With a new album embracing “complete anarchic madness”, his first tour in eight years and (we kid you not) a single with Ice-T, Pink Floyd’s imposing guitarist returns with a mission: to shake up his music, shrug off the fug of nostalgia, disperse the pall of Covid. And there may, DAVID GILMOUR hints, soon be more to come. “I’ve got a trove of stuff already,” he assures MARK BLAKE.

Never mind the rowlocks: David Gilmour stays cool and keeps his oar in on the River Thames, near Hampton Court, August 2, 2024.

Photography by KEVIN WESTENBERG. Digital tech by EDWIN INGRAM.

Kevin Westenberg

IN MARCH 2024, DAVID GILMOUR VISITED ELY CATHEDRAL FOR THE first time in a while. Thirty years ago this historic edifice, dating from just after the Norman Conquest, appeared on the sleeve of Pink Floyd’s The Division Bell, in a nod to the band’s geographical roots 20 miles away in the city of Cambridge, where Gilmour, plus Floyd founders Syd Barrett and Roger Waters were raised. Now Gilmour had returned, with his new co-producer Charlie Andrew, to record Ely’s cathedral choir.

Stood under its sweeping arches and twinkling stained glass windows, Gilmour looked a bit like a visiting priest in his clerical black coat. Instead, he sang and strummed the guitar and helped guide the Kings Ely Singers though The Piper’s Call, the first single from his new album, Luck And Strange.

Listening to The Piper’s Call today, on board Gilmour’s houseboat studio, Astoria, it sounds like there are other ghostly voices wailing behind its grand-finale guitar solo. Is it really the choir, MOJO wonders, making that noise?

“The choir are in there,” replies Gilmour. “But there are other voices too. I usually want everything to be as musically perfect – as in tune – as I can make it. But here there are moments of…” He pauses and offers the first of several inscrutable smiles, “complete… anarchic… madness.”

Kevin Westenberg, Polly Samson (5), Chris Walter/Getty, Francesco Prandoni/Getty

It’s a Monday morning down by the Thames, and the sky is the same murky blue as the river surrounding the Astoria. Up on the mahogany deck a flag, emblazoned with Luck And Strange’s white-on-black logo, flutters like a Jolly Roger. Down below, a frankly exhausted-looking rower pauses by the vessel, before sculling off in the direction of Hampton Sailing Club.

Inside the studio, a silvery-stubbled David Gilmour folds his long black coat onto a nearby chair, sips from a mug of builder’s tea and ponders MOJO’s questions. On past form, he’s given to quietly plucking a stringed instrument while considering his answers. Today, the arsenal (which includes a Fender Strat accessorised with Jimi Hendrix’s original Woodstock-era strap) remain untouched.

By Gilmour’s standards, this autumn is a whirlwind of activity. This September, his album is followed by the release of a version of Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb by Ice-T’s band Body Count on which Gilmour plays guitar and even appears in the video. In October, Gilmour begins his first tour in almost a decade. “But I have too many songs,” he says. And that’s just with the Floyd, the group he joined, initially to understudy his childhood friend Syd Barrett, in January 1968.

Luck And Strange is Gilmour’s fifth solo album, created with his wife and lyricist, Polly Samson (“my muse partner”), whose 2020 novel A Theatre For Dreamers has inspired some of the record. Also involved in the music and lyrics are their four adult offspring, Charlie, Romany, Joe and Gabriel – the last of whom appears, with his arms outstretched, on the album cover.

But one of the prime instigators of its “complete anarchic madness” is Charlie Andrew. The 44-year-old Brit Award-winning producer – whose most prominent prior credits include albums by Alt-J and London Grammar – appears to have shaken things up considerably.

“In my life, people generally are too respectful,” announces Gilmour. “This is the danger of being in my position, isn’t it?” He sips his tea. “Of being a legend or whatever one wants to call it.”

Gilmour emphasises the word ‘legend’ by raising his eyebrows. “I really needed to be kicked right out of my comfort zone.”

LUCK AND STRANGE IS THE PRODUCT OF SOME challenging times. Gilmour and Samson have yet to shake off the insularity imposed by the arrival of Covid in the UK in the spring of 2020 – “We’re not fully back,” Gilmour says – and no sooner had he and Samson poked their heads above the parapet than they became embroiled in an ugly Twitter spat with Gilmour’s former bandmate Roger Waters (more on that later).