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

The Guardian, 18th January 2002

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

Billboard LiveReviews, 17th January 2002

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

Daily Telegraph, 18th January 2002

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

The Independent, 21st January 2002

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.