“We could be as rude and insulting to each other and our music as we wanted”: David Gilmour on the ‘earlier stages’ of Pink Floyd

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David Gilmour says he believes that people give him “too much deference” and that too many of his collaborators feel unable to give him the honest feedback that he needs.

In an interview with The Sun, the Pink Floyd legend said that: “After you achieve these dizzying heights, people tend to show you way too much deference,” he admits. “It becomes hard to retrieve the setup you had when you were young.”

“In the earlier stages of Pink Floyd, we could be as rude and insulting to each other about our personalities and our music as we wanted - and yet everything would be all right in the end. No one ever stomped off permanently - until that bloke did…”

We think he might be referring to Roger Waters. Clearly, he who cannot be named.

Gilmour is set to release a new solo album Luck And Strange this Friday and he was talking about how he came to work with Alt J and Marika Hackman producer Charlie Andrew on the album.

“I looked at all the people I knew but I’d got to a point in life where I wanted to move things forward in a different way. I made contact with Charlie and he came down to the house. He had total lack of knowledge of Pink Floyd and the side of the music industry that I come from.”

"Charlie was refreshingly blunt with some of his opinions. He was brilliant’’.

The album is something of a family affair for Gilmour. His wife, the novelist Polly Samson contributes the majority of the lyrics, their daughter Romany played the harp on the track Between Two Points and the final track Scattered is co-written by their son Charlie and features backing vocals from his brother Gabriel.

Gilmour praised his wife’s contributions in the interview, saying: “As a married couple, we discuss our fears and our joys. She knows my preoccupations.

"It’s a great skill that she can inhabit my head.  But her input is not limited to the lyrics. She has solid opinions on every aspect of what we do and is not scared to voice them.”