Few have melded ground-breaking musical intelligence and record breaking chart success as brilliantly as Pink Floyd. Since their inception in the mid-1960s, they have established an almost unbroken occupation of record charts in the UK and across the world, selling more than 250 million copies in the process. Now a new generation of fans has discovered their music, a reflection of their incredible relevance and endurance.

David was born just after the Second World War and, like many of us baby- boomers, he was massively inspired by the energy and fire of the new American music that hit our shores in the mid-1950s – ‘Rock Around the Clock’ by Bill Haley and the Comets and ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ by Elvis Presley were among the first in his collection.

He was immediately determined to express his feelings through music. Soon he borrowed a guitar from his next-door neighbour and began to experiment with the chords and styles of the blues, rhythm and blues and rock and roll records he was now discovering – Leadbelly, B.B. King, Pete Seeger and Buddy Holly’s Fender Stratocaster were the sounds that fired his ambition.

David founded and played in a few cover bands before joining Pink Floyd in 1968 at the height of the psychedelic era, where he dived into liquid light shows and mixed-media happenings, forging an indelible bond between experimental music and visual art. It was a multicoloured combination that the band used to express their music through their live performances from then on, including a truly mind-blowing charity concert at the Rainbow Theatre in London in 1973. The centrepiece of this show was a performance of Dark Side of the Moon, their most successful album ever.

A quiet man, David has always expressed emotions mainly through his music. From those early days of rock and roll through the world domination of Pink Floyd to the release of his expressive and beautiful solo recordings, carefully crafted in his houseboat studio, David Gilmour has created a legacy that will last forever. 

Bob Harris