David Gilmour

David Gilmour (born March 6, 1946, Cambridge, England) is a British musician best known for being the lead guitarist and singer for the British rock band Pink Floyd, one of the most famous rock groups in history. Gilmour’s bluesy musical style appears most prominently in his guitar solos, which are often improvised and rely on rich sustained notes rather than shorter notes played at speed. The prominent American music magazine Rolling Stone ranked Gilmour as the 14th best guitarist on its top 100 guitarists list in 2015.

Early life

Gilmour is the son of Douglas Gilmour, a University of Cambridge zoology lecturer, and Sylvia Gilmour, a teacher and film editor. He received his first guitar at age 13, which he borrowed from a neighbor, and he learned to play the instrument from a Pete Seeger instruction record and book. While attending the Perse School in Cambridge, Gilmour played music with Syd Barrett and Roger Waters, a pair of students at Cambridgeshire High School for Boys who would later become his bandmates in Pink Floyd. In the mid-1960s, he and friends tried to make money busking through Spain and France; however, they were so unsuccessful that Gilmour had to be hospitalized for malnutrition.

Pink Floyd years

Barrett, a guitarist, and Waters, a bass player, teamed with drummer Nick Mason and keyboardist Rick Wright to form a band in 1965. The band, Pink Floyd, soon became one of the most well-known psychedelic bands in London. Barrett, however, struggled with schizophrenia and overuse of the hallucinogenic drug LSD, so Gilmour was brought in to play guitar in concerts, while Barrett focused on studio work. After Barrett suffered a breakdown, Gilmour replaced him as guitarist, starting with the 1968 album A Saucerful of Secrets, although Barrett wrote one song on that record.

Discover the fascinating events that shaped the world, straight from our editors.

SIGN UP

By clicking “Sign Up”, you consent to the Britannica Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

Gilmour, who has called Jimi Hendrix one of his main influences, helped shift the band’s focus to the progressive rock sound that was popular in the early ’70s. In this period, Pink Floyd released thematic albums such as Atom Heart Mother (1970), Meddle (1971), and its breakthrough record, The Dark Side of the Moon (1973)—which spent almost 19 years on the Billboard Top 200 album chart and ranked number 55 on Rolling Stone’s list of top 500 albums of all time. The magazine said the record “marked Pink Floyd’s transition from an experimental, jam-oriented progressive outfit primarily beloved by college students and assorted ‘heads,’ to a top-echelon rock act characterized by its rich songwriting.” The album, whose lyrics are written solely by Waters and begins and ends with a heartbeat, features songs that explore heavy themes, including insanity, wealth, and war.

Waters continued to exert more control over the band in subsequent albums, such as Wish You Were Here (1975), Animals (1977), and The Wall (1979), after which he fired keyboardist Wright. On The Wall, in addition to playing guitar, Gilmour cowrote “Comfortably Numb,” “Run Like Hell,” and “Young Lust.” Pink Floyd broke up after the 1983 album The Final Cut; however, Gilmour, Mason, and Wright later reunited under the Pink Floyd name—which infuriated Waters, who sued Gilmour and Mason. (Waters claimed Pink Floyd was “a spent force creatively” and sought to prevent his former bandmates from using the name, but his effort was unsuccessful.) Pink Floyd continued to produce albums, such as A Momentary Lapse of Reason (1987) and The Division Bell (1994), and the band members reunited with Waters at the 2005 Live 8 benefit concert. The set ended with a group hug of the four men. Waters and Gilmour also performed together at a charity event in 2010.

Solo projects and later career

During the late 1970s, Gilmour started to branch out into solo projects and work with other musicians. He came out with his first solo album, David Gilmour, in 1978 and produced two songs on Kate Bush’s debut album, The Kick Inside (1978). His second solo album, About Face (1984), included two songs he wrote with rock icon Pete Townshend, the lead guitarist and songwriter for the Who. During the 1980s, Gilmour appeared as a guest musician on albums by artists including Townshend, Bryan Ferry, and Supertramp. His later solo work includes On an Island (2006) and Rattle That Lock (2015), the latter peaking at number four on the Billboard album chart. He and the other members of Pink Floyd were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (as part of Pink Floyd) in 1996.