Pink Floyd is one of the best-selling bands of all time and the guitarist/singer David Gilmour certainly was a crucial element for the band’s sound, taking them into another level allied with Roger Waters’ lyrics and basslines, Richard Wright‘s keyboards and Nick Mason‘s drums. He joined the band in 1967, to serve first as a kind of backup for Syd Barrett and then in the mid-80s became the band leader when they reformed after Waters decided to leave the band.
Gilmour was part of 14 of the 15 albums released by the band and for any musician, it’s not easy to pick which is his favorite album from his own discography. However, David Gilmour revealed which is his favorite one released by Pink Floyd.
The Pink Floyd album David Gilmour said is his favorite
Gilmour was questioned recently in an interview with Rolling Stone about saying that his new solo album “Luck and Strange” was the best one he played since “Dark Side of The Moon” (1973). But he changed that statement, explaining that he actually prefers “Wish You Were Here”, released in 1975.
“It’s a flip statement, really. 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. It seems so totally irrelevant to me now,” David Gilmour said.
Pink Floyd’s ninth studio album, “Wish You Were Here” was the follow-up to “Dark Side of The Moon”. Besides the title-track, it had songs like “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”, “Welcome To The Machine” and “Have a Cigar”. At the time it was released, the album peaked at number 1 on the United States Billboard 200, the UK albums chart and in many other countries.
He had already said that it was a satisfying album
More than three decades ago, Gilmour had already said to Guitar World magazine that it was probably the most satisfying Pink Floyd album. He explained that he really loved the record and he believed they had achieved a better balance of lyrics and music.
“Yeah, that’s what the album’s about, I think as far as Roger‘s concerned anyway. It’s about that feeling we were left with at the end of Dark Side. That feeling of ‘What do you do when you’ve done everything?’ But I think we got over that. For me, Wish You Were Here is the most satisfying album. I really love it. I mean, I’d rather listen to that than Dark Side of the Moon.”
“Because I think we achieved a better balance of music and lyrics on Wish You Were Here. Dark Side went a bit too far the other way – too much into the importance of the lyrics. And sometimes the tunes – the vehicles for the lyrics – got neglected. To me, one of Roger’s failings is that sometimes, in his effort to get the words across. He uses a less-than-perfect vehicle,” David Gilmour said.
That album stood the test of time and remains as one of the band’s most successful records. Both Gilmour and Waters constantly featured songs from that record on their live shows over the decades.
How the track “Wish You Were Here” was written according to Gilmour
On the second episode of his podcast, back in 2019, David Gilmour talked about the use of acoustic guitars in his career and he also revealed how Pink Floyd’s classic “Wish You Were Here” was written.
“The start of ‘Wish You Were Here’ has got a bit of mythology around various cables being taken out of studios and running to cars and running back again. The start of that track… The track was supposed to be imitating the sound of a car, music being played coming out of the radio. We did actually run a microphone out into my car in the car park in the front of Abbey Road.”
“I just twiddled with the dial, we recorded some stuff just twiddling with the dial and the changing of stations and used a bit of it all on ‘Wish You Were Here.’ These strange things that happen, it’s the weirdest synchronicity that you get, those strange voices saying weird things. And then we did it again on ‘The Wall’ album, exactly the same thing. You know you’re going to get something fantastic.”
“Nowadays, of course, you press the button and you change the channels between stations. In those days, you just turned the thing and it gradually went from one end to the next one,” David Gilmour said.