David Gilmour’s greatest bits, in Pink Floyd and beyond, selected by TOM DOYLE.

Do You Want To Marry Me?

(Two Weeks In September soundtrack, released on À Cœur Joie EP, Barclay, 1967)

While a private press 1965 EP by his first band Jokers Wild was Gilmour’s debut appearance on vinyl (their cut-glass harmonies on Why Do Fools Fall In Love are something to hear), his contributions to two soundtrack songs by French composer Michel Magne were where he found his voice. The Brigitte Bardot-starring romp from which it came was a dud. But even if Gilmour’s tuning wavers on this ’60s Euro groover, it’s unmistakably him.

Let There Be More Light

(Pink Floyd, A Saucerful Of Secrets, Columbia, 1968)

Gilmour’s first guitar solo on a Pink Floyd record arrived three-and-a-half minutes into the sci-fi opener of their second album, as a blend of his own fluid movements and Barrett’s fractured style. (Floyd manager Andrew King made an uncorroborated claim that Syd played guitar too.) Even more striking was his vocal debut in the stirring choruses (“And then at last, the mighty ship…”), depicting an alien craft landing at RAF Mildenhall.

Point Me At The Sky

(Pink Floyd, Columbia single, 1968)

The fifth Floyd single was a flop, but it again shone the spotlight on Gilmour as a singer (Waters took the bridges and outro). His yearning delivery saw him inhabit the character of Henry McLean, the airman about to attempt take-off in “my beautiful flying machine” amid this

episodic, Beatle-y adventure. It may have failed to point them towards the charts, but it signposted the way ahead, as the band rejected the constraints of the pop 45.

Green Is The Colour

(Pink Floyd, More, Columbia, 1969)

This hushed, country-ish song was one of the standouts of the band’s first film soundtrack, for More, Barbet Schroeder’s messy, Ibiza-set druggy escapade involving an ex-Nazi and a heroin-addicted couple. Written by Waters, sung by Gilmour, it’s a delicate, sun-dappled offering that further developed his dreamy vocal style, in this instance reduced to a horizontal stoner whisper (best evidenced by the ‘wow, man’ observation, “The quickness of the eye deceives the mind”).