David Gilmour: from Cambridge to the Circus Maximus | Ultimate Guitarist Reunion

Why fans still care

DAVID GILMOUR used to own the Black Strat. In March 2026 it sold at Christie’s for about US$14.55 million, and no guitar had ever made more at auction. He wasn’t even the one selling it.

That’s how much the sound means to people. Count Pink Floyd’s records and his own and he has had ten number 1 albums in Britain.

The Dark Side of the Moon, from 1973, spent 937 weeks on the US Billboard 200. Guinness World Records lists that as the most weeks on the chart for any album.

Early life and training

David Jon Gilmour was born in Cambridge on 6 March 1946. His father, Douglas, was a senior lecturer in zoology at the University of Cambridge, and his mother, Sylvia, was a teacher.

Before Pink Floyd he played in Jokers Wild, one of the most popular bands on the Cambridge pub scene in the 1960s. In January 1967 the band went to Paris for a club residency at Le Bilboquet, and he stayed on until the end of that summer.

In late 1967 or early 1968 (the sources don’t agree on the month) he joined Pink Floyd as a guitarist and singer. He was brought in to cover for Syd Barrett.

Career chapters

1. 1967 to 1968Joins Pink Floyd
2. 1968Syd Barrett leaves, and the guitar is Gilmour’s
3. 1973The Dark Side of the Moon
4. 1978First solo album, David Gilmour
5. 1979The Wall
6. 1985Roger Waters, Who’s Who number 18 in · Ultimate Eagles Reunion (story coming soon) leaves the band
7. 1987A Momentary Lapse of Reason, the first Pink Floyd album without Waters, Who’s Who number 18 in · Ultimate Eagles Reunion (story coming soon)
8. 1994The Division Bell
9. 1996Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with Pink Floyd
10. 2003CBE
11. 2005Live 8, Pink Floyd’s four members together again
12. 2014The Endless River, the last Pink Floyd album
13. 2024Luck and Strange, his third solo UK number 1

Joining Pink Floyd and the Syd Barrett years 1968 to 1975

Gilmour and Syd Barrett met as children in Cambridge, and later they played guitar together. In 1965 Barrett co-founded Pink Floyd, while Gilmour kept playing in his own bands.

For a short time in early 1968 Pink Floyd were a five-piece. A photo shoot that January is the only one with both Barrett and Gilmour in it. The five-piece played its first gig on 12 January 1968 and only a handful more. On 26 January the band played without Barrett for the first time, and from then on the guitar was Gilmour’s.

He didn’t walk away from his old friend. When Barrett made his two solo albums in 1970, Gilmour co-produced part of The Madcap Laughs, some of it with Roger Waters, Who’s Who number 18 in · Ultimate Eagles Reunion (story coming soon), and produced Barrett on his own.

Barrett’s shadow stayed over the band. On 5 June 1975, while they were working on Wish You Were Here at Abbey Road, an overweight man with a shaved head and no eyebrows turned up in the studio, and it took them a while to realise it was Syd. In some accounts they were mixing Shine On You Crazy Diamond, a song about him, at the time.

Gilmour has said he has a regret or two about Barrett, who died in 2006. “I regret that I never went up to his house and knocked on the door,” he said.

Dark Side and The Wall 1973 to 1979

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame counts Pink Floyd among the architects of psychedelic and progressive rock. It puts The Dark Side of the Moon (1973) and The Wall (1979) among the most ambitious and best-selling albums ever made.

In Britain, the band’s number 1 albums run from Atom Heart Mother through Wish You Were Here to The Final Cut, and later The Division Bell, Pulse and The Endless River, and in 2025 the live At Pompeii MCMLXXII.

The push and pull with Roger Waters 1975 to 1985

By the mid-1970s the band were pulling in two directions. Louder describes the Wish You Were Here sessions as a struggle to agree, with Roger Waters, Who’s Who number 18 in · Ultimate Eagles Reunion (story coming soon) intent on a new path and Gilmour and Rick Wright happy with the road they were on.

The Wall brought it to a head. Producer Bob Ezrin recalled that Waters, Who’s Who number 18 in · Ultimate Eagles Reunion (story coming soon) hadn’t planned to use any of Gilmour’s material at first. Gilmour said Ezrin was there partly as a man in the middle between the two of them. “Our arguments were numerous and heated,” Gilmour said.

Comfortably Numb started as Gilmour’s demo. Ezrin fought for it, and Waters, Who’s Who number 18 in · Ultimate Eagles Reunion (story coming soon) wrote the words. Even then they argued. By Ezrin’s account, Gilmour wanted it lean, with just bass, drums and guitar, while Waters, Who’s Who number 18 in · Ultimate Eagles Reunion (story coming soon) sided with Ezrin’s idea of an orchestra. They had a row over which of two backing tracks to use, and in the end used bits of both. Gilmour called songs like it the last embers of their ability to work together: “my music, his words.”

By The Final Cut in 1983, which Uncut calls a Waters, Who’s Who number 18 in · Ultimate Eagles Reunion (story coming soon) solo album in all but name, there wasn’t much partnership left. In December 1985 Waters, Who’s Who number 18 in · Ultimate Eagles Reunion (story coming soon) wrote to the band’s record companies to say he had left.

Rockestra and the first solo records 1978 to 1984

His first solo album, David Gilmour, came out in 1978 and reached number 17 in the UK. On 3 October that year he was at Abbey Road Studio Two. Paul McCartney, Who’s Who number 4 in · Ultimate Beatles Reunion (story coming soon) had called a rock orchestra together for the Wings track Rockestra Theme, and the guests included Pete Townshend, Who’s Who number 8 and John Bonham, Who’s Who number 6 in · Highway to Hell (story coming soon). Eric Clapton, Who’s Who number 3, Jeff Beck, Who’s Who number 15 and Jimmy Page, Who’s Who number 32 were invited too, but didn’t come.

His second solo record, About Face, reached number 21 in 1984.

Pink Floyd after Waters 1986 to 2014

Gilmour didn’t see Waters, Who’s Who number 18 in · Ultimate Eagles Reunion (story coming soon) leaving as the end of Pink Floyd. “We felt we were released,” he told Uncut. In 1986 he and Nick Mason started work on a new record with Ezrin aboard the Astoria, Gilmour’s houseboat studio. Waters, Who’s Who number 18 in · Ultimate Eagles Reunion (story coming soon) went to court to stop them using the Pink Floyd name, arguing the band were “a spent force creatively”.

The case was settled at the end of 1987, at a meeting on the same houseboat. Years later Waters, Who’s Who number 18 in · Ultimate Eagles Reunion (story coming soon) admitted he had got it wrong. “I was wrong! Of course I was,” he told the BBC in 2013.

A Momentary Lapse of Reason came out on 7 September 1987 and reached number 3 in Britain and America, with Gilmour leading the band and Rick Wright back on board for the tour. The tour ran to almost 200 shows. With no sponsors, Gilmour and Mason paid for the production themselves, and Mason put up his 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO as collateral. He still owns it. “David carried most of that tour on his shoulders,” Mason said.

The Division Bell followed in March 1994, and Gilmour had found a new songwriting partner in Polly Samson. It was the band’s biggest seller since The Wall and went to number 1 in Britain and America. Marooned, an instrumental Gilmour wrote with Wright, won a Grammy. The band’s last full concert was at Earl’s Court in London on 29 October 1994.

Twenty years later Gilmour and Mason went back to the Division Bell sessions and built The Endless River from them, as a tribute to Wright. Gilmour said Wright had been “underestimated by the public, by the media and by us at times”. It went to number 1 in Britain in 2014, and Gilmour said he was pretty certain it would be the band’s last. “This is the last thing that’ll be out from us,” he told BBC 6 Music.

McCartney, the Who and the Hall of Fame 1984 to 1999

He kept turning up on McCartney’s, Who’s Who number 4 in · Ultimate Beatles Reunion (story coming soon) records in the 1980s and 1990s. On 14 December 1999 he played in McCartney’s, Who’s Who number 4 in · Ultimate Beatles Reunion (story coming soon) band at the Cavern Club in Liverpool.

Pink Floyd’s live album Pulse (1995) went to number 1 in Britain. In 1996 the band went into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, presented by Billy Corgan. The same year he joined the Who at their Hyde Park concert, singing The Dirty Jobs and playing guitar on Love Reign O’er Me.

In November 2003 he was made a CBE for services to music, at Buckingham Palace. He joked that the Queen had probably heard Pink Floyd through her children or grandchildren.

Live 8 2005

On 2 July 2005, at Live 8 in Hyde Park, Gilmour, Roger Waters, Who’s Who number 18 in · Ultimate Eagles Reunion (story coming soon), Nick Mason and Rick Wright played together for the first time since 1981, when they’d last shared a stage at Earl’s Court. They did four songs in about 20 minutes: Breathe, Money, Wish You Were Here and Comfortably Numb.

“The moment was bigger than those bad feelings,” Gilmour said. Afterwards Pink Floyd’s sales jumped by about 1,300 per cent, and he said he’d give his share of that rise to charity.

The moment was bigger than those bad feelings.

On his own terms 2006 to 2026

On an Island went to number 1 in 2006. Two years later, on 15 September 2008, Rick Wright died, aged 65. Gilmour called him “such a lovely, gentle, genuine man”.

On 12 May 2011 he walked on at the O2 Arena during Roger Waters, Who’s Who number 18 in · Ultimate Eagles Reunion (story coming soon)’ The Wall Live and played Comfortably Numb with him. Rattle That Lock (2015) was another UK number 1.

In April 2022 he and Nick Mason put out Hey Hey Rise Up as Pink Floyd, with the Ukrainian singer Andriy Khlyvnyuk, to raise money for humanitarian relief in Ukraine. It was the first new Pink Floyd music since 1994. Gilmour called the Russian invasion “this vile act”.

Luck and Strange came out on 6 September 2024 and became his third solo number 1. The tour opened with six nights at the Circus Maximus in Rome, and the concert film, Live at the Circus Maximus, Rome, reached cinemas on 17 September 2025.

Craft, sound and style

The guitar everyone knows is the Black Strat. Jim Irsay bought it in 2019 for US$3,975,000. In March 2026 his estate sold it at Christie’s for about US$14.55 million, the most ever paid for a guitar at auction.

Listen to the solos in Comfortably Numb or Wish You Were Here and you’ll hear why. He doesn’t play many notes. He makes each one last.

He has his heroes, too. He told Mojo in 2016 that he wished he’d been one of the Beatles.

The Black Strat and the others

The Black Strat is a 1969 Fender Stratocaster he bought in 1970 at Manny’s, on West 48th Street in New York. Christie’s credits it on The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals and The Wall, including Money, Shine On You Crazy Diamond and the Comfortably Numb solo, and on four of his solo albums, from David Gilmour in 1978 to Rattle That Lock in 2015. It was modified so often over the years that it once had an XLR output jack, since taken out. For a long stretch it sat on loan at the Hard Rock Cafe, until he took it back to play Live 8 on 2 July 2005.

It wasn’t the only famous guitar in the house. A white 1954 Stratocaster, serial number 0001, which he got in 1978, played the rhythm parts on Another Brick in the Wall Parts 2 and 3. The solo on Part 2 was a 1955 gold Gibson Les Paul. In the 1980s and 1990s his main electric was a Candy Apple Red 1984 ’57V Strat, the guitar on A Momentary Lapse of Reason and The Division Bell. In the studio his main acoustic was a 1969 Martin D-35 he bought on the streets of New York in 1971, and it’s all over Wish You Were Here.

He told Guitar World in 1993 about a few odd ones. The last Money solo was played on a Lewis guitar “made by some guy in Vancouver”, with “a whole two octaves on the neck”. Dogs was a custom Telecaster through Hiwatt amps and Yamaha rotating-speaker cabinets. By 1993 he was mostly on “modern ’57 reissue Strats with EMG pickups”.

Echoes, fuzz and lap steel

On Meddle in 1971 he was experimenting with a Binson Echorec, and One of These Days grew out of it, then Echoes. For One of These Days he set the vibrato on an H&H amp to roughly the tempo of the delay, and hid the tape splices under cymbal crashes. Money, two years later, was a Fuzz Face and a Binson echo. He thought the amp was a Hiwatt but wasn’t sure, and he recalled using Fender Twin Reverbs a lot in the studio.

His guitar tech Phil Taylor says the Comfortably Numb solos are a Big Muff and a delay, and that Gilmour would rather use a pedal like the Big Muff than a rack unit, because pedals have more character.

He doesn’t play slide with a bottleneck. He plays it on lap steel. One of These Days is a lap steel in open E minor (E, B, E, G, B, E from low to high), and The Great Gig in the Sky is open G with the top string left on E, so he could play major and minor chords on the top three strings. Live, up to 1993, he used two cheap Jensen lap steels fitted with Fender pickups.

Building a solo

On Comfortably Numb he recorded five or six solos, marked the bars he liked with ticks and crosses, then rode the faders to build one solo out of them. The first Money solo was artificially double-tracked. Live, he never plays a solo exactly as it is on the record.

Some of it goes back to A Saucerful of Secrets in 1968, when he laid the guitar on the studio floor and slid the leg of a mic stand along the neck.

He told Rick Beato he wasn’t gifted with enormous speed and just wants to play a nice tune, and he credits Hank Marvin of the Shadows for that. Beato has a name for what happens when fast players turn up on his channel: the “Gilmour Effect”, a flood of comments from fans who’d rather hear Gilmour. Phil Taylor puts the classic sound down to his fingers, his vibrato, his choice of notes and the way he sets his effects. Bob Ezrin says there are no wasted notes.

What other guitarists hear in him

Ask other players about Gilmour and they talk about feel and tone, not speed. He says the same thing himself. “The fingers aren’t very fast but I think I am instantly recognisable,” he said in 2006.

Joe Perry, Who’s Who number 17 is a fan of the first Comfortably Numb solo. “He’s got probably the best Strat tone I can think of,” Perry told Guitar Player in 2024, and he put it down to how little distortion Gilmour uses.

Bob Ezrin, who co-produced The Wall, A Momentary Lapse of Reason and The Division Bell, calls him his favourite guitar player. “He just has a way of massaging sound out of the guitar,” Ezrin said in 2024.

His official site says a Guitarist magazine poll voted him “Best Fender Guitar Player Ever”, ahead of Jimi Hendrix, Who’s Who number 6 and Eric Clapton, Who’s Who number 3.

Stories people still tell

1. Pompei.

   On 6 July 2016, before his concerts at the ancient site, the town of Pompei made him an honorary citizen. “Here in Pompei I feel safe, as if I was at home,” he said. The live album from those shows, Live at Pompeii, reached number 3 in 2017.

2. The Queen.

   At his CBE in 2003 he joked that she’d probably heard Pink Floyd through her children or grandchildren.

3. Thanks for buying it.

   When Luck and Strange hit number 1 in 2024, he said: “I’d like to thank everyone who’s bought my new album.”

4. The guitar he didn’t sell.

   The Black Strat’s record US$14.55 million went to Jim Irsay’s estate, not to Gilmour.

Legacy

The Hall of Fame has Pink Floyd. The Queen made him a CBE. Anglia Ruskin University gave him an honorary doctorate in 2009, and Pompei made him one of its own.

On 22 May 2026 he shared the news that saxophonist Dick Parry had died, aged 83. “My dear friend Dick Parry died this morning,” Gilmour wrote.