David Gilmour - Meltdown Festival, Royal Festival Hall, London, June 21st 2001 |
David Gilmour - Live - Meltdown Festival
The
Meltdown Festival is a regular event held at the Royal Festival Hall on
London's South Bank, next to the River Thames. Each year, a different
artist is invited to concoct an eclectic mix of performers for the
festival. In 2001 it was Robert Wyatt. Amongst those he invited were David Gilmour, who, to many people's surprise, happily took up the offer and performed a breathtaking and unexpected show for the two thousand lucky enough to get tickets.
From a personal perspective, the
choice of songs was perfect (always some songs you yearn to hear of
course) and some big surprises as the evening unfurled. I must admit
that my jaw had dropped so far when he followed Terrapin with Fat Old
Sun, that it took most of the rest of the show to get it back into
position! Thankfully he followed with some more expected songs such as Wish You Were Here...I say thankfully, as although I feel a lot of them are overperformed, it enabled me to pull myself together! To hear Fat Old Sun AND Terrapin live was awesome. What was also nice, was to see David looking so calm and relaxed, almost from the outset. He calmly batted away questions and shouted nonsenses from the audience, like a seasoned comedian deals with hecklers. Bear in mind that this was probably the first show he had done in many years where things were pretty quiet during and between songs... The songs performed were:
Terrapin Fat Old Sun Coming Back to Life High Hopes Je Crois Entendre Encore (an opera by Bizet) Smile (a new song) Wish You Were Here Comfortably Numb Dimming of the Day (by Richard Thompson) Shine On You Crazy Diamond part 6,7 & 9 Encore:
Hushabye Mountain (from the 1970 film, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) Performing these tracks were the following (amongst others - at one point there were nine vocalists on stage - sorry, didn't manage to work out who they all were) who accompanied David:
Caroline Dale Nick France Michael Kamen Chucho Merchan Dick Parry Sam Brown Durga McBroom Claudia Fontaine Carol Kenyon Press reviewWhile his guitar gently weepsFrom The Independent, UK, 25 June 2001Here's a concept even weirder than Arthur Smith sings Leonard Cohen: David Gilmour sings Bizet. A high spot of the legendary Pink Floyd guitarist's Friday night RFH extravaganza - part of the Meltdown 2001 festival, devised by Robert Wyatt - was his rendering of a rapturous aria from The Pearl Fishers. In French. And in a high tenor that became a climactic falsetto. Charles Trenet meets Aled Jones. It was gorgeous, but scarcely what the fortysomething Floydies in the audience were expecting. Gilmour took the stage in his rock-star-millionaire garb of nondescript T-shirt and jeans and the demeanour of a truculent roadie, picked up an acoustic guitar and launched into a one-man-band version of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond", his tribute to the damaged visionary Syd Barrett from the original Floyd line-up. As the stage filled up with instrumentalists - saxophone, double bass, cello, piano, second guitar, and (count 'em) nine backing singers - we realised his wasn't going to be an MTV "Unplugged" session. It was a showcase, by a musician bored with his rock-god pigeonhole, of his eclectic musical taste. Gilmour raided the band's back pages for favourite moments - "Fat Old Sun" from Atom Heart Mother, "Wish You Were Here" in a gorgeous duet with Neil McColl, "Comfortably Numb" from The Wall (with a contribution from the Robert Wyatt, who now resembles Moondog). He threw in Richard Thompson's folksy "Dimming of the Day" with the delicacy of a Celtic harpist. Ignoring the over-familiar Dark Side of the Moon, he sang three numbers from The Division Bell, calming the rock'n'roll strut of "Coming Back to Life" into a tender tribute to his wife, Polly. When he finally strapped on a Stratocaster, the audience whistled and yelled for the authentic Gilmour sound - those liquidly stratospheric electric solos, at least an octave higher than anybody else's. Visibly, he relaxed with an axe. But the revelation of the evening was the romanticism of his arrangements, the mellifluousness of his voice, the churchy swoop of the streaming, arpeggiated cello and the nine-part choral harmonies. Is that the sound this burly guitar hero has secretly craved? The audience cat-called genially throughout, like adolescents cheeking the headmaster at Gilmour High. "Where's Roger Waters?" asked a Floyd anorak of the departed bassist. "You want him, you can have him," said Gilmour. He closed with an electric reprise of "Crazy Diamond", returned for a full-stage epic blast of "A Great Day For Freedom", and sent the audience home to bed with a lullaby called "Hushabye Mountain". The big softie. |