In the article, printed in a special issue of the newspaper's G2 supplement ('Mission To The Moon: 40 Years On'), he also noted that "it was fantastic to be thinking that we were in there making up a piece of music, while the astronauts were standing on the moon. It doesn't seem conceivable that that would happen on the BBC nowadays".