David Gilmour Backtracks on Playing Pink Floyd Songs in Concert

David Gilmour made a splash early in the promotional cycle for the upcoming Luck and Strange when he described it as the best album he’s made since Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon. He’s backing away from that now, though a general reticence about those years remains.

“It’s a flip statement, really,” Gilmour tells Rolling Stone. “I mean, it’s not like Dark Side the Moon is even my favorite album. I think I prefer Wish You Were Here. Anyway, it feels to me like it’s the best thing I’ve done in more or less my living memory, because some of those things feel like they were someone else, back in those eons ago. I was in my 30s when Roger left our little pop group and I’m 78.”

Luck and Strange is due on Sept. 6, and was initially advanced by “The Piper’s Call” in April. More singles and confirmed concert dates followed.

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Gilmour hasn’t released a solo album since 2015’s Top 5 international hit Rattle That Lock – and hasn’t played a U.S. concert in eight years. But Gilmour turned a few more heads when he indicated an unwillingness to return to estranged bandmate Roger Waters-era songs during these upcoming shows.

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Gilmour also seems to be more open now to including Pink Floyd songs in his solo setlist – though one track in particular apparently won’t be played. “I think I will be doing one or two things from that time, but it just seems so long ago,” Gilmour says. “I know people love them, and I love playing them. I’ll be doing ‘Wish You Were Here’ – of course, I will – and some of the things that started with me anyway.”

So, perennial favorite “Comfortably Numb” will “quite likely” appear but “I don’t think I’ll be doing ‘Money,'” Gilmour admits before adding: “If that’s your reason for coming …”

As recently as the 2000s, Gilmour and Waters seemed to have called a truce. The classic-era lineup reunited for 2005’s Live 8 concerts, then Gilmour and Waters made a couple of additional live appearances together in 2010. Gilmour isn’t willing to discuss what subsequently went wrong.

“It’s boring. It’s over,” he argues. “As I said before, he left our pop group when I was in my 30s, and I’m a pretty old chap now – and the relevance of it is not there. I don’t really know his work since. So I don’t have anything to say on the topic.”

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