Gilmour Fine Without Floyd On New Album, Tour
David Gilmour has remained quiet since Pink Floyd’s unexpected reunion last July for the Live 8 concert at Hyde Park, but hardly inactive. The man described as “the guitar and the voice of Pink Floyd” was busy putting the finishing touches to only his third solo album in a career that spans close to 40 years.
As previously reported, “On an Island” is due March 6 through EMI in Europe and a day later via Columbia Records in the United States. A 25-date sold-out tour starts in March in Europe and crosses over to America in April before returning to the U.K. at the end of May for a series of concerts at the Royal Albert Hall.
“I do really think it is about as good a piece of work as I have ever done,” Gilmour tells Billboard, adding, “It felt to me that this album should be me and not Pink Floyd this time. It’s just a slightly different way of working. I worked from home on my own [without] having to be involved in the rather large machinery that is the Pink Floyd thing.”
And while Pink Floyd played stadiums on its final 1994 tour, Gilmour is constraining himself to theaters and mid-size venues this time. “I don’t owe people anything,” he says. “If people would like to come to my concerts I’d love them to come. And if they like the music that I make, I love that too. But I do not make music for other people. I make it to please myself.”
Gilmour confirms Pink Floyd “were offered a lot of money to go on tour” after Live 8, with or without founding member Roger Waters, with whom Gilmour has incessantly feuded since the mid 1980s.
“I have no interest in going on a tour to make money without making new product, new art,” he says. “So just going out and replaying our old hits again on a tour does not appeal to me at all.”
So will there ever be a chance to see the band live again? “Who knows?,” Gilmour offers. “I have no plans at all to do that. My plans are to do my concerts and put my record out.”
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