Many fans view Pink Floyd’s 1983 album The Final Cut as effectively a Roger Waters solo outing, with the recording plagued by growing tensions within the band. Waters officially left Pink Floyd in 1985, and many assumed that would be the end of the group.

It wasn’t. Not long after Waters’ departure, David Gilmour and Nick Mason reconvened with plans for a new Pink Floyd album. They also brought keyboardist Rick Wright back into the fold after he had been unceremoniously fired by Waters during the making of The Wall.

The resulting album, A Momentary Lapse of Reason, surfaced in 1987. But its release ignited a bitter feud and legal battle between Gilmour and Waters over the right to use the Pink Floyd name.

The dispute was eventually settled out of court, with Gilmour’s camp retaining the right to carry on as Pink Floyd. But what had caused the acrimony that had been simmering behind the scenes for years?

For longtime Pink Floyd roadie and tour manager Chris Adamson, it can be traced to one thing.

“What messed them up was the age-old thing — wives!” Adamson tells Guitar Player. “Before that, there was none of that thing going on. David and Roger really complemented each other. But then the wives got involved.”

Adamson — who recently shared his recollections of Floyd during the making of Meddle and The Dark Side of the Moon — believes the group’s internal dynamics began to fray once Gilmour and Waters entered new relationships following the breakdown of their first marriages.

“With all the original wives, the band and all of us used to go on holiday together, the wives, the kids, everyone,” he says.

That changed in the late 1970s. Waters had been married Judith Trim, but their marriage ended in 1975. While on tour in America, the bass guitarist met Carolyne Christie, who worked for EG, the management company whose roster included Roxy Music, King Crimson, T. Rex and Emerson, Lake & Palmer, among other artists.

“They ended up living together and then getting married and having two kids together and everything. But she was incredibly strong — demanding, whatever. She basically said to Roger one day, ‘What the hell do you need those other guys for?’

“And that’s when the rot set in. That started the split.”

Adamson’s recounting is given further weight in Mark Blake’s 2008 biography of Pink Floyd, Comfortably Numb: The Inside Story of Pink Floyd. “Carolyne was landed gentry, and had all the attitudes associated with her class, and she seemed to have this huge effect on Waters,” Blake writes, noting that “he seemed to change completely.”

Adamson says a similar scenario played out in Gilmour’s personal life in the early 1990s. He had been married to artist and former model Virginia “Ginger” Hasenbein since 1975, but they divorced in 1990. He soon began dating English novelist and journalist Polly Samson, whom he married in 1994.

“By this time the split had happened in the band,” Adamson says, “but she pushed any chance for a reunion right out the door when she said to Dave, ‘What the hell do you need them for?’”

The Wall co-producer Bob Ezrin told Blake that Samson’s presence in the band further fueled the internal tensions.

“It wasn’t easy at first,” he said. “It put a strain on the boys’ club, and it was almost clichéd to have the new woman coming in and then get involved in the career.”

Even Gilmour acknowledged in a Mojo interview that “Polly has a tendency to ruffle everyone’s feathers. I’m not aware of her having ruffled Nick or Rick’s feathers, but she certainly ruffled the management’s.”

Years later, Adamson was working with John Mayer at London’s Royal Albert Hall when he decided to approach Gilmour in the hope of mending the rift between him and Waters.

“I really did think I could get the band back together. I was at the bar with Dave and he introduced me to his new wife. She was all very friendly until she found out I was from the past. Then suddenly the long knives came out.

“I remember standing at a bar with Dave and asking him, ‘Is there any chance of you and Roger getting together?’ And he looked at me and said, ‘Not a fuckin’ chance now.’”

Adamson believes the death of Floyd keyboardist Rick Wright in 2008 severed the remaining thread keeping the group’s former members united. The four musicians last shared a stage in 2005, when Pink Floyd reunited for Live 8.

Gilmour’s most recent public performance with Waters was in 2011, when he made a surprise appearance at Waters’ The Wall Live tour to perform his iconic guitar solos on “Comfortably Numb.”

In the years since, Gilmour and Waters have moved even further apart. In 2023, Samson publicly attacked Waters over his political views in a tweet in which she called him “anti-Semitic” and a “Putin apologist,” among a long list of other accusations.

Gilmour subsequently responded: “Every word demonstrably true.” Significantly, he insists Pink Floyd will not regroup.

So while Adamson believes time can heal old wounds, he thinks Pink Floyd’s rift has gone too far to repair.

“Getting the band together is never going to happen,” he says. “When Rick passed away, things continued to drift apart. And unfortunately that situation is how it is today.”

The Liverpool Cavern Club was famous as the spot where the Beatles found local fame in the early 1960s. It was there that Brian Epstein first saw the group on Thursday, February 9, 1961, and got the idea to manage the band, which led to their signing with George Martin’s Parlophone label the following year.

The club was such an important part of Beatles history and so beloved by the locals that in 1973, Liverpool officials allowed the Cavern to be purchased by the Merseyrail underground railway to create a ventilation shaft. When that proved unnecessary or infeasible, the property was turned into a parking lot. (Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone?)

A new Cavern Club was built across the street, and it was there, on December 14, 1999, that original Beatle Paul McCartney made an appearance to promote his new album, Run Devil Run. For the occasion, he brought with him not one but two fellow legends: former Deep Purple drummer and founder Ian Paice, and guitar legend David Gilmour.

Paice and Gilmour had good reason to be on hand. Both had participated in the recording of Run Devil Run, an album that saw McCartney cover a dozen rock and roll classics and three originals. The album’s creation followed a year of mourning for McCartney’s wife and Wings partner, Linda.

McCartney wanted to cut the album quickly, just as the Beatles’ first albums had been made. To that end, he enlisted Chris Thomas — who had helped engineer the Beatles’ 1968 White Album and played keyboards on four of its cuts — to produce the album in Abbey Road’s Studio Two, where much of the Beatles catalog was tracked.

Gilmour, who played electric guitar and lap steel on the album, was certainly no stranger to McCartney, having played guitar solos on tracks from his albums Give My Regards to Broad Street, from 1984, and Flowers in the Dirt, from 1989. Even before then, Gilmour had been among the many guitarists — including Pete Townshend, Hank Marvin, Laurence Juber and Denny Laine — who performed on McCartney and Wings’ star-studded “Rockestra Theme,” from that group’s final album, 1979’s Back to the Egg.

The guitarist’s work on Run Devil Run occurred during a quiet period in his career. Pink Floyd had put out their 14th studio album, The Division Bell, in 1994, and would not release another until their final record, 2014’s The Endless River. All was likewise quiet on Gilmour’s solo career front.

In fact, two public performances were the main activities in Gilmour’s career following The Division Bell: They comprised McCartney’s 1999 Run Devil Run promotion and an appearance with the Who at their 1996 concert in London’s Hyde Park, a celebration of the group’s return to the stage after a seven-year hiatus. Gilmour performed on a pair of tunes from Quadrophenia, singing "The Dirty Jobs" and playing guitar on "Love Reign O'er Me.”

The guitarist’s performance with McCartney — during which he played a rather well-worn blonde Fender Telecaster — came close to satisfying a desire he’d had for years to play with the Beatles.

“I really wish I had been in the Beatles,” Gilmour told Mojo in 2016. “[They] taught me how to play guitar; I learnt everything. The bass parts, the lead, the rhythm, everything. They were fantastic.”

Recalling his participation in Run Devil Run, Gilmour told the magazine the experiencing brought him back to his childhood.

“I’m a kid, really,” he said. “You get into Studio Two at Abbey Road, you’re sitting there with Paul McCartney, and your guitar is plugged in. You think that’s an ordinary day’s work, but of course, it isn’t; it’s magical!”

And as Gilmour revealed in that same interview, it was he who convinced McCartney to perform a Beatles song at the Run Devil Run promotion at the Cavern: “I Saw Her Standing There,” the first song on the the first Beatles album, 1963’s Please Please Me.

“Managing to persuade him to sing ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ at the Cavern, with me doing the John Lennon parts, was absolutely fantastic,” he said.

“I’ve been in the Who, I’ve been in the Beatles, and I’ve been in Pink Floyd,” Gilmour concluded. “Top that, motherfucker!”

The performance was released as a DVD, Live at the Cavern Club, in 1999.

Pink Floyd roadie and production manager Chris Adamson saw much of what went on behind the scenes during the group’s halcyon days in the 1970s, becoming firmly entrenched within the band’s inner circle.

“I was with them for a good 10 years, having begun working for them from around the time of Meddle,” Adamson recalls today. “I was with them through Obscured by Clouds, The Dark Side of the Moon and right up to them starting The Wall album. I was just a roadie but, in those days, I worked for the band full-time. They didn't tour like you do now, where you have a set period, and you build up to it and go. In those days, you'd even go out and do a couple of gigs on a weekend, or whatever else came in.

“And then when you weren't doing that, you did other things. I would take their wives out shopping. I even dug a pond for David Gilmour at his house in Epping Forest once. You just did all that sort of stuff. You became like a domestic helper, a butler of sorts. A jack of all trades, which was enjoyable.”

During the group’s recording sessions for The Dark Side of the Moon at Abbey Road Studios, Adamson was there front and center. He provided the title to “Any Colour You Like,” which he explains was one of his catchphrases: “Any color you like; they're all blue.” He also contributed several spoken-word fragments to two of the album’s tracks.

“The first voice you hear on that album is me,” Adamson reveals. He appears soon after the ticking clock on the opening track, “Speak to Me.” “I say, ‘I’ve been mad for fucking years, absolutely years…’ I also do the bit at the end of ‘Money.’”

He explains that the statements he and the other participants provided were answers to questions posed by the band.

“We were in the studio one day and Roger just gave us these cards with questions on them. We went and sat in the studio and you had to just read the questions to yourself. One was, ‘Do you think you’re going mad?’ Another was, ‘What do you think of the dark side of the moon?’ and ‘When was the last time you had a fight?’”

Adamson recalls some of the other participants.

“There is the Irish-sounding guy who was the doorman at Abbey Road, a guy called Roger ‘the Hat’ Manifold, who was a roadie and used to work for a band called Love Affair. There's also a woman on it too, Puddie, who at the time was going out with Pink Floyd road manager Peter Watts. She's the one who says, ‘Cruisin' for a bruisin’.’

“And the other two people on there are Henry McCullough, the guitarist out of Wings, and his wife. Ironically, the question they were answering was, ‘When was the last time you had a fight?’”

McCullough’s answer — “I don't know. I was really drunk at the time” — can be heard at the end of “Money.”

Part of Adamson’s job involved working closely with David Gilmour, particularly when setting up his electric guitars, amps and effects in the recording studio. It was a responsibility he took on from the moment he came onboard. In this role, he inadvertently became responsible for one of the most unusual sounds on “Echoes,” recorded during the Meddle sessions.

“Where you hear what sounds like a seagull screeching was due to me being in a rush one day wiring all of David’s pedalboard,” Adamson explains. “That caused me to wire the wah-wah pedal the wrong way around. So when he went to switch it on, that was the sound he got, but David loved it.

“So then I had to have that incorporated into his pedalboard so that he could play it. I had a switch made that would switch it back to a regular wah-wah pedal or switch it so he could get that screeching sound whenever he wanted. So that all came about from just an accident of me rushing and plugging it in the wrong way.”

In keeping with Floyd’s experimental spirit, the success of The Dark Side of the Moon encouraged the group to begin hatching plans for an album built entirely around non-musical sounds. Tentatively titled Household Objects, the project would eventually be shelved, but not before the band created material from everything from cans and bottles to a vacuum cleaner. Adamson was assigned to seek out the objects.

“They were going to use objects, such as airplane elastic that could be stretched over a table with a matchbox under it to get a bass sound,” he explains. “And a stiff brush on a wooden floor for a snare sound.

“I spent ages with Rick going around department stores buying bits of things that you could make any kind of noise from. And eventually we'd got three basic tracks down. When we came to put some footsteps on one track, though, we could never get them in sync. And that’s where we found out that the metronome we were using at Abbey Road Studios was always going out of tempo on the sixth beat. So all the tracks became useless. They did end up using a lot of bits and pieces from the tracks on other albums.”

Adamson considers Gilmour “one of those magical guitar players with such an identifiable sound.” To him, the three principals of Pink Floyd — Gilmour, Waters and Wright — were all masters of sonic exploration.

“It was the age when synthesizers of all sorts started to appear with loads of sounds,” he says. “And they all used to use Binson Echorecs too, which were delay units made out of a metal disc in Italy. They had these heads around it where you could set the delay or could change it. On a lot of the tracks, when you hear Roger playing bass, it’s being played through a Binson and then through an Echoplex.”

Adamson says tape echo was a commonly used effect, with the band employing various tricks to extend the loop.

“They’d have a two-inch tape machine, and then positioned right across the room we'd have a drumstick and use it to hold the length of tape while it spun so we could get a really long loop to create a delay. They were real explorers of music.”

The critical and commercial success of The Dark Side of the Moon transformed Pink Floyd from a cult band into one of the biggest groups on the planet. For Adamson, who had been there through the experiments, the breakthrough was as dramatic as it was unexpected.

“The Floyd were a sort of cult band before then, but that album just launched them into the stratosphere,” says Adamson. “I don't know why it did, but it did, and it just happened at the right time. It was monstrous.”

For someone who had spent years wiring pedalboards, hunting down odd noises and doing whatever jobs the band needed, Adamson had witnessed the transformation from unusually close range. Pink Floyd had gone from an experimental cult act to a global phenomenon — and he had been there for the strange, messy and often accidental moments that helped make it happen.

Even the most celebrated, seemingly indomitable guitar players have influences; they have heroes they try to emulate. David Gilmour, a master craftsman of guitar solos, is no exception. In fact, following in the footsteps of one guitarist left him terrified.

Gilmour once said that he developed his “tuneful” approach to soloing after a reluctant acceptance that, try as he might, he would never be a shredder. It helped him weave into his own lane. But it wasn’t always like that.

In 1985, a decade after Pink Floyd were arguably at the height of their powers and had successfully followed up The Dark Side of the Moon with an album that exhausted Gilmour, he spoke to Guitar Classics. In the interview, he was asked to dissect his guitar-playing DNA.

“I was a blues fan, but I was an all-around music fan,” he explained of his early days (via Far Out). “For me, it was Lead Belly through B.B. King and later Eric Clapton, Roy Buchanan, Jeff Beck, Eddie Van Halen and anyone you care to mention.”

His influences were widespread, and he wasn’t closed off to newer players bringing fresh ideas to the table. In fact, he celebrated those innovators, adding: “Mark Knopfler has a lovely, refreshing guitar style. He brought back something that seemed to have gone astray in guitar playing.”

He tried to copy a number of those players, to extract knowledge from them. But for a man who has written more iconic solos than most, there was one player he held in even higher regard.

“I was trying to learn 12-string acoustic guitar like Lead Belly,” he says. “At the same time, I was trying to learn lead guitar like Hank Marvin and later Clapton. All of those different things had their moments and filtered through my learning process. These days I don’t listen to other people to steal their licks, although I’m sure Mark Knopfler and Eddie Van Halen still influence me.”

As for the solo he wishes he wrote, he name-drops Peter Green’s cut on Fleetwood Mac’s 1968 instrumental track, “Albatross”. Years later, he was asked to cover the song at Mick Fleetwood & Friends’ tribute concert to Green, at London’s Palladium on February 20th, 2020. Green would die just months later.

Fleetwood had personally invited Gilmour to feature. It put the fear of God into him.

“He had so much reverence for Peter Green’s playing and who Peter was and the songs,” the drummer told Rolling Stone. “He initially got cold feet. He was like, ‘I don’t know if I can interpret Peter’s work. It’s so amazing. Maybe I can’t do that…At the moment, I’m sort of passing on the idea. But later on, if this happens, I may gather enough courage.’”

Gather the courage he did, but with a degree of separation between him and Green. He opted to play pedal steel, rather than electric guitar.

Yet the song proves the point that all guitarists have their muses. Green has said that “Albatross” was written in direct reference to two tracks: Santo & Johnny’s “Sleep Walk” and “The Last Meal”, a John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers track from Clapton’s revered era with the group. He had craved a bluesier take on Hawaiian-style playing, and the song stuck to Gilmour like glue.

Meanwhile, Gilmour has named this player as one every guitarist should study. He’s also confessed to never learning one of his most famous solos.

Few guitarists have developed a sound as distinctive as David Gilmour. But the Pink Floyd legend has always been open about the players who helped shape it.

While Gilmour would eventually become known for his lyrical phrasing and expressive bends, he spent his formative years studying the guitarists he admired. One album, in particular, became an important part of his education in electric-guitar playing: Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton.

Released in 1966, John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers’ landmark album captured Eric Clapton at the forefront of Britain’s blues boom following his departure from the Yardbirds. Combining blues standards like Freddie King’s “Hideaway” and Robert Johnson’s “Ramblin’ on My Mind” with originals such as “Double Crossing Time,” it became essential listening for aspiring guitarists — including a young David Gilmour.

Gilmour has often said he was never interested in building his reputation on speed. Instead, he gravitated toward the melodic playing of the Shadows’ Hank Marvin. But when it came to developing his blues guitar vocabulary, Clapton’s work with John Mayall proved just as important.

“All of those guys were incredible,” Gilmour once said. “I spent time trying to learn how to play their licks perfectly. I would suggest any young player should try to sit down and do that. You will wind up knowing how to play their stuff quite well.”

For Gilmour, learning Clapton’s solos wasn’t about imitation for its own sake. It was about building a musical vocabulary that would eventually become his own.

“Eventually,” he added, “you will find your own style from that. It forces its way out of the copying.”

Alongside Clapton’s blues playing and Marvin’s melodic approach, Gilmour found the foundations of a style that would later define Pink Floyd. Although his music ultimately moved well beyond traditional blues, he has always maintained that those influences never disappeared.

Speaking to Guitar World in 1988, Gilmour recalled that he also spent his early years studying Jimi Hendrix and Howlin’ Wolf.

“When I was young, I actually sat down and learned many of the classic blues solos by Eric and Hendrix, as well as studying old Howlin’ Wolf records,” he said. Although he no longer consciously thinks in blues clichés, he added, “the blues run pretty deep” in his playing.

While Gilmour has admitted he feels “a certain sort of jealousy“ over Clapton’s talent and reputation, he’s chosen not to compete with him. Instead, Gilmour built his reputation on phrasing, dynamics, and tone. To that end, Clapton’s influence was an important part of that journey, alongside Marvin, Hendrix, and the blues pioneers whose music helped shape one of rock’s most recognizable guitar voices.

It’s among the most famous electric guitar solos in all of rock. Some consider it the best solo of all time.

But David Gilmour says he can’t play it. Which is odd, considering he’s the one who created it.

The solo in question is the second in the Pink Floyd iconic song “Comfortably Numb,” from 1979’s The Wall.

Gilmour tells Rick Beato that he “never learned” it and prefers to just wing it and do something fresh when he performs it live.

“I’m not thinking about the audience and what they want, to be honest,” he tells the host. “I just like it starting the way it starts, and the rest of it sort of so ingrained in me that the various parts of it are going to find their way into what I'm doing.

“But I’ve never learned it.

"I mean, there are a lot of guys who can play that. But I don’t play it,” he adds with a laugh. “To me, it’s just different every time. Why would I want to do it the same? Would it be more popular with the people listening if I did it exactly like the record? Or do they prefer that I just wander off into whatever feels like the right thing at the time? I don't know.

“I suspect they prefer it to be real and to be happening, you know? There are cues within it, which I use to tell the band, ‘We’re going to end’ or ‘We’re going to do this.’ And so, they crop up as being the same every time, pretty much.”

As The Wall producer Bob Ezrin explained to Guitar Player in 2024, the two solos were cut at different times, with different producers.

“The solo at the end of the song was done when Roger [Waters] and I were in a different studio, and David did that with James Guthrie,” Ezrin said. (For the record, the first solo, which takes place at 2:38 into the song, is Ezrin’s favorite of the two.)

Both solos were cut with the guitarist’s celebrated Black Strat played through a combination of Hiwatt amplifiers and his Yamaha rotary speaker cabinet.

While the first solo has a more “composed” feeling about it, the second combines a sense of being both planned and improvised. Gilmour has explained he created this impression by recording five or six takes and compiling the finished solo from the best bits of each. The combination of repetition and development keeps the excitement building for two minutes, before Gilmour moves up an octave to raise the intensity another level.

That freedom to create on the fly ran counter to Pink Floyd’s meticulous approach to recording. Gilmour tells Beato the group constantly discussed each song’s development.

“All the time, on everything, on every instrument,” he attests. And while he says drummer Nick Mason never required much direction from the others on any song, Gilmour made one special request of him for “Comfortably Numb.”

“There’s a place where there’s a bass drum missing,” he explains. “I said, ‘Can you just not play that bass drum? I want that gap.’”

While guitarists ranging from Steve Morse to Joe Perry have raved to us about Gilmour’s first “Comfortably Numb” solo, Alex Skolnick tells us he prefers the second.

“Often overshadowed by the song’s first solo, that second solo somehow manages to be screaming, despite the slow tempo, and is a true lightning-in-a-bottle moment,” he said in our November 2024 issue. “It’s a masterclass in using space, bends, melodic development, resolution of ideas, effective tone, blues in a non-blues context and pure emotion.”

As for Gilmour, his favorite solo is on “Dogs,” from the group’s 1977 album, Animals. Sadly, he doesn’t say which of the track’s four guitar solos he’s referring to. And as he revealed recently, one of those was accidentally erased, forcing him to redo it.

While few guitarists have built a more distinctive voice than David Gilmour, there's one player whose position he has long envied: Eric Clapton.

Not because Clapton is more famous, or because of his technique, but because of the freedom his blues background affords him.

“I have to confess to a certain sort of jealousy of Eric Clapton’s position,” Gilmour says. “He has his wealth of material, and he's such a consummate blues player that he's got a wealth of other people's material that he can play that's not so well known. He can take out a new band every time.

“That would be a nice position to be in. Then reality kicks in. But I'm not in that position.”

It's a surprising admission from a guitarist whose own catalog includes some of rock's most celebrated solos. Yet Gilmour has never viewed himself as a traditional blues player in the Clapton mold.

In fact, he says his signature style was shaped partly by necessity.

“I wasn't gifted with enormous speed on the guitar,” he told Rick Beato in 2024. “There were years when I was younger when I thought I could get that if I practiced enough. But it just wasn't ever really going to happen.”

Rather than chase technical flash, Gilmour gravitated toward melody and phrasing, drawing inspiration from early hero Hank Marvin.

“Hank was just playing a tune,” he said. “I think I come from there.”

That melodic approach would become the cornerstone of Gilmour's playing with Pink Floyd, helping him forge a style that stood apart from both blues traditionalists and the generation of electric guitar heroes obsessed with speed. He’s said before that his style is “an amalgamation of folk and blues.” As a young guitarist, he studied the work of Clapton, Jimi Hendrix and Peter Green, borrowing ideas while gradually developing a voice of his own.

“You bend a note, hold it, then shake it,” he said of his vibrato technique in a 1983 interview. “It's kind of like the way classically trained singers hold a note for a couple of seconds, then add vibrato. I've always enjoyed listening to guitarists who do that well — players like Peter Green.”

Even after decades at the top of the guitar world, during which heÆs performed some of the most-loved guitar solos, Gilmour has remained surprisingly self-critical. Speaking to Guitar World in 1998, he admitted that “about once a year, I have sort of an attack of a guilty conscience about my abilities, so I'll sit and run through a couple of scales.”

That lingering insecurity may help explain his admiration for Clapton's position. Gilmour can appreciate the freedom that comes with being able to draw from a vast blues repertoire, even if pursuing that path would have meant abandoning the qualities that made him unique in the first place.

As Gilmour himself once observed, he can try to sound like Jeff Beck, Clapton or Hendrix, “but it never works.” He only ever sounds like David Gilmour.

Back in 2006, Phil Manzanera was three years removed from Roxy Music’s latest reunion and back in the mix as a hired gun, working for the likes of Robert Wyatt, Brian Eno, Annie Lennox and Chrissie Hynde, among others, as well as recording his own albums. But a stint as David Gilmour’s right-hand man was a welcome addition to the regimen.

“I met David when I was 15, the week he joined Pink Floyd,” Manzanera tells us via phone from his home in Sussex in the English countryside — next door to Gilmour’s, in fact. “Pink Floyd was the coolest band in the world back then, them and the Soft Machine.”

The two guitarists maintained their friendship, and Manzanera co-wrote the single “One Slip” with Gilmour for Pink Floyd’s 1987 comeback album, A Momentary Lapse of Reason.

Fast forward 19 years and Gilmour was preparing for his own comeback with On an Island, his first solo outing in 22 years and his first album since Pink Floyd’s The Division Bell in 1994. He recruited Manzanera to co-produce with himself and Chris Thomas, as well as play guitar on three of the album’s 10 tracks — joining a corps that included Pink Floyd keyboardist Richard Wright and latter-day bassist Guy Pratt, along with David Crosby, Graham Nash, Robert Wyatt, Jools Holland, Georgie Fame and others.

“David doesn’t need a producer,” Manzanera says, “but he likes to have company to bounce his ideas off of, or to say, ‘I’ve got 10 ideas — any of these any good?’”

Manzanera created a chart on which he noted which pieces of music might work well together.

“There were 153 little bits, so I would take it to my studio and go back the following week and say, ‘Bit number 78 with bit number 13, and then a bit of number 121.’ And David would say, ‘What’s that?’ and I’d say, ‘That’s you. You did that!’” He laughs. “He’d either go with it or wouldn’t, but he did go with a lot of the stuff.

“He just had too much stuff accumulated and wanted a bit of help to sort it out. I’m used to doing albums and things.”

Working alongside Gilmour at his houseboat studio Astoria and his studio in Sussex, Manzanera helped him complete the album. Nearby sat Gilmour’s circa-1954 Stratocaster with the serial number 0001, which he purchased in 1978 and reportedly used on “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2.”

“I’d just sit there and have his number 0001 Strat next to me, looking at it,” Manzanera says. “It was just a lot of fun.”

Manzanera adds that all concerned were well aware that Gilmour “hadn’t done anything in a while… so I was just trying to be supportive of him, as a friend, and wanting him to succeed.”

He’s also an unabashed Gilmour fan.

“I love his voice,” Manzanera notes. “Obviously everyone goes on about the guitar, which is fantastic, but I just love that voice. It’s so unique. He does a lot of stuff so well — still does it so well. It’s amazing.”

After On an Island’s release in March 2006, Gilmour recruited Manzanera to be part of the band for a spring and summer tour supporting the album, along with Wright and Pratt.

“When we did ‘Wish You Were Here,’ I got to play it on the actual acoustic 12-string he played on the original, so that was a lot of fun, too.”

Manzanera also co-produced Gilmour’s next album, 2015’s Rattle That Lock, playing both acoustic guitar and keyboards on the album and again joining Gilmour on tour during 2015 and 2016.

In between, he was part of the production team for 2014’s The Endless River — to date the final Pink Floyd album. Intended as a tribute to Wright, who passed away in 2008, the 18 instrumental tracks were built from recordings made during sessions for Floyd’s 1994 album The Division Bell, with additional material added nearly two decades later.

“We were in David’s kitchen one day — this is after Rick died — and there were all these tapes,” Manzanera recalls. “David asked, ‘Do you fancy having a listen and see if you can make anything out of it?’

“So I went away for six weeks and listened to every scrap. I loved Rick’s Farfisa organ from the early Pink Floyd albums, so I particularly chose bits that had it. That was such a unique aspect of Floyd that hadn’t been spotlighted enough.”

After cutting and pasting clips together, Manzanera felt he could create something cohesive from the recordings. Gilmour liked what he heard, but Manzanera was concerned about playing it for Nick Mason.

“I thought, How am I gonna play this to Nick? I’ve taken a few liberties with his drums — one bit from here, one bit from there. Finally I thought, Right, I’m gonna turn the lights off, put the screen saver on and put the music on and just not look at him.

“He listened to it and said at the end, ‘Yeah, there might be something there.’ Phew!”

After a break of a few months, Gilmour pushed everyone into the studio to finish the recording.

“David said, ‘Look, why don’t we all go into the studio at the same time and try and finish this off together?’”

Gilmour recruited his wife, the English novelist and writer Polly Samson, to compose lyrics for the album’s only non-instrumental track, “Louder Than Words.” With assistance from producer Youth, “we all worked together and got it done,” Manzanera says.

The Endless River hit number one in quite a few countries around the world, including the U.K., and number three on the Billboard 200 in the U.S.

Manzanera — who received an Order of the British Empire honor in 2024 — tells many of his other stories in his 2024 memoir Revolución to Roxy, and has brought his An Evening of Words and Music show to the U.S. Current dates include Space in Chicago on May 18, the Shank in Milwaukee on May 19 and the Quinlan Room in Minneapolis on May 20 (tickets and other details via manzanera.com).

In the studio, the guitarist is also prepping a 51st-anniversary reissue (scheduled for September 11) of Mainstream by his pre-Roxy band Quiet Sun, as well as a brand-new album by the band. There will also be a boxed-set edition of Roxy Music’s second album, For Your Pleasure, remastered by Steven Wilson and due out this fall.

“It’s a really great package, with lots of extra stuff on it,” Manzanera says. “I’ve been waiting for this for years, ’cause it’s one of my favorite albums. I heard the Dolby Atmos mix that Steven did; there’s lots of great things Eno had done that I never heard before… ’cause back then you were constrained by the length of sides on vinyl. If you had extra stuff you couldn’t use it, but now it will have a chance to be heard, which is exciting.”

There aren’t many guitarists who can say they were there when Pink Floyd formed and then went on to perform with two of their key members. Tim Renwick is the exception.

The English guitarist’s association with the Floyd stretches far back. He attended Cambridgeshire High School for Boys, where he met future Floyd members Syd Barrett and Roger Waters. Renwick was around as Barrett's mental health began to unravel in 1967 (Alice Cooper told Guitar Player about witnessing his deterioration up close). He was also friends with David Gilmour and saw him perform with his pre-Floyd group Jokers Wild. Many years later, he became the go-to guitarist for the solo tours of Gilmour and Waters.

In between, Renwick carved out his own career. In addition to performing on David Bowie’s self-titled 1969 album (famous for its hit track “Space Oddity”) and doing session work with Eric Clapton and Elton John, he was a guitarist with English outfit Sutherland Brothers & Quiver, who scored a couple of modest U.S. hits with “(I Don't Want to Love You But) You Got Me Anyway” in 1973 and “Arms of Mary” in 1976.

But it was with folk-rocker Al Stewart that Renwick firmly established his reputation. He contributed his six-string stylings to most of Stewart’s 1970s output, including his 1976 hi album Year of the Cat. The title track showcases Renwick’s hauntingly melodic guitar work as he performs the song’s acoustic and electric solos.

In the years that followed, he found himself in demand with his old Cambridgeshire mates GIlmour and Waters. In 1984, Waters invited him to join the tour for his album The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking, where Renwick shared guitar duties with Eric Clapton. A few years later, in 1987, Gilmour asked him to join Pink Floyd’s A Momentary Lapse of Reason. He found the experiences couldn’t have been more different.

“Roger was always quiet when I first knew him, but by the time I actually got to play in his band, he was a bit difficult,” he reveals. “He was very determined to rule everything. He had a problem passing out responsibility to people. He had to sort of do everything for himself, which made him an uncomfortable figure to work with really.

“But when I worked with David, he was much more casual,” he continues. “He'd just let people get into the swing of things without leaning on them too heavily. So, you could express yourself a bit more around him, which was more fun, obviously. So that was the difference between them. David was a far more relaxed person to work with and brought the best out of people.”

With that said, Renwick offered some anecdotes about Pink Floyd’s three guitarists.

Syd Barrett

“I first saw them when they were starting out, and Syd Barrett was very much the leader of the band. I got to know him a bit and he was really lovely, a very wide-eyed and quite amusing young chap. I was told later that pretty much all his material from the first couple of Pink Floyd albums, was written when he was an early teenager, so it was all stuff that he had in his back pocket already as it were.

“They had early success with their singles ‘See Emily Play’ and ‘Apples and Oranges,’ but they didn't really get taken seriously, apart from in London where the psychedelic thing was happening in a much bigger way than anywhere else. And so they were struggling a bit. They'd play gigs out of town that weren't very terribly well attended.

“And Syd was living in a house with a bunch of people that were doing quite a large amount of psychedelic drugs, so he was completely going off his tree. I saw him later in London and hardly recognized him. He was just completely different and very difficult to communicate with. He would answer questions about four minutes after you'd asked them and all completely out of sync.

“And there were wild stories of him turning up at gigs, turning his back to the audience and not playing. He’d be just waving his arms around which became quite a common thing, and was quite strange.”

“Syd had been the main writer in the band, but once he left, David — who’d already been hired to help out due to Syd’s behavior — sort of took over and had a lot of space and room to fill. As Syd’s guitar playing was pretty strange and quite unusual, David basically had to take a lot of those ideas and make them much more musical, and he also brought melody to the band in a big way.

“At the same time, Roger also began to write, but it took a while for him to kind of get going on that.”

Roger Waters

“I got along with him very well when we were rehearsing for the Pros and Cons tour. It was just the two of us.

“But once we actually got involved with the band, he really became a bit too bossy. It wasn't as lighthearted as it could have been. I have to say he took everything very seriously, and tended to want everything to sound exactly the same as the record.

“And he was very vigilant in pointing things out. If you didn't quite play something exactly right or changed the feel of something, he would point that out and let you know that he wanted it to be exactly as close to the record as it possibly could be.”

“It has to be said that Roger was a bit resentful of the fact that whenever Eric Clapton got up and played a solo, the place would erupt. People would get their lighters out and there would be a tremendous outpouring of applause.

“And that annoyed Roger quite a lot because rightly or wrongly, he felt that the audience weren't actually listening to the songs. They were just watching out for what Eric was doing. So there was a certain amount of resentment there.”

David Gilmour

“Jokers Wild was a really good, and popular band, especially with the Cambridge college student set. They used to do a lot of Beach Boys numbers and stuff with three and four-part harmonies. Obviously, David’s playing was good, but the guitar wasn’t at the forefront so, there wasn’t much actual guitar playing or a great deal of soloing involved.

“But he was always a bit of a guitar hero. He was the sort of person that, if you walked into a room, everyone would stop talking. He was quite staggeringly good looking and had quite a presence to him as well.”

“A few years later, when I was in Sutherland Brothers & Quiver, David helped us out a lot. He came and did a bit of production, worked on our demos and things for songs, and we recorded at his home studio. He used to come along and jam at gigs but because we never announced it. No one ever knew who it was.”

“There's not really that much spoken about him and his philanthropy — for example, his work with Kate Bush and how very helpful he was to her. He actually fronted the money, paid for the arrangements to be done and all kinds of stuff. He obviously could see that she had a fantastic amount of talent.

“David also made sure she wasn't exposed to too much rock and roll nonsense when she was young. He kind of held her back in a way too, so she had time to sort of develop and grow up and be able to actually deal with the pressures of the business.”

Pink Floyd found it difficult to follow up their hit 1973 album, The Dark Side of the Moon. The record’s success left them wondering exactly how they could top it, or at the very least come up with something even more stunning.

As guitarist David Gilmour told NPR in October, “We were in a very strange place.”

Now we know just how strange. In a recent talk with NPR for the album’s 50th anniversary, former Floyd drummer Nick Mason explained the group’s methods during their first weeks back in Abbey Road Studios, where Dark Side was recorded.

“In fact, of course, we ended up spending an awful lot of studio time doing nothing or working on a project called Household Objects,” Mason says. The concept behind that latter project, he said, “was to make a record using household objects rather than musical instruments.

“The only thing I remember playing was, instead of using a bass drum, I had an ax and a large log of wood.”

Pink Floyd recorded just two songs before giving up.

“I think if we’d stuck with it, we’d still be in Abbey Road now trying to finish,” Mason says. “We should have carried on touring Dark Side for another year. But we didn’t. We thought we’d sort of had to get on, I suppose.”

It wasn’t all a wasted effort. One of the instruments for Household Objects was a makeshift glass harmonica, made by filling water glasses with varying amounts of liquid and stroking the wetted edges of the glasses to produce bell-like timbres. The instrument reappeared on the intro to “Shine on You Crazy Diamond,” the central track on Wish You Were Here, the album they eventually got around to making.

As Gilmour previously explained, bass guitarist Roger Waters came up with the album’s title, which was in part a criticism of his bandmates, who were, creatively speaking, not all there.

But Wish You Were Here was also a tribute to the band’s founder, Syd Barrett, who abandoned the group as his undiagnosed mental health issues made it impossible for him to perform. His breakdown, which began while the band was on tour in the U.S. — a stint that saw them living for a short time with the Alice Cooper band — led to Gilmour joining the band as Barrett’s condition worsened.

His decline would become a central theme in Waters’ music, including Floyd’s 1970s albums The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here and The Wall. But nowhere was it more explicitly about Barrett than in the central work on Wish You Were Here: “Shine On You Crazy Diamond.” The song was written expressly in tribute to Barrett, who coincidentally visited the band in the studio on the day they recorded it.

As Gilmour explained to Rick Beato, that song came about after he stumbled onto a note cluster while playing his electric guitar. The passage, consisting of G F Bb E played in sequence (often referred to as “Syd’s Theme”), became central to the song.

“I was in a rehearsal room doing all sorts of little things, and that one [came] out,” Gilmour explained. “Something in your brain goes, There’s something to that! You do it again, and after a while, other people in the room stop.

“You can see this thing on people’s faces, this awakening moment. People are going, ‘there’s a possibility here. There’s something here’. The whole of 'Shine On' grew out of that moment.”

For all Pink Floyd’s efforts, Wish You Were Here was panned by music critics, who felt it lacked the creativity of its predecessor. Melody Maker called it “unconvincing in its ponderous sincerity,” while Rolling Stone‘s reviewer criticized “Shine on You Crazy Diamond” for its “lackadaisical demeanor.”

Fifty years on, however, the album is considered a classic from a decade that — barring some dabbling with household objects — was Pink Floyd’s most productive.

Prog-rock legends Pink Floyd have released a new video for their Syd Barrett–inspired epic "Shine On You Crazy Diamond," presenting it as one 25-minute-long song for the first time in history.

The track serves as a prelude to the 50th-anniversary edition of Wish You Were Here, which comes out next month. The 1975 classic — which has sold 20 million copies to date — is set for reissue with a new Dolby Atmos mix by James Guthrie, who began working with the band on 1976’s The Wall. Originally, the track was split into two, with parts 1–5 opening the album and 6–9 closing it out.

“Shine On…” was written about former Floyd guitarist and vocalist Syd Barrett. Its lyrics were penned in light of his mental health issues, which began to manifest publicly during the band’s ill-fated U.S. debut and led to his departure in 1968. Gilmour, who had been hired for guitar support as Barrett’s health declined, became his full time replacement.

The song centers on what Rick Beato calls “the most famous chord in rock history,” though Gilmour himself describes his electric guitar passage as an arpeggio, given the fact that he never strums through the intriguing note cluster: G F Bb E. Instead, he plays each note individually, with spine-tingling results.

“I stumbled upon that one by accident,” he told Guitar World of the Gm7add6 chord/arpeggio in 2006. But speaking to Rick Beato last year, he went into more detail about that fateful moment, and how his bandmates seemed to know he was onto something special.

“I was in a rehearsal room doing all sorts of little things, and that one [came] out,” he explained. “Something in your brain goes, There’s something to that! You do it again, and after a while, other people in the room stop.

“You can see this thing on people’s faces, this awakening moment. People are going, ‘there’s a possibility here. There’s something here’. The whole of 'Shine On' grew out of that moment.”

Writing the album in the wake of the life-changing success of The Dark Side of the Moon caused problems for the band.

"We were in a very strange place,” Gilmour admitted to NPR, referring to the group's sudden ascension in the charts. “The ‘difficult second album’ thing springs to mind. It wasn’t a second album or anything, but it was the second album after having the knock-your-socks-off, fulfill-all-your-dreams sort of album, right? ‘The Dark Side of the Moon.’”

He said there was “lethargy in the studio” as the respective members battled existential questions of whether they were in the game for fame, money or a pure love of music.

Speaking to Guitar Player in 2024, Gilmour reflected on the brief period in which he and Barrett were members of Pink Floyd with an air of sadness.

“It was tragic, really,” he said. “We’ve got a bit of film of Syd in a dressing room somewhere at one of those gigs, and he dances this little jig — a little dance — and he’s all smiling and laughing.

“But you just look at him and go, ‘Oh God, no, tragic.’ Poor chap. I can’t remember much about it. I was brand new, and I think they knew I’d be taking it over.”

In the end, they only played five shows together.

Wish You Were Here's half-century reissue arrives on December 12 via Sony Music, which bought the rights to the band's back catalog for $400 million in October 2024. The album will be available in several formats, including a Deluxe Box Set and a Blu-ray edition featuring three concert films from the supporting tour and a short film on Storm Thorgerson, the artist behind most of the band's iconic album covers.

Meanwhile, Gilmour’s feud with former Floyd bass guitarist Roger Waters has dashed any lingering hopes of a reunion. Gilmour is already hard at work on a follow-up to his latest solo album, Luck and Strange.

When it comes to ranking the greatest guitar solos ever written, David Gilmour is a player on most people’s lips. It could be argued that his greatness comes from a lack of uniformity in his approach to each cut.

By his own admission, the prog-rock guitar hero can’t shred like Jimi Hendrix and Yngwie Malmsteen. Speed, he once told Rick Beato, has never been something he could master. That, in turn, forced him to reassess his playing style and ultimately took him down a more melodic approach favored by his guitar hero Hank Marvin.

But when it comes to writing lead guitar lines, he tells the Broken Record Podcast he has no fixed way of doing it.

“That's just how I am,” he says (via Ultimate Guitar). “Some of the solos in the studios are pretty much one-take things that you just have to find the right moment and play. Some of them are put together in all sorts of different ways. Sometimes, you find good bits on different [recorded] takes and join them all together.”

He’s also leaned heavily into his lyrical phrasing, using rather literal ideas to ignite ideas.

“Sometimes I get the microphone, and I sing,” Gilmour continues, “because your voice can leap in leaps that are unusual; you might not quite get to on the guitar. There are 100 different ways, and I still haven't quite worked out one proper way of getting to that.

“But once they're done and they've embedded themselves in your brain, it's then a joy to play them live and to be able to depart from them knowing that you can find your way back into something that is both new but familiar at the same time.”

Speaking to Guitar Player in 2003, the guitarist also explained how a sensitivity to Syd Barrett's legacy in the group influenced his playing early on as he learned to let his own voice shine.

“I was trying to play some of Syd Barrett's parts, yet adapt them to my own style and taste,” he explained. “The framework I was working in was already set, and it included a style of guitar playing that was already a part of it. It took a while for me to allow myself to stray from what I thought I should be doing.”

He added that he regularly goes back to his blues and folk roots for answers, admitting that “elements of blues phraseology run pretty deep in my playing.”

Interestingly, Gilmour raised eyebrows earlier this year when he said that he can't play one of Pink Floyd's most iconic solos, having taken a different approach to his live performances over the last 46 years. Meanwhile, he has explained what exactly happened to cause his Animals solo to be wiped from existence.

In that, there's a lesson in the magic of improvised solos, where the player is living in the moment and feeling each note as opposed to executing something they had spent hours upon hours perfecting before they'd stepped foot into the studio.

“You never quite feel 100 percent satisfied,” he said of his inability to capture the deleted solos' spontaneity. “Although every note has been learned and rehearsed and played, you think, Oh, there's something about the feel that had before that is gone forever.” One more, he was forced to change his approach.

In related news, Rick Beato has shared with Guitar Player what he learned by sitting just inches from him during their interview.

Imagine having your guitar heroes answer all your questions while revealing their tone and technique secrets up close and personal where you can witness every minute detail about their how their hands work magic on key instruments, amps, and effects. Such is the enviable position of YouTube sensation Rick Beato.

His deep-dive interviews include a crazy range of players representing all ages and genres including David Gilmour, Billy Strings, Derek Trucks, Brian May, John Fogerty, George Benson, Matteo Mancuso, Al Di Meola, Tommy Emmanuel, Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Mateus Asato, Pat Metheny, Steve Lukather, Yngwie Malmsteen, Nuno Bettencourt and Neal Schon.

Beato rarely performs live, so when he made a rare appearance in San Francisco we did a Guitar Player Presents promotion and sat down with him person to see what we could learn.

On David Gilmour and Neal Schon

“Sitting down with Gilmour was unbelievable because he played through all the original gear that he used on all these famous records,” Beato reports. “When you hear that Binson Echorec and he’s using his whammy bar and everything it sounds so pristine. He was playing through like five different amplifiers set up right near me.

“I sat two feet away from Gilmour, and when I watched David play I realized that he’s got massively big fingers. With some of this stuff it’s like, “How did I not notice that before?

“Another one is Neal Schon, who I just sat down with for an interview. I’ve watched Neal play a thousand times, but you can’t tell what people are doing unless you’re right next to them. For example, he showed me how he holds his pick and kind of uses it at an angle.

“He told me that his first guitar teacher drew a circle on the pickguard of his Les Paul and instructed him to keep his pinkie inside that circle. His picking chops are sick, he just rips, but he’s so relaxed no matter how fast it goes. He could always do that, but watching him up close you really get a feel for it.”

The Eric Johnson Effect

Beato is an proficient guitar player in his own right who wields his signature Gibson Les Paul Special Double Cut electric guitar in his highly-educational videos where he often breaks down the licks of his favorite players. Beato leans on 63 years of life experience that gives him a long lens through which to view the guitar universe. For example, in a video called “Why Are Guitar Players Clueless About Music?” Beato describes the “Eric Johnson Effect.”

“In that instance I’m talking about his use of spread triads on the intro to ‘Cliffs of Dover,’ he explains. “When guitar players hear that, they immediately reference Eric Johnson, even though I learned it from Pat Metheny’s Bright Sized Life album that came out in 1975. He uses spread triads all over the place, and Bach was doing this stuff 300 years ago.

“But people always talk from their point of reference. And if the only player they’ve heard to that is Eric Johnson, that’s totally cool. I’m glad that they’ve actually heard it from Eric Johnson. It’s important to talk about these things, and for me, to know the origins of some of these ideas.

Beato has an extensive background playing jazz, and one of his personal missions is to keep the genre’s guitar greats in the larger musical conversation, especially as they seem to fall off contemporary Best Guitarist lists.

Beato tells GP, “Whenever I do some type of guitar list I'll always throw in a jazz guy or fusion guy such as Pat Metheny, Larry Carlton, Frank Gambale, Joe Pass, George Benson or Allan Holdsworth. I think it’s important to keep reinforcing these things, especially to rock players that might not even know any of these names. I try to use my YouTube channel to do as much as I can to keep the legacy of incredible musicians alive.”

On Billy Strings, Mateus Asato and other young players

The gray-haired guru may be a bit jaded about the state of pop music, but not at all about the current guitar landscape. In fact, he bristles with optimism when talking about the young guns ripping up the modern guitar landscape, citing advances in technology for giving them a leg up on past legends.

“Young players have the advantage of growing up with great ways to learn like YouTube where you can watch the actual artists play their stuff. Billy Strings is amazing. Mateus Asato. Matteo Mancuso. Tim Henson. Tosin Abasi. These guys are all phenomenal and can play insane stuff. The greatest technical players are alive right now.”

Beato has worked practically every gig in the music business. He was in a band called Billionaire that got a record deal in the late ’90s but got dropped quickly after selling poorly. He did better behind the scenes as a record producer and a songwriting collaborator before major label budgets dried up when streaming hit.

On Keith Richards, Jimmy Page and other bucket listers

Beato landed well on his feet with his current gig as a YouTube content creator. His channel launched in 2015, and now he’s got about six million subscribers. The freedom to create content about whatever he finds interesting allows him to cultivate his greatest strength as a highly informed educator and interviewer.

There was a recent scare when Beato underwent open-heart surgery in July 2024. He made a quick recovery, and it gave him a big picture perspective. He doesn’t take his good fortune for granted, and has his sights set on getting as many iconic interviews in the can while he can.

“I’d love to interview Keith Richards, Jimmy Page, Pete Townshend and Paul McCartney,” Beato reports. “I learn things from every interview because I ask about the things I want to know. I always talk about music, and I ask the questions that musicians want the answers to. It’s kind of like when I used to teach lessons, I’d tell my friends that I learn more than the students learn.”

Jim Irsay’s lauded $1 billion collection of acoustic and electric guitars is set to be sold, his family has confirmed.

The billionaire businessman, who passed away aged 65 in May, was the owner of the NFL team, the Indianapolis Colts, from 1997 until his death, having inherited the club from his father. But it was his penchant for acquiring famous and hugely influential guitars that earned him such a fierce reputation in the music scene.

“It’s an eclectic collection, but really it’s about spirituality,” he had once said of a hoard of instruments dubbed “the greatest guitar collection on Earth” by Guitar World. “It’s about human beings being as great as they can and changing the world with love and strength,

Included in his collection is David Gilmour's iconic Black Strat, acquired for $3,975,000 in 2019, and Jerry Garcia's Tiger, which kick-started his collecting when he bought it in 2002.

The sale of the collection will be handled by Christie’s New York, which previously auctioned off Mark Knopfler and Jeff Beck's storied instruments. A series of auctions will take place in March.

“This decision was not made lightly, but with deep reflection and love for the legacy he built,” the Irsay family says in a statement via the Colts. It has been noted, however, that some items in his collection will be kept in the family, with the “majority” going under the hammer.

“Our dad was a passionate collector, driven not by possession, but by a profound appreciation for the beauty, history, and cultural resonance of the items he curated,” the family’s statement expands. “Each piece in the collection tells a story — and he was always so excited to share those stories with the world.”

Indeed, much of his collection was recently put on display at Indiana University Bloomington and has also been accessed by the Steichen and Purdue University Guitar Lab for educational purposes.

Many of his pieces, including the Fender Mustang Kurt Cobain played on the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" music video — bought for a record-breaking $4.5 million in 2022 — and Bob Dylan’s infamous Newport Folk Festival Stratocaster, which he played during his controversial first electric set, hold huge cultural significance.

Several Beatles guitars are also housed in the collection. That includes John Lennon's 1963 Gretsch 6120 Country Gentleman, used to record “Paperback Writer,” George Harrison’s 1964 Gibson SG, used on the same song and across the Revolver album, and Lennon’s 1964 Rickenbacker Rose Morris Model 1996.

Two iconic Eric Clapton instruments, his Fool SG, which played a starring role in Cream and is synonymous with his woman tone, and his 1939 Martin 000-42 acoustic guitar, played during his career-reviving MTV Unplugged performance, also feature. As does Prince's unmistakable Yellow Cloud guitar, built by luthier Dave Rusan, meaning they could all be headed to auction in March.

It's not just instruments in his stock, either. Aside from Paul McCartney's handwritten "Hey Jude" lyric sheet, he'd acquired an Apple II manual signed by Steve Jobs, Hunter S. Thompson's Red Shark convertible and Jack Kerouac's original typewritten manuscript of On the Road.

“Christie’s is honored to offer this magnificent collection, so lovingly compiled, maintained, and shared by legendary collector Jim Irsay over decades,” Julien Pradels, president of the Christie’s Americans region, says in light of the impending auction.

The auction signals the end of an era spanning over two decades, and one that, in Irsay’s eyes, represents the best of his homeland.

“I’ve been so blessed, and like I always knew, rock and roll and N.F.L. football — that’s America, man, that’s what it’s about,” he said in 2022. “I mean, it doesn’t get any bigger, better than that.”

You'd have to be crazy to think a Pink Floyd reunion was possible. David Gilmour has made it clear he has no interest in reuniting with bass guitarist Roger Waters, and has said the death of founding keyboardist Rick Wright makes the question moot.

That doesn't stop people from asking, though. The prog icons last shared a stage at Live 8 in 2005. It was a show where Gilmour saw Waters, who left the band in 1985 and promptly engaged in legal battles against the group, as merely a “guest” rather than a band member outright.

If that suggests things are frosty between Gilmour and Waters, it's just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

Sitting down with U.K. newspaper The Telegraph for a rare joint interview with his wife and longtime collaborator/lyricist Polly Samson, Gilmour was asked what could possibly thaw relations between the former bandmates and allow them to perform together once again.

“Nothing,” was his retort. “There is no possible way that I would do that.”

It would be particularly difficult given that Samson has herself been a vocal critic of Waters.

In February 2023, she attacked him in a merciless tweet which, among other choice words, labelled him as “anti-Semitic” to the “rotten core. Also a Putin apologist and a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching, misogynistic, sick-with-envy megalomaniac.”

Gilmour backed up his wife adding, “Every word demonstrably true.”

Waters, in turn, refuted Samson's “incendiary and wildly inaccurate comments,” which were prompted in light of an interview where he seemed to praise the Russian president's leadership and criticized then U.S. president Joe Biden.

Samson said she did it because she thought some readers were confusing Waters and Gilmour.

“The reason I did it was because Pink Floyd are quite a faceless band,” she explains to The Telegraph. “Everywhere I went, there was a chance that people thought I was married to the one who said things like that. And it wasn’t a great feeling.

“If they knew you’re married to someone from Pink Floyd, half the time people were giving me quite strange looks, and it was really uncomfortable,” she continues. “I just wanted to draw a line and make it clear that these were not views held by me or the person I was married to.”

Alongside Waters, Gilmour helped transform the band's fortunes following the departure of founding guitarist Syd Barrett. Gilmour's tenure saw him celebrated as one of rock's greatest electric guitar players, bringing him immense fame and acclaim, while it lifted the group to prominence.

Although he gives Waters credit for his contributions to the band's monumental success — particularly for his songwriting and story-telling talents on albums like Animals and The Wall — he has no wish to carry on with the group.

“I’m at peace with all of these things,” Gilmour told Guitar Player last year. “But I absolutely don’t want to go back. I don’t want to go and play stadiums. I’m free to do exactly what I want to do and how I want to do it.”

He's certainly done that. He believes his latest solo album, Luck and Strange, is his finest work in 50 years, and has already laid out a timeline for its follow-up as he looks to end his run of long gaps between solo LPs.

Elsewhere, he's theorized why vintage guitars outperform their modern counterparts — even though he admits he couldn't pick out his legendary Black Strat in a blindfold test — and named his favorite prog guitarist.

The Dark Side of the Moon put Pink Floyd in a difficult position, guitarist David Gilmour says. Although the group had been a recording act since 1967 — and had even scored a hit with founder Syd Barrett on guitar and vocals — they remained essentially an underground act. Once David Gilmour took over for the ailing Barrett, the group delved into a more experimental and avant-garde style of music.

But The Dark Side of the Moon was something else. With the album, the band found the perfect mix of extended prog excursions and radio-friendly songs, like “Breathe (In the Air),” “Time” and “Money.” In an era of electric guitar heroes, Gilmour became ranked with the best of them, thanks to his fluid guitar solos, played on his famous Black Strat.

The Dark Side of the Moon became an international smash hit upon its release in 1973. Suddenly, everyone knew who Pink Floyd were.

And as Gilmour says, that made creating their followup album incredibly hard. Over eight years, Pink Floyd had released at least one album per year. Now two years would pass before the group released their next record, Wish You Were Here.

"We were in a very strange place,” the guitarist tells NPR. “You know, the ‘difficult second album’ thing springs to mind. It wasn’t a second album or anything, but it was the second album after having the knock-your-socks-off, fulfill-all-your-dreams sort of album, right? The Dark Side of the Moon.

"And there was a lot of lethargy in the studio, a lot of sitting around trying to get ourselves up into getting back to work properly. And it took quite a long time.”

That disorganization was a frustration to bass guitarist Roger Waters, who was central to the band’s musical creations. And it had a lot to with the title and theme of the next record.

Says Gilmour “That is part of what the title of the album and that song is about — Roger’s view that some of us weren’t really there a lot of the time."

The success of The Dark Side of the Moon also forced the band to think more about why they were making records.

"Are you doing this for more fame? Do you want more money when you've done rather well at that moment?” Gilmour says. “All of those things that you dream of when you were a teenager in your first full band were realized by that album.

“And you have to then think, Do I really love music or is it the fame that I really love, or is it the money that I'm after, or is it the other benefits that come with it? I think I got to the conclusion that I really was there for the music more than anything else."

Discussing the origins of Dark Side, Gilmour says that, at that time, he didn’t see a career in pop music as lasting anything more than a decade. However, he adds that, “as soon as Roger came in with the idea of its central themes of how the pressures of modern life can affect your sanity, [the album] started taking shape.”

Waters didn’t have to look far for inspiration: Barrett’s psychological struggles still hung heavy on the band. By the time of Wish You Were Here, his absence and mental decline would become one of the themes the bassist explored within an album about alienation.

As for Gilmour, he was eventually able to see the weaknesses in Dark Side and, in doing so, find a purpose in their follow-up.

“My problem with Dark Side was that I thought that Roger’s emergence on that album as a great lyric writer was such that he came to overshadow the music in places,” he says, “and there were moments when we didn’t concentrate as hard on the music side of it as we should have done.

“That was absorbed into an effort to try to make the balance between music and the words a better one on Wish You Were Here.”

Elsewhere, Gilmour has revealed how one of his "Animals" solos was lost forever, what it was like working with Jimi Hendrix, and why he never saw Pink Floyd as a prog band during their heyday.

Scottish folk guitarist Donovan may not be the most famous musician to emerge from the British Isles in the ’60s, but his influence proved vital to a score who went on to eclipse his career. So much so that two household names sought to capture a little of his genius for themselves, while another praised his inventiveness.

Jimmy Page, glam-rock pioneer Marc Bolan, David Gilmour, Nick Drake and Beatles John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison all admired his songwriting talents. His genre-blurring work, which fused folk, pop, psych rock, and jazz, became a totem of the flower-power movement.

Other musicians took notice, and for Harrison and Gilmour, in particular, it had a lasting effect on them. They didn't shy away from telling Donovan that.

When Louder Sound recently asked the 79-year-old guitarist what he considered his greatest achievement, he shared something Harrison had said about his music.

“I suggested you could do with blending and fusing styles of music — and write more than just ‘I love you, why’d you make me blue?’ in a popular song," he said.

"I didn’t know what to call that achievement, but I worked it out when George Harrison said, ‘Donovan is a catalyst.’ A catalyst can put two things together and create something completely different.”

The fact that Harrison, who outsold his Beatles bandmates when they embarked on solo careers in the early ‘70s, saw Donovan as an innovator alone is impressive. But he then turned his attention to an interaction he once had with David Gilmour.

“He said, ‘You know I bought your cottage?’” Donovan adds, recounting the moment. “I said, ‘Yeah? Why’d you buy my cottage?’ He said, ‘You wrote all those bloody songs there.’

“One song on Sunshine Superman [his third album, from 1966] was called ‘Three King Fishers,’ and he said, ‘When I heard that song, my future with the band I was with' — which I suppose was Floyd — 'I knew my direction.'

“That’s the effect of a catalyst: He bought my cottage. He said, ‘Maybe all that happened there would rub off on me.’”

Gilmour had joined Pink Floyd in 1967, shortly after the group made a peculiar trip to the U.S., where they house-shared with Alice Cooper. That makes it possible Gilmour is referencing his early days with the band here.

The song certainly has the kind of slow-burning, hazy quality that the band would later forge a reputation for with Gilmour at the songwriting helm, although the folk elements are a little out of the Floydian remit.

Later in his career, Donovan had both Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones play on his 1968 track “Hurdy Gurdy Man.” But it was another member of Led Zeppelin who took a leaf out of Gilmour’s book.

“Robert Plant said to me one night, ‘You know I bought your 1965 Aston Martin.’ I said, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘Cause it was so beautiful. You had a headlining put in it [in the car roof] and it was custom-made.'”

Donovan was convinced there was an ulterior motive. When he pushed the singer for the real reason he bought the sports car, he confessed, “Maybe you wrote a couple of songs in that car.”

While Donovan’s contributions haven’t received the attention given to those of his contemporaries, his impact on music in the latter half of the 1960s is evident. Although the folk music scene had long faded long before, he managed to keep it alive not by combining it with folk rock as the Byrds had, but by fusing it with psychedelia and Indian music, making it a distinct facet of the 1960s scene during a time when popular music was branching off into myriad new directions, including hard rock, heavy metal and progressive rock.

Gilmour, meanwhile, has admitted he never resonated with Pink Floyd's prog rock tag, while naming one prog guitarist who can “really do their stuff.”

He's also looked back at how blues players were key influences of his sound, with his infamous vocal-like playing style ultimately born from an inability to shred.

“I think I was probably a grumpy old man in my 20s,” David Gilmour says today. Now 79, Gilmour doesn’t sound grumpy but rather philosophical about music, Pink Floyd and the group’s role in prog rock.

Certainly, Pink Floyd are celebrated as one of prog rock’s greatest bands. From their early experimental work to conceptual albums like The Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall, the band created extended songs composed with multiple sections, and featuring intricately layered arrangements, long electric guitar and keyboard solos and thematic lyrics, all elements of prog rock. Add in the trippy album sleeve designs and elaborate tour set designs, and you really can't call it anything else.

Yet Gilmour denies Pink Floyd belongs to the prog rock genre and says the group never so much as discussed its style of music.

"No, we didn't talk about style, and I've never talked about progressive rock, or thought that we were — whatever — progressive rock,” he tells Rick Beato. “To me, progressive rock is very, very serious players who can really do their stuff.”

As his example of a guitarist who is firmly in the prog-rock camp, Gilmour points to none other than longtime Yes virtuoso Steve Howe, whose work defined prog on albums like Fragile and Close to the Edge.

“The wonderful Steve Howe,” Gilmour says. “You know, lovely guy, lovely guitar player. But I'd never thought of us in those terms at all."

For that matter, he believes Pink Floyd were prog before the genre existed.

"I think we were doing it long before the term progressive rock, and I think I was probably a grumpy old man in my 20s. You know, sort of, 'Nah, that's not us.'

“And the whole idea of labeling,” he continues. “It's become more essential in this day and age. But I'm not keen on it."

Gilmour is so anti labelling that he’s ready to dispel the idea that Pink Floyd was even much of an entity. Rather, he says, the band was just four musicians who agreed on the music they created.

"It's just that everyone had to agree,” he says. “And when you're on your own, you're the only person who has to agree.

“But the band is a funny thing, as you say. You know, there's a name, Pink Floyd, and it becomes a real object in people's minds throughout the world, for many, many years. It means something that kind of exists, or existed.

“In fact, it's just three or four people who get in a room together and strum guitars and keyboards together, and it's a very approximate, rough way of naming it."

"It's giving it an actual name, and we've all got them. The Beatles are as real a thing, in my mind, as it is to other people. But in fact, it's meaningless. It's just a convenient handle for a pop group, a convenient way of saying these people work together.

“And when they no longer work together, it's gone, and [there's] no sadness about that, or regret. It's just, life changes, and it never was a physical object in the way that none of us can help having it."

Now that Pink Floyd is in his rear-view mirror — thanks to the assistance of his wife and musical collaborator, Polly Samson, Gilmour is devoted to his solo career. He says his last album, 2024’s Luck and Strange, was such a happy affair that he’s moving ahead with its followup.

“I’m slowly building up towards a new album, and I have quite a bit of material that is in some sort of formative stage,” he tells Rolling Stone. “That’s what’s keeping me busy at the moment.”

“It’s always my intention to be a bit quicker [to release albums], and I suspect this one will be a bit quicker. But you never can tell. Within the next year or two.”

In related news, Gilmour has discussed the famous Pink Floyd guitar solo he can’t play and reveals how a solo on the classic Animals track “Dogs” was “Completely erased, gone forever. Done.”

It’s said that all good things must come to an end. After the passing of keyboardist Rick Wright in 2008, Pink Floyd needed to be put to rest.

Floyd guitarist David Gilmour was clearly having trouble doing just that. It was his wife, the writer Polly Samson, who helped him close that chapter of his life and move on to focus on his solo career.

Samson was no stranger to the group's inner workings. Besides being Gilmour's wife, she collaborated with the prog rock greats on 1994’s The Division Bell.

And in the years after Wright's death, she helped him write the band's final chapter with their last album, The Endless River.

“David wanted something as a full stop to the whole Pink Floyd thing,” she tells Prog of her work on that album. Released in 2014, The Endless River was intended to be definitive — a tribute to Wright, and a swan song for one of progressive rock's most established bands.

It wouldn't be toured either; their last show together was at Live 8 in 2005, the first time that Gilmour, Wright, drummer Nick Mason and bass guitarist Roger Waters — who left the band in 1985 — had performed together in 23 years. After the album, Pink Floyd ceased to be.

The Endless River was predominantly instrumental, with ideas plucked from The Division Bell leftovers. Gilmour and Mason wanted to let the music do the talking.

But one song, “Louder Than Words,” became the outlier.

“I didn’t want to write lyrics for that album,” Samson admits. “I loved it so much as an instrumental album, and to impose lyrics without Rick being around felt presumptuous or wrong.”

Gilmour, however, persuaded her to do it. The song would be the punctuation mark he needed.

“So, without a piece of music, I wrote ‘Louder Than Words,’” she continues. “It was an easy lyric to write, because for years I’d noticed this thing: If you’re in a room with David, Nick and Rick — or as I was at Live 8, with David, Nick, Rick and Roger — nobody speaks. There’s nothing but awkward silences.

“They have no small talk with each other, they have no big talk with each other; they just do not speak. If you happen to be the unlucky person in the room, it’s the most awkward feeling you can imagine.

“And then they get onstage with their instruments and suddenly they’re so eloquent, and the way they communicate is beautiful. I wrote ‘Louder Than Words’ to express that feeling.”

With “Louder Than Words” as its lead single, The Endless River was a commercial success. Despite middling reactions from critics, the song's strength made it Amazon’s most pre-ordered album. Vinyl copies flew off the shelves at a speed not seen since 1997, and it topped the charts in various countries.

By that point, Gilmour had already released three solo albums: David Gilmour (1978), About Face (1984) and On an Island (2006). But as he’s recently admitted, his solo career has been stop-and-start at best all along. With 2015’s Rattle That Lock, he had a chance for a fresh start.

Samson calls her husband a “ponderous” conversationalist, saying that he primarily “communicates through the guitar,” thus necessitating Samson's lyrical talents. As work on Rattle That Lock began, however, she pushed for change. She adopted a nurturing, almost maternal approach to broaden her husband’s horizons.

“I’d just written the lyrics to [the song] ‘Rattle That Lock,’ which David was very keen on. But I said, ‘I’m not writing another one now until you’ve written one,’” she says. “It was a bit like trying to get a child to do their math homework. I had to shut him in a room with a blank paper, and he would stare at that blank paper. I’d come in with a cup of tea and say: ‘How’s it going?’ And he’d say, ‘Oh, not very well.’

“Then we’d go for a walk and talk about what he was trying to write about, and it was like squeezing the words out of him. In the end, he got there, and I think they’re two very fine lyrics. But it took a lot of work.”

Granted, the world had to wait another nine years for a follow-up, but Luck and Strange — a record he deems on par with The Dark Side of the Moon — proved that patience is a virtue. Whether or not the guitarist keeps to his word that he'll complete his next record “within the next year or two,” Gilmour is clearly focused on the future.

“It’s impossible to go back there without Rick Wright, and I wouldn’t want to,” he told Guitar Player late last year. “It’s all done.”

Elsewhere, the guitarist has recalled the first moment he saw Jimi Hendrix play, and what happened when one of his “Animals” solos was completely erased.

Recording studios are meant to be spaces for creativity, but with one wrong push of a button they can become tools of destruction.

David Gilmour discovered this the hard way when his second guitar solo on Pink Floyd’s “Dogs” was erased during the creation of the group's 1977 masterpiece, Animals.

Sandwiched between 1975's Wish You Were Here and 1979's The Wall, Animals was Floyd's 10th studio album and part of the progressive-rock group's career-defining run of success.

As the track after the album-opening snippet “Pigs on the WIng 1,” “Dogs” establishes the album's mood and theme over its 17-plus minutes. But construction on such a lengthy track happened over several sessions. In the course of it all, Gilmour's original second guitar solo was wiped by accident.

“We had the whole first half of the song,” Gilmour explains to Rick Beato in a new interview. “Then we had a middle breakdown, which became all that weird stuff, and that was filled with white two-inch leader tape.

“Eventually, the rest of the song was tagged on there while we were thinking about and working out what to do with it.”

Leader tape would typically be inserted between sections of recorded music, such as songs or takes, on a reel. Visually, it serves to alert the engineer that a recording has ended, and it's a safeguard against continuing to record or erase tracks past their end point and into the song that follows.

But apparently Gilmour's bandmates — bass guitarist Roger Waters and drummer Nick Mason — missed the cue

“There was something on the first half that we wanted to erase,” Gilmour explains. “Roger and Nick put it into 'erase,’ and then forgot that it was in 'erase,’ and went right through the leader tape by two minutes, and then took away my second guitar solo. Completely erased, gone forever. Done. ”

Although the solo was lost, the guitar part that was tracked beneath it avoided a similar fate, as Gilmour had it backed up.

“Luckily, I do take mixes home, and I'd taken a rough mix of that, so I had to go and re-create it from my rough mix,” he explains. However, he says he was unable to recapture the spontaneity of his original solo.

“You never quite feel 100 percent satisfied,” he says with a sigh. “Although every note has been learned and rehearsed and played, you think, Oh, there's something about the feel that had before that is gone forever.”

Gilmour had just become a father for the first time and was less hands-on with the record than he'd been with Floyd's previous efforts. That led to Snowy White being asked to provide a solo for "Pigs on the Wing" in his absence. White was in Floyd's camp to assist with live performance, but when he showed up at the studio to discuss his role in the band, the band put him to work.

“We went back into the control room, and Roger says, ‘While you’re here, why don’t you play a solo on this song I’ve just done called ‘Pigs on the Wing’?" White told Guitar Player in 2023. “I picked up a white Stratocaster [Gilmour's guitar bearing the serial number 0001 ] and it sounded all right. So the track played through once and I fiddled about, and then they did a take, and that was it.”

Unfortunately for White, his work was cut from the vinyl album release, although it did appear on the eight-track cartridge versions of Animals. Nearly 10 years later, another guitarist, Phil Manzanera, carved his name into Pink Floyd history after his demo became a cut on the band's final 13th album, A Momentary Lapse of Reason.

Elsewhere in his interview with Rick Beato, Gilmour reflects on the first time he saw Jimi Hendrix play guitar in a room filled with music greats.

“I went out the next day, trying to find records by this character Jimi Hendrix,” he recalls. “But he didn’t exist.”

Gilmour released his latest solo album, Luck and Strange last year, referring to as the best thing he’s written since The Dark Side of the Moon. The guitarist has historically seen each solo album released after years of inactivity, but he’s intent on bucking that trend with its follow-up, and he's now issued a timeline for its release.

As a young guitarist on London’s mid-1960s music scene, David Gilmour had a chance to catch any number of famous and up-and-coming musical artists. He was still a couple of years from joining Pink Floyd when he decided to stop into Blaises Club, a gambling casino located in a hotel basement, on December 21, 1966.

“When I was living in London, and I was completely broke — and this is long before I joined Pink Floyd — there was a club in South Kensington called Blaises,” he tells Rick Beato. “And if you were a member of that club — and it cost five pounds or something to be a member — you could go free from Monday to Thursday, or Tuesday to Thursday. So I'd go there quite a lot, because it was free.

“And one night, I went in there, and it was rammed with people. All the Beatles, and all the stones were in there. I thought, This is a little bit unusual!”

Gilmour soon discovered what had drawn London’s biggest musical acts to the club that night. Following a set by Brian Auger and the Trinity, a slim figure made his way onstage.

“A kid came in with a guitar case, got up on the stage, opened his guitar case and put [the guitar] on the wrong way round,” GIlmour recalls. “He plugged into an amp and started, and the entire place was just —.”

He gives a look of astonishment.

“Jaws dropped. It was absolutely extraordinary.

“I went out the next day, trying to find records by this character Jimi Hendrix. And there was James Hendricks, of [American vocalese trio] Lambert, Hendricks, Lambert and Ross.

“But he didn’t exist.

In fact, Hendrix’s first record, “Hey Joe,” had been released five days earlier, on December 16, 1966, but perhaps the spellings of his first and last names confused record shop workers. Either way, Hendrix’s first album, Are You Experienced, wouldn’t come out until May 12, 1967, nearly five months later. When it did, Gilmour was ready, with money in hand.

“As soon as it came along,” he says, “I thought, Yes, Jimi!! I want a slice of that!”

Gilmour became such a Hendrix devotee that he sought out every opportunity to see him perform. That led to his extraordinary experience running the PA for the guitarist's set at the 1970 Isle of Wight festival.

“I helped mix the sound for Hendrix at the Isle of Wight in 1970," Gilmour revealed to Prog magazine in 2019. “Not a lot of people know that.”

The 1970 festival, the last of three consecutive music events on the island, was held from August 26 to 30 and is acknowledged as the largest music festival of its time, even bigger than Woodstock. Artists who performed include Rory Gallagher, the Doors, the Who, Miles Davis, Joni Mitchell, Jethro Tull and Free, among many others.

Hendrix performed in the early hours of August 31 with drummer Mitch Mitchell and bassist Billy Cox. His set, however, was plagued by problems from the sound system, with the chatter from the security personnel’s walkie-talkies heard at one point during his performance of “Machine Gun.”

Although Pink Floyd’s sound system was used for the festival, the group didn’t perform. Gilmour says he was there simply as an attendee.

“I went down to go to it and I was camping in a tent, just being a punter,” he told Prog. “And I went backstage where our main roadie guy, Peter Watts, was trying to deal with all the mayhem, with Charlie Watkins of [British musical instrument maker] WEM, and they were very nervous. They were going to have to mix Hendrix’s sound. I did some mixing stuff in those days, and they said ‘Help! Help!’ so I did."

Gilmour recalled working from the side of the stage with a WEM Audiomaster mixer. He would eventually come to own the very guitar strap Hendrix used at the Isle of Wight and attach it to his Black Strat, the famed Fender electric guitar he played on classic Pink Floyd cuts like “Money,” “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” and “Comfortably Numb.”

“My lovely wife Polly [Samson] bought me, as a present, a Jimi Hendrix strap, that you can see,” he told Prog. As he explained to the interviewer, it was not a copy of a Jimi Hendrix strap but the real thing. “No, the Jimi Hendrix strap, that he’s [wearing at] a lot of his later shows, at the Isle of Wight in 1970,” he explained.

He added that he didn’t get a chance to meet Hendrix at the festival. “Not then. I had met him previous to that, once,” he offers. “I didn’t know him.”

Despite his fondness for Hendrix’s style and choice of main guitar — a Fender Stratocaster — Gilmour never attempted to emulate him. His own style is slower, more fluid than fiery, owing in large part to his inability to play fast.

“I wasn’t gifted with enormous speed on the guitar,” he told Beato in a previous interview. “There were years when I was younger where I thought I could get that if I practiced enough. But it just wasn’t ever really going to happen.”

In related news, Gilmour recently revealed that he is at work on his followup to last year’s solo record, Luck and Strange.

David Gilmour said last year that his next album might come sooner than later. Speaking to Guitar Player in 2024 for the release of Luck and Strange, his first solo work in nine yearsm the former Pink Floyd guitarist said he hoped to ride the momentum of that album's sessions into his next set of songs.

"My intention is to gather some of these people together and get back and start working on something else in the new year," he said. "What you want is a few things to get started with and hope it all starts flowing, and that’s what I’m hoping will happen."

Now, he’s said the record’s successor can be expected “within the next year or two.”

“I’m slowly building up towards a new album, and I have quite a bit of material that is in some sort of formative stage,” he tells Rolling Stone. “That’s what’s keeping me busy at the moment.”

“It’s always my intention to be a bit quicker [regarding the gaps between his solo albums], and I suspect this one will be a bit quicker. But you never can tell. Within the next year or two.”

Luck and Strange, a record Gilmour called his best work since The Dark Side of the Moon, ended a nine-year dry stretch following 2015’s Rattle That Lock. On the press trail for Luck and Strange last year, he stated that he had already amassed “a trove” of new ideas for what would be his sixth solo LP.

“There’s a consistency to what we’ve just done with this album now,” he says. “We’ve taken things further. I’ve got a trove of stuff already… Bits and pieces of songs, some of which I rather like.”

And he’ll certainly have fewer distractions stopping him from getting them over the line, having confirmed last year that Pink Floyd is well and truly over. Their last show was at Live Aid 2005.

“I put the whole Pink Floyd thing to bed many, many years ago,” he told Guitar Player. “I mean, it’s impossible to go back there without Rick [Wright, their late keyboardist], and I wouldn’t want to. It’s all done. I’m in this selfishly lucky position of having more than enough money and having had more than enough fame. I just don’t need that stuff these days.”

However, those comments also underscore the fact that he is in no need to rush his writing process. Fans will be wise to not hold their breath.

Gilmour had played a small number of shows to support Luck and Strange, and the first stop of the tour, at Circus Maximus, an ancient Roman chariot-racing stadium in Rome, Italy, was captured for a new concert film. The slightly unimaginatively titled Live at the Circus Maximus will be released on September 17.

Exactly a month later, the live album, The Luck And Strange Concerts, will follow in its wake. The album features 23 songs from shows across the tour, which included a five-night stop at Madison Square Garden, and an impressive recovery from a guitar strap break mid-solo.

Whether he will tour its follow-up is to be seen. If he does, it will be on a similar scale.

“I’m afraid I will not be schlepping around all the cities of America, South America, Europe, and the rest of the world,” he relays. “That’s for the young folk.”

Last year, Gilmour commented on the “amazing” coincidences that saw some fans theorize that Dark Side of the Moon and The Wizard of Oz are narratively linked, and, in January, he was left wondering “how the hell did I actually do that?” as he looked back on his finest Pink Floyd guitar solo.

Being a big-time record company executive certainly comes with perks. And some of Paul Rappaport’s most treasured bonuses were of the six-string variety.

Rappaport spent an appropriate 33 1/3 years working in radio promotion for Columbia Records, ascending to the role of senior vice president of rock promotion and working with a who’s-who roster of artists that included the Rolling Stones (individually and collectively), Paul McCartney, Pink Floyd and a score of others.

He also help launch the careers of Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Blue Öyster Cult, Loverboy and Alice in Chains. He went on to win an Emmy Award for Live by Request, a performance series he created for the A&E Network that ran from 1996 to 2004, and pen the popular blog Backstage Access. He chronicles all of this in a new memoir, Gliders Over Hollywood: Airships, Airplay and the Art of Rock Promotion, from Jawbone Press. (The title refers to a promotion for Aerosmith’s debut album.)

Rappaport is also a player from his youth, first inspired by the regional Country Music Time morning TV show broadcast to his hometown of Los Angeles.

“As I watched the performers, I was immediately entranced by the guitars they played,” Rappaport — also a master magician and fencer — writes. “Most striking to me was that each guitar seemed to have its own soul. When the player hit the strings, a unique voice would ring out helping to bring the singer’s songs to life. The attraction was so strong I told my parents I needed to learn how to play guitar.”

He did just that, taking lessons at a local music shop and learning to play Spanish and Hawaiian styles, country and folk before rock and roll.

Rappaport played in a variety of bands (the late Karen Carpenter was a classmate at Downey High School) and saw early shows by the Stones, the Jimi Hendrix Experience and others before attending UCLA and joining Columbia as a college rep before taking on a full-time job with the label after graduation. There was always a guitar close by, however.

“I love to play,” he tells Guitar Player via Zoom, in an office that has a 1959 Les Paul reissue visible in the background amidst gold and Platinum record plaques and other memorabilia. He also has a 1952 Les Paul goldtop reissue and a 1962 Les Paul Junior that he received as a gift.

“I’m a Les Paul guy,” he notes. “I like the sound, that real creamy, dreamy tone you get from them.”

Other models, however, account for some of Rappaport’s best guitar stories in Gliders Over Hollywood.

Arming Elvis Costello’s Forces

“I don’t part with a lot of guitars; they become your friends,” he notes. But one he gave away was a 1967 red Rickenbacker with an F-hole and sharp body edges — to Elvis Costello.

“I loved Roger McGuinn and the Byrds and that 12-string Rickenbacker sound,” Rappaport says. “But I bought the six-string because I was playing in a band and I needed something more versatile. Still got the jingle-jangly sound, but I could play any style of music with it.”

While squiring Costello and his Attractions on their first U.S. tour, Rappaport learned that Costello also loved the Rick sound and wanted to buy one, but was having a hard time finding one with its original pickups intact. Rappaport had at the time switched to a Gibson Melody Maker as his main axe and was not playing his Rick much, “so I told Elvis I’d give him my Rickenbacker.

“I was such a fan of Elvis’s music,” he recalls. “People had given me guitars. The Melody Maker was given to me by one of my best friends in life, from my high school band. As a musician, there was this little voice inside that said, I think I’m supposed to give one back.

“Elvis said, ‘At least let me buy it from you.’ I said, ‘Y’know, El, we’re becoming friends. It would mean more to give it to you. It feels natural to give it to you.’ A guitar needs to be played, right? Not sleeping like a princess under my bed.

“Then he goes off and uses it all over Armed Forces. I was jumping up and down: ‘My Rickenbacker is famous!’ It was in good hands. It did what it needed to do. So I never looked back.

“Sometimes I think, ‘Does he still have it? Would he give it back?’ But I don’t need it now for the kind of music I play. I’m just glad it went on to the next life it was meant to have.”

Running Like Hell with Pink Floyd

Rappaport became friendly with Pink Floyd when the band signed with Columbia during the early ’70s and worked on campaigns for Wish You Were Here, Animals, The Wall and The Final Cut, as well as the members’ solo albums.

After helping the band navigate its difficult comeback, sans Roger Waters, with 1987’s quadruple-Platinum A Momentary Lapse of Reason, Floyd manager Steve O’Rourke contacted Rappaport later in the year, telling him the band wanted to give him a special Christmas present as a thank-you for his efforts.

Rappaport waved it off, but early in the new year O’Rourke called back with an offer to join the band onstage during its summer tour — a gesture inspired by Rappaport’s assistant, who had told the manager about his dream to play live at a massive venue

Rappaport chose an August show at London’s Wembley Stadium and flew across the pond for what he describes as “a full rock-star treatment” from before the gig through the after-party. He spent three months learning “Run Like Hell,” the show’s final song, even studying its nuances with the guitarist from a local Pink Floyd tribute band.

“I was a real player, so I wanted to be serious about it, not like... a lark,” he says.

David Gilmour offered Rappaport one of his Fender Telecasters, but the exec instead chose one he brought with him from the States because he preferred the lighter-gauge strings. Gilmour also instructed Rappaport to leave the soft chords from the recording alone and concentrate on the major and power chords the group favored in live performance.

Rather than a blur, Rappaport recalls everything from the sound check to his conversations with Gilmour’s guitar tech Phil Taylor and the actual performance.

“I was already in a euphoric state and then things got even better,” he recalls. “In the middle of a song, after a trippy Richard Wright keyboard solo... David played a lick, then turned around and motioned with his finger for me to answer. Instinctively, I did, and the next thing I knew we were trading licks.

“All of a sudden it hit me like a ton of bricks: Let me get this straight; I am in Wembley, playing live onstage with Pink Floyd, and I’m trading licks with David Gilmour. Is that what the fuck’s happening?”

Gilmour and drummer Nick Mason brought Rappaport to the front of the stage to take the final bow with the band.

“I felt like I’d played well, and now I could finally take in all the applause and hoopla happening around me. I took a bow standing next to David and Nick, threw my pick into the audience and waved my hand. ‘See ya next time!’ What a fucking blast.

“The band’s other keyboardist, Jon Carin, walked by and gave me a thumbs-up and a smile. That meant so much to me — like I was on par with the gang. And, for just a little over seven minutes, I was. I was in Pink Floyd — for real.”

Rappaport never repeated the guest spot with Pink Floyd but did continue to work with the band, including a campaign to announce its 1994 album, The Division Bell, and the accompanying tour with a seven-figure blimp blitz that traveled around the country.

"5 Strings, 3 Notes, 2 Fingers..." and Keith Richards

Rappaport says that in doing his job, “It meant a lot to me to help these artists, who were heroes of mine. My life was shaped by them... It was one of the joys for me that I could give back to them, ’cause I grew up with these people.”

And it was particularly resonant to meet, become friendly and ultimately get to play guitar with Keith Richards.

“I was a Rolling Stones nut,” he says. “I learned to play electric guitar listening to those early Stones records, listening to Keith Richards, so I really wanted to do something good for those guys because I love them. And it meant a lot to me to have a relationship with Keith Richards. The guy’s my idol.

“And then all of a sudden I’m getting a guitar lesson from this guy. How cool is that?”

That occurred during the video shoot for the Stones’ 1986 rendition of Bob & Earl’s “Harlem Shuffle” for the group’s Dirty Work album. Rappaport had gotten to know Richards during the New Barbarians tour a few years earlier (Stones mate Ronnie Wood’s Gimme Some Neck came out on Columbia in 1979), but found a more lucid musician and man at the Midtown Manhattan soundstage — where Richards even apologized for anything he did years earlier that might have offended Rappaport.

Rappaport used the opportunity to “gush on” Richards. “We were now just two guys talking guitar,” Rappaport writes. Richards explained why Rappaport’s attempts to cover Stones songs with his teenage bands failed, telling him about the G tuning he learned from Don Everly. He instructed Rappaport to go home, remove the bottom E string from his guitar, then tune the A string to G and the top E to D.

Further instructions: “Bar any fret you like, play an open chord, and add your second finger one fret up on the B string, your third (finger) two frets up on the D string, hammer on and off, then report back.”

It was a lesson well-learned, as “all of those Rolling Stones hits start(ed) falling effortlessly out of the guitar... When I came back to the video shoot the next day, I don’t know who had the bigger smile on his face, me or Keith.”

Rappaport would go on to have even greater success for the Stones with 1989’s Steel Wheels album, scoring three number one Billboard Mainstream Rock chart hits with “Mixed Emotions,” “Rock and a Hard Place” and “Almost Hear You Sigh.” The album also went top five and double Platinum.

Though the group would move to another label after that, he subsequently sent Richards a photo Henry Diltz had taken of the guitarist, warming up in a dressing room. It was signed, “To Paul, 6 strings, 3 notes, 2 fingers, 1 asshole — Love, Keith.” Rappaport keeps it in view in front of him in his home office.

Gliders Over Hollywood: Airships, Airplay and the Art of Rock Promotion, by Paul Rappaport, is out now from Jawbone Press.

For a guitarist who’s made his mark in the world of prog rock, David Gilmour is remarkably rooted in the blues. An old-school progger like Steve Howe shows fluency in a range of styles — from rockabilly to classical to jazz and bluegrass — while a more modern prog player like Tim Henson combines elements of progressive metal, jazz, trap, and K-pop.

But Gilmour has somehow managed to navigate Pink Floyd’s catalog with little more than bluesy phrasing on electric guitar, and with elements of folk when he ventures into acoustic guitar territory.

“My style is my style, and it was created out of an amalgamation of the folk and blues I started with,” he told Guitar Player in 2003, “as well as my early years in Pink Floyd when I was attempting to be a psychedelic-type guitar player.

“That being said, I think I always come back to certain elements of blues phraseology. The blues run pretty deep in my playing.”

It’s a rich musical vein that nurtures some of his most iconic solos, including those in Pink Floyd tracks like "Money" and "Comfortably Numb."

As he told Guitar World in 1988, he started out on electric guitar copying the lines of late 1960s guitarists like Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix.

“When I was young, I actually sat down and learned many of the classic blues solos by Eric and Hendrix as well as studying old Howlin' Wolf records,” he said.

That apparently served him well when Gilmour joined B.B. King for a New Year's Eve performance on Later... With Jools Holland in 1997.

In 1968, around the time that he was studying Clapton and Hendrix, Gilmour joined Pink Floyd as support for guitarist Syd Barrett before taking over once Barrett’s mental decline made him unreliable. Given his role at the time, Gilmour attempted a more, as he said above, “psychedelic” style.

“When I joined Pink Floyd I was trying to play some of Syd Barrett's parts, yet adapt them to my own style and taste. The framework I was working in was already set, and it included a style of guitar playing that was already a part of it. It took a while for me to allow myself to stray from what I thought I should be doing.”

And while specific references to Gilmour’s blues influences don’t appear verbatim in his playing, he says they are within the well from which he draws to create his own signature style.

“It's like, you've got a series of things that you can put together in different combinations but there aren't that many moves you can make,” he explained. “Instead, I try to approach things, given my limitations and strengths, from a more melodic standpoint and just work on it until it sounds... nice.

"I don't really have any plan in hand that helps me to deal with this. I try not to be too tied down by rules and regulations. So the blues influence may come out at times but I like to think I come at it from a different angle."

Part of that “different angle” is simply down to Gilmour’s inability to play fast. As he revealed to The Telegraph, “I just have not got very good coordination between left and right hand. My fingers are very slow. I couldn’t do what all these other guitar players could do, so I had to do something different.”

He elaborated on this with Rick Beato last year, when he explained his early attempts to play in the faster style of guitarists like Ritchie Blackmore and Jimmy Page, “There were years when I was younger where I thought I could get that if I practiced enough,” he said. ” But it just wasn’t ever really going to happen. I’ve got no control over the music I make.”

Although it can be easy to think otherwise when watching the world’s best shredders treat fretboards like Michael Schumacher did a race track, guitar players are humans. And, like all humans, even the best to walk this Earth have weaknesses.

As in the case of David Gilmour, the most tactful players can turn pitfalls into their strongest weapon. Ever since he joined Pink Floyd in 1967, Gilmour has made no bones about where he feels his ceiling is in certain aspects of his players. So he’s doubled down on the things he excels at, helping him rank highly in the world’s best guitarist polls and lists of the greatest-ever guitar solos.

“I just have not got very good coordination between left and right hand,” he told British newspaper The Telegraph in 2002. “My fingers are very slow. I couldn’t do what all these other guitar players could do, so I had to do something different.”

His solution, he says, was “trying to create guitar melodies over what we did,” with the crooning, gorgeous lead electric guitar work on 1979’s “Comfortably Numb” the obvious example of his slow but meaningful approach.

“I wasn’t gifted with enormous speed on the guitar,” he echoed last year when appearing on Rick Beato’s YouTube channel. Interestingly, he reveals there was a period, before he changed tact, where he battled with his abilities, momentarily losing himself in a bid to go toe-to-toe with his peers.

“There were years,” he says, “when I was younger where I thought I could get that if I practiced enough. But it just wasn’t ever really going to happen. I’ve got no control over the music I make.”

A period of self-reflection led to him analyzing other players, ultimately finding an unlikely guitar hero in contrast to the Howes, Hacketts and Hendrixes of the world: the Shadows’ Hank Marvin.

“Back in the ’60s, Hank was just playing a tune,” he tells Beato. “I think I come from there. I just want to play a nice tune!”

Purposefully slowing things down to make his playing more melodic and spacious also allowed him to shift his focus, and he soon found that precision in what he did had far more value than putting his foot on the gas.

“I'm quite fussy about overeager vibrato,” he explains. “Sometimes a little thing gives it a little extra tone or — I hate to say the word — 'refinement,'" he adds with a laugh.

To his point, MusicRadar once put the vibrato techniques of legendary players, from B.B. King to Brian May and Zakk Wylde under the microscope. The resulting piece revealed the audio waves their respective approaches produce.

Gilmour, who is described in the article as “the grandaddy of taste,” produces the smoothest of waves. Wylde's, in contrast, is by far the most dramatic.

“[Gilmour's] vibrato,” the piece says, “is smooth, often ethereal, and has a very subtle and slow rise and fall in pitch. Think B.B. King in super-slow motion.”

The guitarist released his latest solo album, Luck and Strange, last year, calling it the best thing he’s written since “The Dark Side of the Moon”.

It was his first new record in nine years, but he’s since spoken of his hopes to keep up the momentum and release more music in the near future.

One month after suggesting that AI could be used to create new music for nostalgic Who fans longing to relive the band’s heyday, Pete Townshend has revealed that he doesn’t actually enjoy being onstage.

His comments come as he continues to promote the forthcoming Quadrophenia ballet. Townshend says he far prefers working behind the scenes rather than performing in front of a crowd.

“Most musicians are not like me,” he told Spanish radio station RockFM (via Blabbermouth). “Most musicians do two things that I don’t really do, or don’t enjoy doing. One is they love performing. I don’t love performing. I don’t like being on a stage.

“I don’t hate it, but it doesn’t fill my soul in the way that you see some performers — just their soul is filled through being on the stage. That’s not me.

“The other thing,” he continues, “is they love to collaborate with other musicians. I think that, for me, collaboration is something that I find very difficult. If I was in a studio with a really great musician, or with a group of really great musicians, I think I would find it very hard.

“I find it difficult to collaborate. I find it very difficult looking in the eyes of another musician. I find myself looking to my own energy to express myself.”

The new ballet, which is set to be staged in Plymouth, Edinburgh, Southampton, London, and Salford in the U.K. this summer, is an exception to the rule. The project, he says, isn’t collaborative in the traditional sense.

“On the other hand, of course, I really admire the process of collaboration. I admire the process of dance and music. Quadrophenia is currently being turned into a ballet. We had our first rehearsal on Monday. It’s gonna be fantastic.

“But I think one of the things about that is that that kind of collaboration is an exploration of the human body, of dancing. With music, I find myself wanting to stay in my box for a while.”

It’s a mindset that stands in stark contrast to the wild young guitarist who once fought loudness wars with the Rolling Stones’ Ronnie Wood and regularly smashed guitars with freewheeling abandon. But it reflects how Townshend’s relationship with music — and performance — has evolved over time.

Last year, he opened the Townshend Studio, a new teaching and creative center at the University of West London in Ealing. While his solo career continues, live shows have become increasingly rare.

Pressed by RockFM to name other notable collaborations, Townshend highlighted two legendary players.

“I loved working with David Gilmour on my White City album, and we co-wrote some songs, but that was an uneasy collaboration,” he says. “I actually made it clear I’m not a natural collaborator.

“And I really enjoyed working with Eric Clapton back in 1973 when we did the Rainbow Concert together,” he concludes. “I think it’s interesting, ‘cause so many new musicians that I really respect want to work with me, and I wish I was more open to it. I could have fun with some of the greatest musicians in the world.”

In related news, Townshend recently spoke about the one part of his guitar playing he believes no one can best — and discussed how Jimi Hendrix, who he controversially claimed “wasn’t creative,” inspired the creation of "Tommy".

It's an enduring friendship that dates back to more than 50 years ago. Roxy Music’s iconic guitarist Phil Manzanera and Pink Floyd former mainstay and six-string hero David Gilmour first crossed paths in the 1960s when Manzanera was an up-and-coming teenage guitarist.

Over the course of the ensuing decades, their friendship developed to the point where they came together musically to collaborate. Gilmour would transform one of Manzanera's demo tracks into the song "One Slip," from Pink Floyd's 1987 album, A Momentary Lapse of Reason.

Manzanera would go on to co-produce David Gilmour’s 2006 album, On an Island, and 2015’s Rattle That Lock, as well as contribute additional acoustic guitar on several tracks, and he was one of the producers of Pink Floyd’s 2014 outing, The Endless River.

“I had first met David when I was 16 and then I followed his career,” Manzanera recalls today. “And when I got into Roxy Music five years later, I reconnected with him when I heard Chris Thomas mixing the Dark Side of the Moon album at Air Studios in London, where we were doing our second Roxy Music album.

“I went in to the control room of Studio Two, and none of the Floyd were there. It was just Chris, and he played me the song ‘Money.’ And when I heard the guitar solo, I thought, Jesus, this is amazing!

“So I sent David a telegram saying, ‘Remember me? I'm in a band now called Roxy Music’ and we reestablished contact. So I have known him a hell of a long time.”

Having become part of Gilmour’s inner circle, Manzanera got to witness his development as a guitar player, from close quarters.

“I watched his style evolve really all along,” he says. “I remember the first time I heard the guitar solo from ‘Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2,’ I thought, Geez, how the hell did he do that?

“And the sound, and the tone? [Pink Floyd founder and guitarist] Syd Barrett was more off the wall and experimental, and not so blues oriented. But David brought a sort of blues sensibility to Pink Floyd and then had to do the experimental stuff as well too. So he evolved in his own way of creating weird and wonderful sounds.”

When Gilmour decided to enter the studio to record his third solo album, 2006’s On an Island, he called on his friend to assist in its production as well as contribute guitar to three tracks. Manzanera later joined Gilmour’s touring band for the record, all of which gave him insights into Gilmour’s precise playing technique.

“One of the things about David's playing — and in some way it's a bit like me — is that while it seems to be about distortion and echo, it is actually about the way he plays the notes and bends them, along with the strength of his hands,” he reveals.

“And he's got a fantastic sense of tuning. He's very, very hot on tuning. So often when I was recording him, I would have a tuner right there with me to check on the tuning. But he would come in to listen to a take or something, and if a note wasn't bent or pulled or pushed to the right tuning, he'd want to redo it.”

Manzanera says this could be a problem at time.

“People who have perfect pitch — and I don’t know if he has it — but for those who do, it becomes a bit of a problem. You're going to be either under the note or above the note.

“And because I was brought up listening to people like Miles Davis, tuning for me is about the space in between the intervals, which interests me just as much. It doesn't have to be perfectly in tune, but it drives some people mad — obviously those who have perfect pitch.

Manzanera says that while Gilmour is a master of the guitar, he is also highly adept at playing the lap steel.

“His use of the lap steel is quite unique as well,” he says. “There's no one else who can do that in that kind of musical context. It is not country music, nor is it super high-driven steel-string playing. But again, because he’s got this great sense of tuning, he can find the spot. It's like when you’re playing slide, but sitting down and playing in the sort of melodic bluesy way. So, he adapted that. And that's pretty damn unique, I think.”

Gilmour’s search for perfection runs deep. It not only takes precedent when it comes to playing the guitar but underscores every aspect of the writing and recording process.

“He has a guitar palette that he tends to use,” Manzanera explains. “Sometimes in his demos, he will just use a Zoom digital recorder and will D.I. it and get this great sound. But then when we’d be in the studio, we'd spend ages with all sorts of valve amps and expensive stuff trying to recreate the Zoom demo.

“Because he’s doing the demos himself — and he's very adept at doing that — he gets used to the sound of what's on the demo, and he’ll like it. And I will always say, ‘If it sounds good, that's it.’ You just have to trust your ears and things like that.

“And that’s how we would work together, finding the place between the demo and what became the finished product. Because David knows what he wants.”

Think you’ve heard the most jaw-dropping hardcore blues solos of all time? We don’t think you have until you’ve heard every solo on this list of what we consider the 50 greatest badass blues guitar solos of all time.

Let’s face it: Thousands up thousands of great blues solos have been played on the electric guitar, so you can imagine how daunting it was for us to narrow our selection down to just 50. For starters, we siphoned off more than a dozen artists and solos that have already been so widely celebrated that they hardly need additional mention. After all, who isn't already hip to Clapton's extraordinary solo on "Crossroads" or Jimi's on "Red House"?

We also excluded a few legendary players who were renowned for their acoustic guitar solos, but did little of note once they switched to electric, such as Tampa Red, along with several well-known guitarists that played fantastic electric blues, but didn't really take solos, like John Lee Hooker. And early on we decided not to include seminal acoustic blues players like Robert Johnson, Son House and Blind Willie Johnson, both because their numbers are too great, and because in most cases they played unaccompanied, and therefore didn't "solo" in the same sense as the artists on our list.

After fighting over which guitarists should be included, GP editors Matt Blackett, Art Thompson and Barry Cleveland enlisted additional aid from four blues-savvy contributors — Teja Gerken, Jimmy Leslie, Adam Levy and Michael Ross — and each member of the team was tasked with choosing the particular solo they wanted to spotlight. Whether you hail us as brilliant or bash us as bums, we at least hope that you'll dig reading this as much as we did writing it.

"Ohio" — Dan Auerbach (Black Keys)

Black Keys frontman Dan Auerbach is never flashy, but he's naturally poignant, and the fuzz freak is largely responsible for the past decade's dirty blues resurgence. Auerbach eschews prominent guitar breaks, and almost never strays past the pentatonic box. "I'm not much of a solo guy," he told GP in his February 2012 feature. But I do love 'rips." Auerbach really rips near the end of the single "Ohio," which was released independently from 2010's Brothers. The Akron native's vibrato quivers like the shivers of a cold Midwestern winter. Auerbach eventually engages a wah, induces feedback, and then climbs up the fretboard with flurries of tremolo picking until he reaches a dramatic climax. —J.L.

"Deep Feeling" — Chuck Berry

Even though he recorded for Chess records, home of Muddy Waters and Howling Wolf, Charles Berry is not known as a blues guitarist but rather as one of the inventors of rock and roll. Nevertheless, this instrumental, released as the B-side to "School Day (Ring! Ring! Goes the Bell)," is a straight 12-bar blues. Well, maybe not completely straight, as Chuck throws in a V chord where you don't expect it, and, oh yeah, he performed it on an unusual pedal-steel guitar — thought to be a Gibson Electraharp. The country- style string bends might have been played by anyone, but the wolf-whistle slides are pure Berry. —M.R.

"Stormy Monday" — Dickey Betts (The Allman Brothers Band)

Half of one of the greatest guitar teams of all time, Richard Betts' job description involved going toe-to-toe with the genius of Duane Allman night after night. At Fillmore East, on an evening recorded for posterity, he had the unenviable task of following Duane's incendiary solo on the blues chestnut "Stormy Monday." After Duane comes Greg Allman's jazz waltz organ solo. As the band breaks it down from there, Betts begins his sliding, squeezing and screaming licks that build into a masterpiece of soul, lyricism, intonation and tone that give away nothing to his legendary partner. —M.R.

"Red Dog Speaks" — Elvin Bishop

How about some greasy slide playing over a slow blues in E? That's exactly what Elvin Bishop dishes up on "Red Dog Speaks" (from the album of the same title) and as a bonus, he describes his ax (Red Dog) in the song's lyrics. Want to hear a 1959 Gibson ES-345 Stereo really wail? Wait for Bishop to say, "Speak, Red Dog," and hang tight, as he unleashes a soulful solo that combines fretted notes and fluid slide playing in a relaxed, in-the-pocket manner that puts style and class ahead of showboating. —T.G.

"Albert's Shuffle" — Mike Bloomfield (Mike Bloomfield, Al Kooper & Stephen Stills)

When Michael Bloomfield appeared on the scene with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band in 1964 no one had ever heard guitar playing quite like that, nor did any previous blues album have a printed exhortation to "play this record loud." Indeed, Bloomfield's excitable, ahead-of-the-beat soloing had more to do with rock energy than blues mystery. It wasn't until 1968's Super Session, featuring Bloomfield with Al Kooper and Steven Stills, that Bloomfield settled into this pocket of more traditional blues playing, while retaining the desperate energy that set him apart from the traditionalists, and gave him his distinctive voice in the first place. —M.R.

"Blues Deluxe" — Joe Bonamassa

Bonamassa began his professional career when many lads are being Bar Mitzvahed. His early blues work was that of an impressionist: his solo on "Long Distance Blues" from 2003's Blues Deluxe is Joe doing Eric Clapton. In the decade since, Bonamassa has melded his influences and made them his own, honing a style of diamond precision playing and to-die-for tone. This slow blues from Jeff Beck's first solo record (itself a cover of B.B. King's "Gambler Blues") starts off with three minutes and 50 seconds of soloing that take you from B.B., through Clapton and Eric Johnson, all inflected with a heavy dose of Bonamassa. — M.R.

"Cry" — Doyle Bramhall II

If ever there was a guy to get a handle on the SRV attitude and fire without copping Stevie's licks, it's Doyle Bramhall II. On this slow 12/8 number, Bramhall gets all kinds of righteous Strat tones, including spooky tremolo, clanging semi cleans and a positively massive exploding-amp lead tone. He does a killer, thematic break mid-tune but saves his best stuff for the end of the song. For the outro solo, he coaxes awesome, howling feedback before leaning into his powerful bends that are jam-packed with emotion. His note choices and phrasing as fresh as always, due in part to playing lefty-strung righty, but Bramhall's super-deep pocket might be his greatest asset. —M.B.

"Okle Dokie Stomp" — Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown

You can hear echoes of the big-band era in Brown's recordings from the 1940s and early '50s. It's in the instrumentation— with an ensemble of horns, upright bass, and a drummer driving spang-a-lang on his ride cymbal. Rock-and-roll was about to happen, but hadn't quite. Music from this in-between period is sometimes called "jump blues," and Brown's instrumental "Okie Dolde Stomp" is a first-rate example. T- Bone Walker's influence is apparent here, particularly in a lick that Brown repeats: an up-bent 4 on the third string followed immediately by a 5 on the second string. Still, Gate had his own thing, and it's a whole lot of fun to listen to. —A.L.

"John's Blues" — Roy Buchanan

In 1971 PBS aired a documentary: Introducing Roy Buchanan a.k.a. The World's Greatest Unknown Guitarist, and the world's perception of what a Fender Telecaster could do was forever changed. Buchanan wrenched human cries and animal squeals out of this dead simple guitar design. His style of blues melded James Burton's chicken pickin' with Albert King's expressive bends, definitively illustrating the deep connection between country and blues. It is all here in "John's Blues" from his first record. This is the guitar tone and technique that inspired Danny Gatton, Gary Moore and Jim Campilongo, as well as causing Jeff Beck to dedicate "Cause We've Ended As Lovers" to Buchanan. — M.R.

"When My Train Pulls In" — Gary Clark Jr.

The second flight on the second track from buzz bluesman Gary Clark Jr.'s diverse major-label debut, Blak and Blu, is a gnarly fuzz/ wah solo that kicks off hissing. "We recorded that track first and cut it live in one take," the Epiphone Casino enthusiast revealed in his January 2013 GP cover feature. "I had my Fender Vibro-King, and stomped on all of my pedals for that solo." It peaks when Clark launches into a Chuck Berry–like lick at the 12th fret, and then starts incorporating the G at the 15th fret and the F# at the 14th fret on the high E string. "I'd been experimenting in that range," Clark revealed. "I played that lick over and over to build momentum. We were eager to prove ourselves, and there was an overwhelming sense of 'Let's go for it!’ “ — J.L.

"Feelin' Bad Blues" — Ry Cooder

In interviews over the years, slide guru Cooder has shared some juicy details about his hot-rodded guitars and unusual rigs. It's tempting to tag a particular pickup, compressor or amp when trying to pinpoint the source of his mystical sound, but let's face it — it's a touch thing. That's most apparent in his nakedest recordings, like this laid-back guitar-and-dolceola duet from the Crossroads soundtrack. Cooder has always shunned picks, and this cut shows just how adept he is with his bare hand. Working in open-D tuning, Cooder blurs the line between rhythm and lead. You may be inspired to take up a bottleneck and start practicing — or quit altogether. —A.L.

"Chicken in the Kitchen" — Robert Cray

Though he owes much of his success to a fairly slick, mainstream crossover sound, Robert Cray can play no-holds-barred blues with the best of them. Recorded live, "Chicken in the Kitchen" (on Cookin' in Mobile) not only features some of the most beautiful, sparkly, out-of-phase Strat tone you'll ever hear, it also has not one but two great solos. Number two, especially, is full of incredibly cohesive lines with blindsiding surprises, occasionally getting close enough to the edge that you start worrying whether Cray will make it out alive. —T.G.

"Shake 'Em on Down" — Luther Dickinson (North Mississippi Allstars)

The North Mississippi Allstars lived up to their name when they brought tribal elders R.L. Burnside, Jim Dickinson, and the whole neighborhood to Bonnaroo in 2004, where they documented history in progress. Luther Dickinson pays homage to the past while dragging classic Hill Country blues kicking and screaming into the present via groovy Gibsons, mighty Marshalls, and occasional echo and other effects. He does it to death with a Les Paul in open D on Fred McDowell's "Shake 'Em on Down," which kicks off Hill Country Revue as wickedly as it did the Allstars' debut CD, and, in turn, their career. When Dickinson lays a slide to the treble strings while thumbpicking the bass strings and incorporating optimal open ones, he brings the honeysuckle sweet and the dirty primitive together in glorious harmony. —A.L.

"Blues After Hours" — Hollywood Fats

Fats is one of the more obscure players on our list, but if you've got an appetite for the blues then you really need to put some Fats in your diet. His style was somehow brash and classy all at once. Most frequently seen wielding an ES-335, he was an itinerant sideman who did stints with the Blasters, Muddy Waters and Canned Heat. For raw blues power, though, it's hard to beat his playing with his own Hollywood Fats Band. On the sultry "Blues After Hours" (from Deep on America / Larger Than Life, Vol. 2), he delivers a textbook example of how to build a solo from a humble beginning to a searing climax, and then how to wind it back down for the subsequent vocal verse. —A.L.

"Prison of Love" — Robben Ford

The word "uptown" is sometimes used to describe blues with more jazz-inspired harmonies — chords beyond the common I, IV, and V. Ford can take the blues farther uptown than just about anybody, as this minor-key shuffle from his 1992 record Robben Ford & the Blue Line illustrates so colorfully. He stays in familiar pentatonic territory for the first four bars, and then shades his phrases with canny chromaticism in the next four. He plays even more ear-tweaking lines in the next few measures before taking the express train back downtown for a gritty finish. —A.L.

"The Change in Me" — Eric Gales

Based on a riff that borrows heavily from ZZ Top's "La Grange," Eric Gales' "The Change in Me" is a hard-driving rocker of a tune, and Gales plays highly melodic fills to provide a dynamic counterpoint to the crunchy theme. Demonstrated by several YouTube clips of the song, Gales varies the actual solo considerably from one night to the next, often employing a modern-sounding, delay-drenched high-gain tone and a great ability to allow the solo to alternately breathe and burn. —T.G.

"Bullfrog Blues" — Rory Gallagher

It's no easy task to choose a favorite Rory Gallagher blues solo, but his slide work on "Bullfrog Blues" is a serious contender. Leaving his trademark Strat behind (several YouTube videos show him playing a Gretsch Corvette), Gallagher gets to work in open-A tuning, with a capo on the second fret. The solo itself uses licks in the I, IV and V chord positions at the fifth, seventh and 12th frets, and it isn't unlike Gallagher's acoustic bottleneck work, though a ferocious amount of gain yields one of the meanest electric slide tones that you'll ever encounter. —T.G.

"Please Send Me Someone to Love" — Amos Garrett

In 1974, Amos Garrett's solo on Maria Muldaur's "Midnight at the Oasis" was all over the AM airwaves. It gobsmacked guitarists worldwide with its triple-string bends and unusual phrasing — but the previous year Garrett had already blown minds with his spectacular solo on this Percy Mayfield classic. The Canadian guitarist navigates the changes more like Benny Carter than Albert King. His trademark double-stop bends and large-interval, two-string pull-offs, facilitated by his huge hands, are nothing short of astonishing. The two choruses here are perfectly constructed, and were, in fact, composed. To improvise something this flawless would be superhuman. — M.R.

"Blues Newburg" — Danny Gatton

Danny Gatton had such a great grasp of country, jazz, rockabilly and blues that it's tough to pin down when he was at his bluesiest, but this tour de force is as good a place as any to start. It's got only about one percent of what the guy was capable of, and that means excellent bends on the high and low strings, amazing single-note and chord melody, wicked vibrato, faux pedal-steel licks, blazing runs, breakneck chromatic passages, volume swells, and lots, lots more — all played with impeccable time. Boy, do we miss this guy! —M.B.

"Sure Got Cold After the Rain Fell" — Billy Gibbons (ZZ Top)

Billy G. is one of the finest blues players around, but ZZ Top's boogie-oriented repertoire tends to overshadow a tune like this slow-burn gem from the 1972 album, Rio Grande Mud. The song isn't in the classic 12-bar mold, but Gibbons decorates the 12/8 groove as if it were. Deploying a moderately distorted tone for the licks he plays over a clean arpeggiated rhythm figure, Gibbons shows his usual mastery of note choice and placement, building his solo to create maximum emotion during the song's extended outro. — A.T.

"The Blue" — David Gilmour

You could say David Gilmour has never played anything that wasn't the blues — after all, Pink Floyd was named for blues musicians Pink Anderson and Floyd Council. Gilmour's tone and vibrato have always been touchstones of the modern electric blues sound. Though he played a number of awesome solos with Pink Floyd, "The Blue," from his own 2006 record, Islands, deserves mention for several reasons. Reminiscent of Fleetwood Mac's "Albatross," the solo quickly pushes the envelope with evocative whammy pedal work, which continues throughout, seamlessly woven into classic Gilmour licks delivered with the gorgeous tone and pocket that make him a guitar legend. —M.R.

"Lonesome Dave" — David Grissom

Already astounding when he made the classic Live at Liberty Lunch with Joe Ely in 1990, Grissom has refined his style through the years in stints with Storyville (featuring the SRV rhythm section) and the Dixie Chicks. It is all there in "Lonesome Dave," from his first solo record: the Danny Gatton organ pedal point, the pedal-steel licks (Grissom taught himself to do B-Bender licks without a B-Bender), and the ZZ Top grind. Imagine Bluesbreakers Clapton and Billy Gibbons meet Brent Mason and Albert Lee and you get the idea. Throughout, Grissom's innate taste and musicality let him be jaw dropping without being flashy. —M.R.

"How Blue Can You Get" — Jeff Healey

Healey's blindness and unconventional playing style never hindered his ability to turn in amazing guitar performances, one of many being "How Blue Can You Get" from his posthumous 2008 release, Mess of Blues. Healey burns white hot here, pulling off wickedly fast lines and dramatic bends that defy the physical realities of holding a guitar flat on his lap. And if that's not enough, visit YouTube to also see what a gifted jazz trumpeter Healey was. What an incredible musician! —A.T.

"Blue Guitar" — Earl Hooker

Earl Zebedee Hooker, first cousin to John Lee, recorded this instrumental on May 3, 1961, and It was released the following year. A short time later, Muddy Waters overdubbed vocals onto the track, renamed it "You Shook Me," and released it under his own name. Now a blues staple — covered famously by Page and Beck among many others — Hooker played his immortal slide licks in standard tuning, which was novel for a Chicago blues guitarist at the time. He went on to experiment with echo, wah and other effects, attracting the attention of Jimi Hendrix for one, but this early recording, sans Muddy, showcases one of the most original stylists of all time. —B.C.

"It Hurts Me Too" — Elmore James

No doubt, "Dust My Broom" is slide guitarist James' signature song, but there's so much more mojo to be found in his cover of Tampa Red's "It Hurts Me Too,” if only for his sound. (You can bet your best bottleneck that Ry Cooder has listened to this recording more than a few times.) James takes full advantage of this throaty tone, letting his notes speak in vocal-like phrases. Whatever there is to say in open-D tuning, James says it here, with astounding character and confidence. Blues doesn't get much bluer than this. —A.L.

"Texas" — Eric Johnson

This session for Johnson's 2010 sonically superior release Up Close features guests Jimmie Vaughan and Steve Miller (vocals), who dropped by his studio and inspired him to rise to the occasion. The famously fickle and laborious Strat cat played a '59 Les Paul Standard dubbed "Buddy" through a Fuzz Face and a 100-watt Marshall on the solo—a first-take monster in the moment. Brandishing a sizzling tone and feeding off of Miller's vocal setup, Johnson's searing first solo soars to the heavens. Perfectly timed major thirds sound surprisingly blue, and EJ incorporates just enough diminished and chromatic runs to add spice without pushing too far beyond the boundaries of the blues. —J.L.

"Playing Around" — Lonnie Johnson

Alonzo "Lonnie" Johnson is best known to guitarists for his groundbreaking acoustic six- and 12-string work in the late '20s, including his celebrated duets with jazz guitarist Eddie Lang in 1929, and his 1927 recording "6/88 Glide," featuring what is now widely considered to be the first flatpicked single-note guitar solo. But Johnson's career continued for decades after that, and in 1947 he began playing electric. You'll find great electric solos scattered throughout his subsequent tunes, but the brief but rocking romp on 1949's "Playing Around" notably foreshadows moves that early rockers such as Eddie Cochran, Cliff Gallup and Scotty Moore will explore a few years later. —B.C.

"Born into This" — Wilson T. King

"I was listening to Eddie Hazel on 'Super Stupid' and Jimi's Band of Gypsys when I recorded this," Wilson T. King says, "and I wanted a future blues style of real whiplash out of the bends and tones." Well, he got it, while wielding a '69 Strat with DiMarzio Fast Track pickups played through an early '80s Marshall 2104 2x12 combo cranked way up, and using only his fingers. King is known for pushing the blues envelope in new directions, and this particularly passionate example of that predilection would, no doubt, elicit a big grin from Jimi. —B.C.

"Chief's Blues" — Greg Koch

Although he's known for his monstrous chops, Greg Koch displays tasty restraint for most of this slow blues, and the results are simply delicious. Much as the native people did with the mighty buffalo, Koch uses every part of the scale on these amazing seven minutes, blending major, minor and chromatic lines brilliantly over the changes and milking several notes out of every bend. It's hard to pick the coolest part, but a strong contender would have to be his jarring, pre-bent, triple-stop descending groans. This solo has it all: space, dynamics, humor, sensitivity and bombast, with damn near every lick being of the "must steal" variety. Yes sir! —M.B.

"Wind In Denver" — Sonny Landreth

Louisiana's singular slideman delivers a pinnacle performance on this track that only appears officially on his landmark live recording released in 2005, Grant Street. He tells GP that he achieved the gargantuan stereo tone playing a '66 Strat in open D minor tuning (D, A, D, F, A, D, low to high) through a Matchless HD30 with a 2x12 onstage and a 100-watt Dumble Overdrive Special pushing a 2x12 located offstage in a former freezer storeroom for maximum ambiance. "I was going for that wonderful 'Voodoo Child' vibe that still gets me every time I hear it," Landreth says. Sonny probably has the most evolved technique in slide blues history, and on "Wind in Denver" he delivers a host of hallmarks such fretting notes behind the slide and coaxing heavenly harmonics with a level of unbridled moxy that makes the solo truly monumental. —J.L.

"A Quitter Never Wins" — Jonny Lang

The baddest blues showcase on then teen sensation Jonny Lang's 1997 major-label debut, Lie to Me, is still his showstopper on 2010's Live at the Ryman. In his July 2010 feature he told GP that Albert Collins inspired him to become a Tele player, and Tab Benoit inspired him further. "When I heard his tone I freaked out — the Thinline Tele with humbuckers became the staple for me after that," he said. GP relayed that Lang eventually placed a P90 pickup between the two humbuckers, and he features the classic single-coil during the fiery intro and first solo on Tinsley Ellis' tune at the Ryman. He cuts into the second solo with sheer reckless abandon. —J.L.

"I'm Going Home" — Alvin Lee (Ten Years After)

It's hard to think of Alvin Lee without taking note of his solo in Ten Years After's "I'm Going Home." The band first recorded the song on its 1968 release Undead, and it upped the fast shuffle's octane level during its performance at the Woodstock festival. Playing his iconic "Big Red" 1959 Gibson ES-335, Lee takes the unusual step to start his solo accompanied only by drums for a full 24 bars, playing without the comfort of harmonic guidance from the band. He then proceeds to play one of the most blistering and fluid, Chuck Berry–influenced solos you'll ever come across. —T.G.

"Out of My Mind" — John Mayer

Regardless of whether or not you're into John Mayer's songwriting or vocal style, it's hard to argue with the fact that the guy has chops. Sure, he may not be the most original player to come along, but whether on acoustic, electric, lead or rhythm guitar, he is clearly in command. Eschewing the slick production found on much of his work, Mayer takes a decidedly more raw approach on the live recording of "Out of My Mind" (on Try!), giving his ES-335 a pentatonic workout with great vibrato, slightly overdriven, fat tone, and an excellent climax before resuming his vocal duties. —T.G.

"Still Got the Blues" — Gary Moore

Moore emerged from early British fusion and then spent his career alternating between turning out hard rock and blues records. It would be easy to go with any of his incendiary solos on a straight blues tune, or one of his letter-perfect recreations of Peter Green on Blues for Greeny, but "Still Got the Blues" is pure Moore. Okay, this cycle of fifths progression is not "the blues" per se, but its sharp-five-to-five resolution is blues approved. More importantly, the yearning in the gorgeous melody that Moore milks on the final solo, before tearing the roof of the sucker, is what the blues is all about. —M.R.

"Steroids" — Oz Noy

Oz Noy can get so far outside so quickly that it's easy to think that what he plays is not blues. Despite the funk and fusion elements that he throws in here, the fact is he's playing wild, vibey, blues-on-acid on this tune. We could all add a heaping helping of freshness to our 12-bar playing if we adopted one iota of Noy's phrasing, note choices, or fearlessness that are so abundant on this song. —M.B.

"Three Time Loser" — Bonnie Raitt

While blues and contemporary pop are not always an easy coupling, Raitt has been interlacing the two for decades now with consistently cool results. This track from her 1977 album, Sweet Forgiveness, is a high-water mark. The chord progression here has nothing to do with the customary 12-bar form, but Raitt's supernatural slide work infuses the song with deep blues feeling. Nobody else can make a quarter-tone glissando sound so expansive, and her overdriven Strat tone burns the way whiskey does going down your gullet. Listen close to hear her widen her vibrato and pluck harmonics in the final ride out. Pure swagger. —AL

"Greasy Kid Stuff" — Kid Ramos

Known for his explosive lead work on a Tele or Strat, and the ballsy sound he gets from a Vox AC30 with a stand-alone reverb, Kid Ramos has played with the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Roomful of Blues, James Hannan, and the Mannish Boys. He has also recorded several solo albums, including 2001's Greasy Kid Stuff, where he makes the instrumental title track jump with his fierce attack and fat tone. Check out YouTube to see Ramos tearing it up in a variety of situations, including on a baritone Tele with Los Fabulocos on "Burnin' the Chicken." —AT

"It's My Own Fault" — Otis Rush

Rush takes three solos on this track from the 1967 album Chicago/The Blues/Today!, Vol. 2. His first, in the song's intro, is amazing from the get-go, not because it's a display of guitar fireworks, but precisely because it's not. Phrase by phrase, Rush uses his Epiphone Riviera to masterfully tell a story here. After a couple of vocal verses, he ventures higher up the neck, ramping the thrill factor. His final break is just four stop-time measures to set up the saxophonist's solo, with a staggering impact-to-bar ratio. Rush was a southpaw who played his righty-strung guitar upside down, with the high E on top. This gives his bends an unusual sound because he's pushing the strings where most guitarists would pull, and vice versa. —A.L.

"Blues for Salvador" — Carlos Santana

Santana may not be though of as a blues player per se, and "Blues for Salvador," the title track of his 1987 solo album isn't a standard blues form. But by playing nearly six continuous minutes of intensely bluesy melodic work Santana laid down a masterpiece that helped him win a Grammy in 1989 for "Best Rock Instrumental Performance." Robben Ford later covered the song, and Santana has played it in concert with Buddy Guy, the Wayne Shorter Group and Mexican guitar star Javier Batiz. —A.T.

"Blue on Black" — Kenny Wayne Shepherd

When Louisiana native Kenny Wayne Shepherd broke big while still a teenager in the mid '90s, he was heralded as the next Stevie Ray Vaughan. Of course, nobody is ever the next SRV, but Shepherd's highly rhythmic Southern Strat histrionics clearly owe a debt to Austin's patron guitar player. And like SRV, KWS has a knack for turning stock blues licks into memorable, melodic moments via clever phrasing. You know a player — especially a bluesman — believes he's made a statement when he sticks close to the recorded version of a solo onstage night after night, year after year. "Blue on Black" is case in point. It's hook-laden licks get under your skin and stick in your brain whether it's the original version on 1997's Trouble or 2010's Live! In Chicago. —J.L.

"Three Hundred Pounds of Joy” — Hubert Sumlin

Released as a single on the Chicago-based Chess label in 1963 — with Howlin' Wolf leading the session — this is Sumlin's nonpareil. He plays teasing fills at the top of each verse, with an assured attack and shuddering vibrato, finally launching into his solo midway through the song. He begins with an unusual high-E string bend from the minor 3 up to the 4, falls a few steps back down the minor-pentatonic scale, then repeats the phrase twice more with slight variations. It's a spunky start, and he never relents. In a genre where clichés are an easy pitfall, this is one of the most unique solos ever rendered on a popular recording. —A.L.

"Wild About You Baby" — Hound Dog Taylor

Famously called “the Ramones of the blues" by The Village Voice, Hound Dog Taylor and his band the House Rockers played a ferociously raw kind of boogie blues. Based on the familiar "Dust My Broom" slide riff, "Wild About You Baby" (from Hound Dog Taylor and the House Rockers) is all about a game of call-and-response between the vocals and the guitar. When the time comes for Taylor to solo, he doesn't stray far from the main riff, and his note choices are perfect examples of a solo taking the place of a vocal line. —T.G.

"Slow Blues" — Mick Taylor

Released on Mick Taylor's self-titled post–Rolling Stones solo album, "Slow Blues" is a study in how to avoid mere noodling while essentially blowing for the entire duration of an instrumental track. The fact that "Slow Blues" uses a very cool, modified 12-bar progression with a distinctive bass line and chorused-sounding 13th chords taking the place of an actual melody certainly helps in keeping the tune engaging, but Taylor's throaty, reverb-drenched tone and dynamic playing keep the tune moving forward in a way that is not to be taken for granted in such an extended solo exploration. —T.G.

"Jesus Is Everywhere" — Sister Rosetta Tharpe

Tharpe may not have considered herself a blues artist, favoring gospel songs as she did throughout her career. But when you listen to her live 1964 recording of "Jesus Is Everywhere" — from The Authorized Sister Rosetta Tharpe Collection —the gap between sacred and secular doesn't seem so wide. Armed with a thumbpick, and backed by a bassist and drummer who sound like two thirds of the best rockabilly trio you've ever heard, Tharpe digs in hard on her early '60s SG-style Les Paul Custom. The first half of her solo is relatively straightforward, but when she starts swerving and swooping you'll wonder which way is up. Glory, glory! —A.L.

"Whisky Train" — Robin Tower (Procol Harum)

Like Hendrix, to whom he is overly, if not unfairly, compared, Robin Trower's blues roots run deep. Fifty years into his solo career, he still makes records worth listening to, these days filled with more classic blues tunes than ever. Still, the best example of his rooted playing might be "Whisky Train," a tune he wrote for Procol Harum's fourth album. The song could be considered one long cowbell-driven guitar solo, with Trower riding one of the great guitar riffs over and over, occasionally answering brief Gary Booker vocal sections with short modern blues excursions that preview his style as a solo artist. —M.R.

"I Know" — Derek Trucks (The Derek Trucks Band)

"Nearly everything I do on guitar has a foundation in blues music," says freak of nature Derek Trucks who primarily plays a Gibson SG tuned to open E with a large Dunlop Pyrex slide through a cranked Fender Super Reverb to conjure his signature, liquid fire tone. The way Trucks furthers Duane Allman's electric bottleneck style via Eastern-influenced microtones is mesmerizing. The Derek Trucks Band's 2010 release, Roadsongs, is a supreme document. His "Key to the Highway" solo reaches the highest zenith, but "I Know" is extraordinarily interesting as it progresses from droning raga into a swinging R&B feelgood number with one of the most musical, uplifting major-2 blues solos ever recorded. —J.L.

"Miracles & Demons (Part 2)" — Eddie Turner

A master at creating spooky atmospherics — such as those infusing several Otis Taylor records — Turner is also a funky and hard-rocking psychedelic bluesman in the Hendrix tradition, as evidenced on this track. Rooted in a repeating 6/8 figure played on dual resonators, with Turner's haunting vocals and wicked, wah-inflected, heavily echoed solo intertwining throughout, the tune showcases his ability to simultaneously wail and conjure uncanny sonics via Custom Shop Strats, a '59 tweed Deluxe, a Budda Twinmaster, a Roland RE-301 tape echo and other magical implements. —B.C.

"Tuff Enuff” — Jimmie Vaughan (The Fabulous Thunderbirds)

The other Vaughan is as cool as the other side of the pillow, especially compared to his fire-spitting brother. They both favor Strats, but the similarities pretty much end there. Jimmie rarely plays fast or dirty, and is never flash. He mostly sticks to stabbing single notes within a traditional framework, giving them plenty of space to breathe. Jimmie Vaughan reminds us that less notes can certainly mean more, and the solo on the title track from the Fabulous Thunderbirds' 1986 album, Tuff Enuff, is a shining example. Vaughan doesn't usually do effects, but in this instance shimmering reverb and delay add remarkable depth to his sparse phrasing. It's hard to find better evidence of a pure blues solo building a perfect bridge to a crossover hit. —J.L.

"Call It Stormy Monday" — T-Bone Walker

Chances are, you're not old enough to remember the impact this song made when it was originally released in 1947. (By way of perspective, Clapton was only two years old then, and the first Stratocaster was still seven years off.) So you may listen now and find yourself thinking, What's the big whoop? I've heard other guitarists play that stuff. The big whoop is: Walker invented that stuff. Without his influence, there might've been no B.B. King, no Chuck Berry, and no Gatemouth Brown. Go back to the source and listen, taking note of Walker's rhythmic sophistication. Sure, there are eighth-notes and sixteenths and some triplets. But such subdivisions were never more elastic than in Walker's hands. — A.L.

"Ball and Biscuit" — Jack White (The White Stripes)

Jack White kicked the blues straight in the nuts on "Ball and Biscuit" utilizing a bizarre, ferocious sound the likes of which had never before been heard in the history of America's senior guitar genre. No "real" bluesman would have imagined such blasphemy as a Detroit garage punk playing a plastic guitar (a 1964 Montgomery Ward Airline) with a fuzz-drenched, Whammy-infected tone on a blues romp. White made it his signature tone, and his signature guitar album, Elephant, landed him his first Guitar Player cover story on the June 2003 issue. The bombastic trio of solos throughout White's sideways statement "Ball and Biscuit" play like a blues from hell trilogy. — J.L.

“When I joined Pink Floyd I was trying to play some of Syd Barrett's parts, yet adapt them to my own style and taste,” David Gilmour told Guitar Player in 2003. “The framework I was working in was already set, and it included a style of guitar playing that was already a part of it. It took a while for me to allow myself to stray from what I thought I should be doing.”

It’s remarkable to think that Gilmour’s evolution as a guitarist has occurred almost entirely before the public. He was all of 21 when he joined Pink Floyd in December 1967, after Barrett’s mental health problems diminished his ability to perform. Up until then, he’d barely played in public, aside from briefly busking with Barrett in Saint-Tropez (for which they were arrested) and performing in the blues-rock trio Joker’s Wild, whose covers of chart hits were reportedly so bad that club owners refused to pay them.

As Gilmour himself says, his guitar style developed from his own folk and blues leanings and the requirements of Pink Floyd’s early psychedelic and prog music. If there is one constant in his guitar style over past six decades, it’s blues. The genre is well-suited to his style of soloing, which relies on sustained notes and melodies rather than sheer speed.

“I wasn’t gifted with enormous speed on the guitar,” he told Rick Beato. “There were years when I was younger were I thought I could get that if I practiced enough. But it just wasn’t ever really going to happen.”

Instead, he played to his strengths, developing a slower, more vocal-like style drawn from his own love of blues.

“My style is my style, and it was created out of an amalgamation of the folk and blues music I started with,” he told Guitar Player, “as well as my early years in Pink Floyd when I was attempting to be a psychedelic-type guitar player. That being said, I think I always come back to certain elements of blues phraseology. The blues run pretty deep in my playing.”

And then there is his love of pedal-steel guitar, an instrument that featured almost exclusively in country music until Gilmour became one of the few rock guitarists to incorporate it into his repertoire, alongside his electric guitar work.

“I’ve always had a jack-of-all-trades mentality,” Gilmour said. “I like to be able to pick up different instruments and be competent on them. It would be nice to be good at everything, but, well, you know,” he said with a laugh.

The instrument, as well as a lap-steel, is heard in memorable flashes throughout his Pink Floyd and solo catalog, most notably in “Breathe,” the opening track from The Dark Side of the Moon.

“I’ve always loved steel guitar,” he said. “I bought my first steel—a pedal steel with no pedals — at a junk shop in Seattle in 1968. I had to get the pedals made when I got back to England. That was the same instrument I used on ‘Breathe’ from Dark Side of the Moon."

But of course it’s with a six-string — usually a Fender Stratocaster — that Gilmour has given his most memorable performance. His solos in tracks like “Money” and "Comfortably Numb" are celebrated as the best of his career, if not in rock itself.

But which of his performances does he like best?

“There's a solo on ‘Dogs’ that I thought was pretty good and unusual,” he says, citing a track from Floyd’s 1977 concept album, Animals. It’s too bad the interview didn’t ask him which — Gilmour delivers four brilliant solos in “Dogs”: one at 1:50, another at 3:40, a third at 5:32, and a final one at 13:26 — but we’d bet he’s referring to the third, given his use of the word “unusual.”

“It hasn't entered the pantheon of the ones people seem to like because it's a slightly different style for me, I suppose,” Gilmour continued. “I tracked it with an old Tele, and I was really thrilled with it.

“Also, ‘Echoes’ has a guitar buildup that I love,” he added, referring to the Meddle track that constitutes side two of that album. “It's a creation of dozens of different parts. That sort of textural thing often thrills me more than a particular solo I may have played.”

He said he often is surprised when he hears certain tracks, like “Echoes,” as if it were performed by someone else.

“I get a charge out of thinking, How the hell did I actually do that? You get this out-of-body experience. You're not quite sure if it was you who did it.”

And yet for all the emphasis placed on his work as an electric guitar player, Gilmour said it is an acoustic guitar that has been the backbone of his songwriting.

“I guess it would be my Martin D-35," he said, referring to the guitar that sold for $1,2 million in a 2019 auction of his gear. "I used it on Wish You Were Here, and I've been using ever since.”

Gilmour’s latest album is 2024’s Luck and Strange, an album he called his best work since The Dark Side of the Moon. “The album feels like a solid body of cohesive work,” he told Guitar Player in our November 2024 issue. “It’s the cohesiveness of the whole thing — the writing, the work, the thrill it still gives me to listen to it all the way through as an album. We’re not talking concept album here, but there’s a consistency of thought and of feeling that runs through it that excites me in a way that makes me make those sort of comparisons.”

David Gilmour had a bumper 2024, releasing Luck and Strange, his first solo album in nine years, and globe-trotting in support of it.

Apparently, he's not done.

In a new Christmas message to his fans, the former Pink Floyd guitar virtuoso says there is more to come in 2025, a year he promises will be just as busy for him.

“We've had a very long, busy year making the album, bringing it out, going on tour, meeting me new people, new collaborators.," he says with a dulcimer in his lap. “One way or another we've wound up with a team of people that are an absolute joy to play with and to be with,” he continues, “and I'd like to do it again... starting now!”

With that, the prog legend treats us to a bit of music on the dulcimer, one of several intriguing instruments included on Luck and Strange, along with a Cümbüş guitar and his 1945 Martin D-18. .

“It's a very ancient instrument that came from Europe at some point,” Gilmour says of the dulcimer, which features on "The Piper’s Call." “It's been widely adopted in America — the Appalachian dulcimer. This one was made in Italy. An Italian friend of mine, his girlfriend's father made it for me. I've had it for over 40 years, but I don't really know how to play it.”

If its thin but rich tones sound familiar, that’s because Brian Jones played one on the Rolling Stones' track "Lady Jane," released in 1966. Jones had adopted the instrument after becoming fixated by American folksinger Richard Fariña.

In related news, Gilmour has just released a special live version of "The Piper’s Call." Recorded at the opening night show of the Luck and Strange tour in Brighton, it features his daughter Romany — whom he recently played a surprise duet with in a Brighton pub — on vocals.

To bring the song to life, Gilmour delved deep into his guitar collection. Its rhythms were tracked on a Stratocaster, and its solo comes from a Les Paul, while a Rickenbacker Frying Pan lap steel and an oddball 12-string are also featured.

Luck and Strange arrived in September shortly after Gilmour hyped it up as the best thing he’d written since Dark Side of the Moon. Thankfully, his words weren’t just hyperbole. The record finds the Pink Floyd man at his best and people seem to agree: It topped the charts in eight countries.

GIlmour told Guitar Player about recording "The Piper's Call" in his cover feature for the November issue,

“The song started with me strumming on a ukulele,” he says, “A Martin ’50s ukulele I think it is — and that’s the two chords that I swap over at the beginning. There’s a lot of Strat on there as well, going through my Zoom [multi-effects] processing box that I’ve used for 30 years; I can’t even remember what it’s called, but it’s got a lower octave and a vibrato, and that’s somewhere in there.

“The other thing in there is a 12-string fretless banjo made by a guy in Turkey. I bought it there in a little shop in a coastal village. It’s very tricky to play ‘cause it’s got 12 strings and it’s fretless. It’s got a very Eastern sound to it, which I love.”

Yet, despite his addiction to acquiring intriguing and rare pieces of gear, Gilmour isn't precious about most of the instruments owns. Instead, he's deemed them “the tools of my trade,” and says there are only three guitars he'd never sell. Gilmour’s once-mainstay Black Strat became the most expensive guitar sold at auction when it fetched just under $4 million in 2019.

Meanwhile, superstar producer Bob Ezrin has revealed Gilmour's little-known secret behind his enviable guitar tone, saying: “If you gave that guy a ukulele and a Pignose amp, he'd make it sound like the solo in Comfortably Numb.”

When Jimi Hendrix arrived on England's shores in 1966, the music scene had never seen talent like his. His fiery fretwork awed Eric Clapton and almost derailed Jeff Beck’s career.

Yet, while his abilities astonished his peers, Hendrix looked for his kicks elsewhere. Comments he made to Roy Hollingworth of England's Melody Maker magazine in the September 5, 1970 issue offer insights into what impressed Jimi while he was knocking out everyone else.

Asked what his new music would sound like, Hendrix admitted he didn't know. But he did offer his view of how rock's next stage of development would take shape and — more enticingly — who would do it.

“People like you to blow their minds," he says, "but then we are going to give them something that will blow their mind, and while it’s blown, there will be something there to fill the gap. It’s going to be a complete form of music. It will be really druggy music. It could be something on similar lines to what Pink Floyd are tackling.

"They don’t know it, you know, but people like Pink Floyd are the mad scientists of this day and age.”

As of the time of Jimi's Melody Maker interview, Pink Floyd had established themselves in the prog music scene following Syd Barrett's departure and the arrival of guitarist David Gilmour. The group had released two albums with Gilmour — 1969's More and Ummagumma — and were just one month from issuing Atom Heart Mother, the group's first album to reach number one in the U.K. The record would also secure a spot at number 55 in the U.S., Pink Floyd's highest chart placement at the time.

It's not surprising Hendrix was tuned into Floyd. Both he and they were game-changing innovators, and yet Jimi and Gilmour's musical approaches couldn't be more different. Hendrix took the flashy blues of his forebearers to new heights, ultimately paving the way for future generational talents like Eddie Van Halen, thanks to his staggering speed.

Gilmour, however, was forced to adopt a different style.

“I wasn’t gifted with enormous speed on the guitar,” he recently told Rick Beato. “There were years when I was younger where I thought I could get that if I practiced enough. But it just wasn’t ever really going to happen.”

Instead, he looked to the Shadows' Hank Marvin and the sounds he seduced from his Fender Stratocaster in order to take a more lyrical approach to his guitar solos.

In fact, at the time of his Melody Maker interview, Hendrix thought his flashy style of music had become passé in England while he was off on tour in the United States.

"While I was doing my vanishing act in the States, I got this feeling that I was completely blown out of England," he told Hollingworth. "I thought they had forgotten me over here. I thought maybe they didn't want me anymore because they had a nice set of bands.

"Maybe they were saying, 'Oh yeah, we've had Hendrix, yeah, he was okay.' I really thought I was completely through here."

Obviously, that wasn't the case. But Gilmour's comments about soloing do indicate a split from the pyrotechnics that typified Hendrix's late-1960s reign, something that would rear its head again with the arrival of the early 1980s' Yngwie Malmsteen-inspired shredding insanity.

Many guitar greats seem to agree with Gilmour's point.

“At the time, everybody was going crazy about Yngwie Malmsteen," says Alex Skolnick. “I tried to keep my distance. He was doing his thing, but it wasn’t supposed to be my thing.”

Indeed, the rise of talents like Malmsteen and EVH “kind of ruined the ‘80s,” says Wolfgang Van Halen, because players were trying to outdo one another in an effort to be the next Eddie.

However, Dweezil Zappa has come to the defense of ‘shredding for shredding’s sake,’ saying: “Some people look at it like, 'Oh, that's lame. Who cares about what that skill is.' But you've got to put the time in to do it.

“There's going to be somebody that likes what that thing is. It might not always be the thing that makes you have a comfortable financial lifestyle, but if you go full forward into the thing that you love, I'm all for it.”

Either way, Hendrix — deemed by countless fans and critics alike as the world’s greatest guitarist — would have been far more impressed by someone going against the grain than those diving through arpeggios at warp speed. There's a good guitar lesson right there.

Matteo Mancuso says modern guitar players reach fluency on the instrument faster, thanks to online resources. But that has also made many players focus less on musicality and more on shredding to grow and maintain their social media following.

The 28-year-old virtuoso discussed the benefits and pitfalls of social media In a new interview with Guitar World. In particular, he says guitarists tend to shred because it gets a positive response from their followers.

"That’s why people on Instagram tend to focus on that," he says. For that matter, he says, "They tend to focus more on Instagram reels rather than actual music."

Indeed, due to the fast-paced nature of social media, many users swipe away from a reel after a few seconds if it doesn’t grab their attention. If players pulling out their biggest and boldest tricks tend to outperform those performing with subtlety and nuance, others will feel they need to do likewise.

“I always say, 'Never judge a guitar player by a short reel',” Mancuso continues. “But to make it work, you have to do really short videos with a lot of 'Wow.' People tend to concentrate too much on the 'Wow.'”

Mancuso already had admirers in Steve Vai, Joe Bonamassa, and Al Di Meola by the time he launched his debut album, The Journey, last year. However, while he can shred circles around most of his peers, his dynamism with the electric guitar, more than his acrobatics, has seen his reputation flourish.

He points to guidance he received from Vai as being key to his outlook. "Steve gave me some good advice: ‘Concentrate on music and not too much on guitar.’ You can open up a lot of new ideas with that mindset.”

While Mancuso occasionally uploads short eye-catching videos to his Instagram, "they’re not to be associated with my musical offerings," he says. "They’re separate things."

Mancuso's comments harmonize with recent points made by Oasis guitarist Noel Gallagher about how the current crop of players have an easier entry into learning the instrument. But he too feels too many over-shred simply because they can.

“There's a lot more information out there now when you're starting, for equipment, what it does and what you should be doing,” he says. “Tips for this, videos for that. They'd have a sleepless night thinking about what we used to be. I don't know how we got by.”

However, after his son called him out for not being able to shred, he responded in a typically priceless fashion, saying: “Thank the fucking Lord.”

David Gilmour, in his early days as a player, recently told Rick Beato that his inability to shred forced him to be a more tuneful guitarist. It paid dividends in forging his now instantly recognizable signature style.

That’s two big-name players echoing Mancuso’s sentiments.

So while players may find it easier to master the guitar today, knowing when to shred, and when to be a little more tasteful will forever be a tightrope they have to walk.

Mancuso released his tribute to Paul Gilbert, a song called Paul Poisiton, earlier this year as he continues to – tastefully – showcase his talents.

David Gilmour has spoken about coming to terms with his lack of speed, echoing recent sentiments shared by Oasis guitarist Noel Gallagher that lightning-quick shredding isn’t necessarily the pinnacle of talent.

The Pink Floyd guitarist released his latest solo record, Luck and Strange, earlier this year, believing it to be his best body of work side The Dark Side of the Moon. It’s full of the slow and purposeful soloing he’d built his reputation on, and he’s revealed that his playing style was influenced by his limitations on the electric guitar.

“I wasn’t gifted with enormous speed on the guitar,” he says in a new interview with Rick Beato. “There were years when I was younger where I thought I could get that if I practiced enough. But it just wasn’t ever really going to happen.”

Accepting he would never be an elite-level fretboard gymnast, he looked to more guitarists with musical voices, like The Shadows’ Stratocaster-loving Hank Marvin, for inspiration.

“Back in the ’60s, Hank was just playing a tune, I think I come from there,” he believes. “I just want to play a nice tune!”

His answer was prompted by Beato talking about a phenomenon he’s seen on his YouTube channel that he’s coined ‘The Gilmour Effect’.

Whenever he has a superstar shredder guest on the channel, he receives an influx of comments from fans saying they prefer Gilmour’s more “lyrical” approach to guitar playing, as opposed to incendiary speed.

It highlights the taste divide that cuts through the guitar community. While one person prefers Eddie Van Halen’s pyrotechnics, another hails Eric ‘Slowhand’ Clapton’s more drawn-out vocabulary instead.

With Gilmour sitting firmly in the latter camp — even if it was through necessity at first — he looked to his vibrato technique, both with his fingers and whammy bar, to enhance the flavor of his soloing.

“That's a natural thing that has naturally developed over a long career,” he confesses. “I do both, and I have no idea what I'm doing at any given moment, they're both working, hopefully, in cooperation with each other.

“I'm quite fussy about overeager vibrato,” he extends. “Sometimes a little thing gives it a little extra tone or, I hate to say the word refinement [laughs].”

However, there are caveats to his playing. Live, Gilmour has found that adrenaline can take over.

“When you’re racked up to 150 dB and you’re leaning against that wall of sound on stage,” he says, “the tunes can change,” before adding “I often think, ‘God I’m just going on too long here… time to stop!’” when asked about embracing longer solo sections.

“I’ve no idea of how long these things go on for,” he adds with a wry smile. “I just sort of play until I think, ‘Oh maybe we’ll end now.’”

Last week, Noel Gallagher admitted that his son had called him out for not being able to shred like other guitarists, with the Oasis man returning with a typically priceless answer.

He also opened up on his limited theoretical grasp of the instrument saying: “I’ve got no control over the music I make.”

Yet both artists, despite their pitfalls, have found astounding success. It evidences how superlative shredding skills and studious music knowledge are just two ingredients that can help an artist’s success, rather than define it.

Meanwhile, Gilmour has dismissed sentimentality when it comes to his guitars. His iconic Black Stratocaster became the most expensive guitar sold at auction when it went for $4 million in 2019, but he's admitted there are a few guitars he'd never sell.

Guitarists love their vintage guitars, ascribing mystical and even magical powers to their aged tonewoods, hardware and finish.

Paul Reed Smith says it's all rubbish.

Speaking to American Musical Supply, the celebrated luthier distances himself from the "old is always better" adage. "Nobody thinks that a new vet can get outmaneuvered by an old vet," he said. "But everybody thinks an old guitar can outmaneuver a new guitar. I just don't buy it.”

Smith says he's not alone in his thinking. He points to numerous guitarists, like Widespread Panic's Jimmy Herring, who have espoused the merits of new guitars.

“Jimmy Herring was the first person to say to me ‘My PRS's will do things my vintage guitars won't do,'" Smith says. "I thought that was a beautiful comment.”

The allure of vintage guitars has only grown over the past 40 years, as the market for them has imbued even modest models from the 1960s with an aura of mystique.

No less a player than David Gilmour has weighed in the subject. Speaking about the guitars featured on his latest solo album, Luck and Strange — a record he calls his best LP since Dark Side of the Moon — the former Pink Floyd guitarist said vintage guitars always sound better than modern builds, noting, “All these pieces of wood gradually become in harmony with each other over years of playing.”

Smith isn't buying it. For that matter, he's not particular about tonewood, noting “the species is less relevant than the qualities of the wood," and has ridiculed snobbery of where certain woods are sourced from. He's said Guatemalan fence posts can make for quality guitars just as much as Honduran mahogany

To that end, PRS has been happy to experiment with left-field wood choices like Urban Ironbark, and wood alternatives for fretboards, like Richlite and Ebonol.

Expanding on those beliefs, Smith now says that where a guitar is made shouldn’t be a primary concern for guitar and bass players.

“I’ve always believed that it’s not about the country that an instrument is made in. It’s always been about the skill level of the guitar makers,” he says in a new Premier Guitar column.

“When we first started traveling to overseas guitar manufacturing facilities, we found that almost all their training over the decades had been to go fast, while our teaching about how to make instruments was about how to go well.

“Once they knew how to go well, the guitars they produce are of the same caliber as what we make here. So, as a definitive statement, the country a guitar is made in does not matter much. The skill and care of the instrument makers does matter.”

Outlining an example to back up his argument, he says that when Carlos Santana had asked for a more affordable version of his signature guitar, his solution was to manufacture it abroad.

“When we brought him the prototype, he was impressed, and his comment was, ‘This was made in America, right?’ And I said, ‘No. This was made overseas.’ The contract for his approval was on the table, and he leaned over and signed it as fast as he could.”

Instead of fixating on what wood and an electric guitar's place of origin, Smith underscores the importance of getting instruments in player's hands above all else.

“You should evaluate it the same way, regardless of country of manufacture,” he concludes. “How does it look, how does it feel in your hands, how does it sound acoustically, how does it sound electrically, and most importantly, will it do the job you want it to do?

In case you've been living under a rock—or on The Dark Side of the Moon, for that matter—David Gilmour's brand-new studio album Luck and Strange dropped last month, and the Pink Floyd legend has been doing his fair share of interviews and appearances to promote it.

While in New York City for a run of shows at Madison Square Garden to close out the 2024 tour, Gilmour stopped by The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon for a performance and a rare chat that brought up some unusual topics.

During the show, Gilmour found himself reflecting on one of music's most enduring conspiracy theories: the unusual synchronicity between Pink Floyd's seminal album The Dark Side of the Moon and the 1939 film classic The Wizard of Oz.

As some Pink Floyd fans discovered in the mid 1980s — coincident with the VHS home rental boom — if you start The Dark Side of the Moon at the third roar of the MGM lion, the album aligns eerily well with scenes in the movie. Some examples include “Time” playing during a sequence involving clocks; the “Brain Damage” lyric "The lunatic is on the grass," coinciding with the Scarecrow's whimsical dancing (he has no brain, of course); and the album’s overarching themes of time, conflict, and mental illness mirroring the film's storyline.

When asked about the theory during the interview, Gilmour acknowledged to Fallon, tongue in cheek, "There are these strange coincidences. I'll call them coincidences."

Conspiracy theories in music are nothing new. They range from hidden messages in Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven," Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" and numerous Ozzy Osbourne tracks to claims that Paul McCartney died in the mid 1960s and was replaced in the Beatles by a doppelgänger. As far-fetched as some of these may be, the coincidences between Dark Side and The Wizard of Oz are a little too on the nose to ignore.

But if the matter is entirely unintentional, what could be the explanation for it? This type of phenomenon is often attributed to apophenia, the human tendency to find meaningful patterns in unrelated things. Pink Floyd's mystique during the pre-internet era — undoubtedly combined with some fans’ recreational drug use — no doubt made any correlations between the two more obvious.

Although Floyd has never officially acknowledged any intentional influence, and drummer Nick Mason once dismissed the theory as "absolute nonsense," Gilmour told Fallon he has seen some of the synchronicities. "People have done the donkey work, the chore work, and added it on YouTube. You can watch bits of it. It's kind of amazing," he said with a grin.

Gilmour's take on the "connection" came out during a Fallon segment that also included a playful "True or False" game, with Gilmour addressing some of the myths surrounding his life. From his modest modeling days to a famous picture of him and Paul McCartney with "a great big joint in my hand," the 78-year-old legend admits it scuppered his chances of warding his kids off smoking.

Later on in the show, Gilmour joined Fallon's house band, the Roots, for a rendition of his single, “Dark and Velvet Nights.”

Whether you believe the Dark Side of the Moon/Wizard of Oz connection is deliberate or just a case of apophenia, like every other conspiracy theory, it will probably live on forever. As Gilmour puts it, someone on YouTube has done the "donkey work," so you can check it out yourself and decide.

The thorny subject of the greatest guitar solo of all time has long been a fiercely contested debate, probably because every solo is different. How do you compare, say, “Comfortably Numb” with “Crazy Train,” or “Stairway to Heaven” with “Sultans of Swing”? It’s impossible. Still, public opinion ebbs and flows, and we wanted to find out which solos currently rank among our readers as the greatest of them all.

So we ran a poll on GuitarPlayer.com to find out and here we present the results. We’ll take a look at the stories behind the songs and find out just what made those lead guitar breaks so great through conversations with Brian May, Kirk Hammett, Michael Schenker and others.

20. Gary Moore | “Still Got the Blues”

GUITARIST: GARY MOORE (1990)

The definitive blues guitar ballad.

Presented as the title track from his 1990 album, this wistful tune in A minor became Gary Moore’s calling card fairly late in his career, when he reinvented himself as a blues artist. There’s a point in the solo where you can hear the Belfast great switch from the neck humbucker to the bridge on the 1959 Les Paul Standard he nicknamed Stripe and start deviating from its main theme, mainly sticking within the A minor pentatonic scale, with a few notes from the Aeolian and harmonic minor scales.

Moore was plugged into his prototype Marshall JTM-45 reissue head with one of the company’s newly designed Guv’nor distortion pedals out in front. More than 30 years later, this remains one of the most raw and expressive blues tracks, with Moore almost fighting his guitar at points, yet never failing to deliver the goods

19. Metallica | “Fade To Black”

GUITARIST: Kirk Hammett (1984)

Metallica’s first ballad features some of Kirk’s most epic playing.

Recorded at Flemming Rasmussen’s Sweet Silence Studios in Copenhagen in February and March 1984, Ride the Lightning, Metallica’s sophomore album, was more progressive and stylistically greater in scope than the all-out thrash assault of their debut, Kill ’Em All. That change is evident on “Fade to Black,” which features acoustic guitars and a nonstandard structure more akin to the “Stairway to Heaven” school of songcraft. But it is the song’s timeless melodic solo that most vividly signals a stylistic shift in guitarist Kirk Hammett’s playing. And the signature element he employs for the last solo is arpeggios.

“I have been playing that song for so long now,” Kirk tells our sister publication Total Guitar. “For the very last solo, I know how I want to start it, but then I am in an area where I can improvise for 16, 18 or 24 bars, and then [drummer] Lars [Ulrich] will hit a certain fill, which means that it’s up and it’s time for the arpeggio part. And then I just slide right into those arpeggios.” And they are arpeggios played on two strings, Hammett specifies. “When guitar players first started incorporating arpeggios into their playing, before the whole Yngwie sweep-picking thing, arpeggios were played on two strings – not three or four strings,” he explains. “And that was what the vogue was at the time in the 1980s, so I have been playing those for a long time. I use my middle finger just to anchor my position on the neck.”

That’s a great tip from the man who plays the solos. But how should you tackle them yourself? First, there are two essential scales you’ll need to know: the B natural minor scale and the B Phrygian mode, both shown below. These cover you for the entire opening 30 bars, which, let’s face it, is a lot of music, so this is a good reason to learn a couple of shapes if ever there was one.

To make it simpler, most of your time is spent in the natural minor scale. Not until around bar 20 will you find yourself briefly landing on the C note, which appears in the Phrygian mode. The bottom line is that Hammett improvises this part of the solo live – and these are the shapes he uses.

Up next are those two-string arpeggio shapes, and they’re 16th notes – all of them! At 142 bpm, it’s pretty fast, but Hammett doesn’t pick every note, opting to use pull-offs to make those rapid licks easier. It’s definitely something to experiment with and if you’re still struggling, you could try adding in an occasional hammer‑on, too.

18. Steely Dan | “Kid Charlemagne”

GUITARIST: Larry Carlton (1976)

Messin’ with the “Kid.”

Steely Dan’s catalog is filled with remarkable guitar solos, but Larry Carlton’s brilliant work on The Royal Scam’s “Kid Charlemagne” remains the most celebrated. Carlton strings together a series of tasty phrases that follow the underlying chord changes with a blend of inside and outside playing that is technically mind bending and emotionally satisfying.

“I was pretty familiar with the tune, so I just improvised,” he tells Guitar Player. “People think I’m kidding when I say that, like I had worked the solo out beforehand, but I didn’t. It was straight improv, and it worked.” Very well, in fact. Perhaps more has been written about his solo than of the song itself.

Despite the acclaim, Carlton was, and remains, nonplussed. “When the record came out, there was a wonderful review of the tune in Billboard and they raved about the solo,” he says. “I put the record on and listened to it with my wife, and at the end of it I said, ‘I don’t know. It just sounds like me.’”

17. Cream | “Crossroads”

GUITARIST: Eric Clapton (1968)

The finest rock and roll cover of an acoustic blues song.

It started as a blues tune called “Cross Road Blues” by Robert Johnson and became one of the finest examples of natural ability, soulfulness and showmanship from a virtuosic 22-year-old guitarist named Eric Clapton. His reimagining of the song as “Crossroads” further cemented a legacy that by then had earned him the nickname God.

Famously recorded at San Francisco’s Fillmore West venue for supergroup Cream’s Wheels of Fire album, Clapton’s arrangement retains the soul and spirit of Johnson’s original but updates it for a contemporary audience raring to cut loose and be entertained by dazzlingly quick, passionate musicianship.

Remarkably, Clapton is no fan of the performance: He complains that the band lost the “one” in the first verse of his second solo break, thereby throwing off his phrasing. That’s perfectionism for you. For everyone else, this four-minute track remains a source of fascination more than 50 years on.

16. Eric Johnson | “Cliffs Of Dover”

GUITARIST: Eric Johnson (1990)

Heavenly tones from the Texan great.

This instrumental won Eric Johnson a Grammy for its exquisitely tasteful guitar playing and jaw-dropping tones. For the recordings, the Texan musician mainly stuck with his early ’60s ES-335, though he chose to use his 1964 “Virginia” Strat for the opening lead and parts of the main solo. The guitars were fed into a 100-watt Marshall Super Lead, with an Echoplex and BK Butler Tube Driver to help achieve those smooth, violin-like tones and warm sustain.

“I first heard him in 1986 on Live at Austin City Limits,” Joe Bonamassa told us in 2015. “It was ‘Cliffs of Dover,’ and it was just terrifyingly good guitar playing. I wasn’t even sure if it was real! Then I saw him live, and his tones were the best I’d ever heard. I wondered how this guy was getting all of these sounds out of his Strat. I’d never seen anybody have such a forward-thinking rig like that.”

15. Prince | “Purple Rain”

GUITARIST: Prince (1984)

The Purple One’s defining guitar moment.

The epic outro to “Purple Rain” – which takes up nearly two thirds of the song itself – stands out as some of Prince’s finest work on the six-string, wailing away in G minor pentatonic and occasionally including some more modal notes, like the minor 6th. There’s also that repeating motif that dances around the 2nd and minor 3rd intervals.

It’s simple and effective, setting things up for the vocal melody that comes in toward the end. It’s not a busy solo by any means. Rather, the Purple One chose to leave a lot of space in between the lines he played and focus on big hooks instead of monster licks.

Prince would extend the solo for up to 15 minutes in live performance. While there are many great live renditions of this track, his half-time performance for 2007’s Super Bowl in Miami is the stuff of legend. Shredding alone onstage in the middle of a storm, Prince seemed to be living the moment for which this song was written.

14. Deep Purple | “Highway Star”

GUITARIST: Ritchie Blackmore (1972)

Race with devil on English highway.

“I wrote that out note for note about a week before we recorded it,” Ritchie Blackmore said of his remarkable and most definitely memorable solo to “Highway Star.” “And that is one of the only times I have ever done that. I wanted it to sound like someone driving in a fast car, for it to be one of those songs you would listen to while speeding. And I wanted a very definite Bach sound, which is why I wrote it out – and why I played those very rigid arpeggios across that very familiar Bach progression – D minor, G minor, C major, A major. I believe that I was the first person to do that so obviously on the guitar, and I believe that that’s why it stood out and why people have enjoyed it so much.

“Over the years, I’ve always played that solo note for note, but it just got faster and faster onstage because we would drink more and more whisky. [Keyboardist] Jon [Lord] would have to play his already difficult part faster and faster, and he would get very annoyed about it.”

13. Guns N’ Roses | “Sweet Child O’ Mine”

GUITARIST: Slash (1988)

A game of two halves.

Slash’s solo on this Guns N’ Roses breakthrough single is rock guitar at its finest. The first half is laid-back and modal, built around the Eb minor scale with a few major 7ths thrown in for a harmonic-minor flavor. The second half is much more aggressive and bluesy, and sticks mainly to position one of the pentatonic scale an octave up the neck in the same key. The bends feel that much wider and the vibrato more pronounced.

Slash plays the first section on the neck pickup for thickness and warmth before switching over to the bridge for more bite, with his Cry Baby engaged. Perhaps most impressive is his off-the-cuff sense of feel and how he strings it all together, which is the mark of any great guitar solo. Remarkably, although Slash’s riff was responsible for the song’s creation, he wasn’t fond of the song originally. “We were a pretty hard driving band, and that was sort of an uptempo ballady type of a thing,” he said. “So it’s grown on me over the years.”

12. Ozzy Osbourne | “Crazy Train”

GUITARIST: Randy Rhoads (1980)

Fretboard fireworks galore on Ozzy’s Blizzard of Ozz comeback.

The Double-O has often cited Randy Rhoads as the man who saved his career – and when you hear the solo on “Crazy Train,” you understand why. Although Rhoads’ classical- and modal-based approach was far from Tony Iommi’s blues leanings, he was, like Ozzy’s old bandmate, a true inventor.

There’s a section toward the end of this solo that actually sounds like a train squealing off the tracks, thanks to the use of a chromatically ascending trill that then descends in key. Rhoads concludes the solo with a fast-picked F# minor pentatonic phrase before a rapid Aeolian legato run ending with a big bend on the 19th fret.

The shredder performed the solo with his customized Jackson guitar through a Marshall and a couple of 4x12s while sitting in the control room. “We’d plug the guitar directly into the console,” recalls Blizzard of Ozz engineer Max Norman. “We’d preamp it in the console and send it down to the amp from there. That way we could control the amount of gain that hit the amp.”

11. Michael Jackson | “Beat It”

GUITARIST: Eddie Van Halen (1982)

Breathtaking results from an unlikely pairing.

Asked to contribute guitar to Michael Jackson’s Thriller album, Pete Townshend declined but offered a suggestion: How about Eddie Van Halen? Jackson and producer Quincy Jones thought that was a great idea, and got Ed onboard to play the solo to “Beat It.” But after hearing the part where he was asked to solo, the guitarist was unhappy with the chord changes and had the engineer edit the tape to create a new pattern that better suited what he had in mind.

Ed knew Jackson might be surprised and possibly unhappy with his executive decision. “So I warned him before he listened,” he told CNN in 2012. “I said, ‘Look, I changed the middle section of your song.’ Now in my mind, he’s either going to have his bodyguards kick me out for butchering his song, or he’s going to like it. And so he gave it a listen, and he turned to me and went, ‘Wow, thank you so much for having the passion to not just come in and blaze a solo but to actually care about the song and make it better.’” And he did it for free.

10. The Beatles | “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”

GUITARIST: Eric Clapton (1968)

An uncredited Slowhand makes a rare guest appearance with the Fab Four.

By 1968, George Harrison was penning compositions that rivaled those of his bandmates John Lennon and Paul McCartney. “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” was every bit as good as anything his musical partners wrote, but no one could get up the enthusiasm for it, so Harrison invited his pal Eric Clapton to play on the session, knowing it would put the Beatles on good behavior.

Using Harrison’s 1957 “Lucy” Gibson Les Paul through a Fender Deluxe amp, Clapton doesn’t so much mimic the haunting, aching main melody as he creates a harrowing song within a song. His descending bends and release notes, and that inimitable vibrato, are on full display and are appropriately tear-jerking, weaving a dramatic narrative that builds to a shattering climax.

9. Chicago | “25 OR 6 TO 4”

GUITARIST: Terry Kath (1969)

Wah-drenched ecstasy.

This magazine once described Terry Kath’s “25 or 6 to 4” solo as “Wes Montgomery meets Jimi Hendrix,” and it’s a fair point, as Kath was influenced first by jazz and, later, hard rock. As a founding member of the jazz-rock band Chicago, he held down guitar duties for the group until his tragic death from an accidentally self-inflicted gunshot wound in 1978.

Though his superb playing graced many tracks – notably “Introduction” and “Free Form Guitar,” both from the group’s 1969 debut, The Chicago Transit Authority – there’s no denying the power of his soloing on the group’s early hit “25 or 6 to 4.” Kath uses his wah generously to add emotion to his lines, giving them at times a frenetic despair.

Kath most likely played his Gibson SG Standard, as pictured on Chicago Transit Authority’s inner sleeve, using his favored string set, as revealed to GP: the high E string from a tenor set and a standard set for the rest, moved down one string (i.e. high E for the B string, B for the G string, and so on).

8. Lynyrd Skynyrd | “Free Bird”

GUITARIST: Allen Collins (1974)

The Bird is the word.

As it happens, the four-minute-and-24- second guitar solo that closes “Free Bird” was originally added to give singer Ronnie Van Zant a chance to rest his vocal cords during Lynyrd Skynyrd’s relentless performance schedule. At 143 bars long, the solo is far and away the most epic offering here (in fact, it’s 286 bars of recorded music because the whole thing is doubled).

The tune appeared on the group’s eponymous debut album in 1973, and guitarist Allen Collins delivered the lot on his 1964 Gibson Explorer. As Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Gary Rossington once told Guitar World, “The whole long jam was Allen Collins himself. He was bad. He was super bad! He was bad-to-the-bone bad. When we put the solo together, we liked the sound of the two guitars, and I could’ve gone out and played it with him. But the way he was doin’ it, he was just so hot! He just did it once and did it again, and it was done.”

7. Dire Straits | “Sultans Of Swing”

GUITARIST: Mark Knopfler

An understated guitar hero fingerpicks his way to glory.

Right when the world was crowning Eddie Van Halen the new King of Guitar, along came the rather unassuming Mark Knopfler – schooled in rockabilly, blues and jazz – who demonstrated that you didn’t need walls of distortion to turn heads.

Knopfler composed this pub-rock classic on a National steel guitar but thought it sounded “dull” – that is, until he picked up a Stratocaster, at which point the song “came alive.” Using nary a hint of grit on a Fender Twin, he fingerpicks not one but two standout solos.

The first features a lyrical section of elegant, Chet Atkins-style single-note and chordal bends that sigh and swoon with dreamy romanticism. In itself, that would be enough, but the outro solo is the real attention-grabber, on which Knopfler builds to a dazzling set of spitfire 16th-note arpeggios – cleanly played, precise and rousing every time you hear it.

6. The Jimi Hendrix Experience | “All Along The Watchtower”

GUITARIST: Jimi Hendrix (1968)

The greatest solo in a cover version.

This song tops any list of covers that are better than the original. Guitarists invariably refer to it as a Hendrix cover rather than a Bob Dylan original, proof of how much Hendrix made it his own. Jimi’s rhythm playing is astounding, both in the intro and in the deft chord/ melody work of the verses, and of course, there’s the small matter of four guitar solos to consider. The man many refer to as the best of all time makes the most of his Strat and Marshall rig here, but it’s his offering at the 2:20 mark that we’re interested in. Following an opening run of octaves, he gets into his stride with a typically blues-based minor pentatonic approach in C#.

At 2:32, the main solo explodes into a trademark combination of rhythm and lead, plus funky scratching on muted strings. It’s worth playing along with the scratches, trying to keep a loose wrist and consistent down-up strumming. Those few beats alone will teach you a lot about Jimi’s groove and feel.

To get the sound, select a bridge-position single-coil pickup, dial in delay at around 350ms, add compression for sustain and opt for a Vox wah pedal or something similar. You’ll hear the wind begin to howl.

5. Eagles | “Hotel California”

GUITARISTS: Don Felder & Joe Walsh (1977)

Those iconic twin-guitar harmony lines took the Eagles to new heights.

The title track from the Eagles’ fifth album, and without doubt the song the band will be most remembered for, “Hotel California” frequently tops greatest guitar solo polls. The solo begins at 4:20, forming an extended coda, over which guitarists Don Felder and Joe Walsh trade licks before joining together to play those iconic harmonized licks at 5:39.

As it turns out, those harmony lines work in a relatively simple fashion. Felder and Walsh play an arpeggio of every chord, and the harmony is created by one of the guitars always playing one note lower down in the chord. For example, the notes of the Bm chord are B, D and F#, so, if the higher guitar plays an F#, the lower guitar will play a D, and so on.

This nugget of information can take you a long way to mastering those descending arpeggios. We won’t go as far as to say you could easily work it out by ear, but if you know the chords to the song, it’s possible to jam along. And you can’t say that about many of the solos on this list!

4. Queen | “Bohemian Rhapsody”

GUITARIST: Brian May (1975)

It might just be the biggest rock song of all time.

Following Freddie Mercury’s 1991 death and a cameo moment in 1992’s Wayne’s World, “Bohemian Rhapsody” became a trigger point for a worldwide outpouring of affection and respect for Queen. Their renewed popularity would continue into the new millennium as Ben Elton’s We Will Rock You musical and the band’s discovery of a different way to exist behind frontman Adam Lambert brought their music to a new generation.

And “Bohemian Rhapsody”? Unsurprisingly, it’s Queen’s best-known song, and its brief nine-bar solo is a short and sweet musical interlude, bridging the verses to lead into what’s become known as the song’s “operatic section.” Those two words alone should warn you that this song shouldn’t work. There’s no chorus and, aside from two verses, no repetition. But of course it does work, and Brian May’s solo is the perfect melodic break.

His phrasing is loose and natural, moving across the backbeat rather than sticking to a rigidly timed grid. The fastest licks are expressive bursts, rather than repetitive noodling, and his articulate pre-bend and vibrato technique demonstrates his beautiful touch. Somehow, within the confines of the complex structure of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” this solo is made to order.

3. Led Zeppelin | “Stairway To Heaven”

GUITARIST: Jimmy Page (1971)

Heaven-sent soloing.

From the moment Jimmy Page plays the opening run on his ’59 Fender Telecaster, right through to the flurry of notes and the wailing bend that completes it, this is guitar-solo perfection – a masterpiece of composition. Rather than wander aimlessly, Page creates a song within a song.

The opening phrases set the scene, as he adds notes to the pentatonic scale to follow the song’s final chord progression. A rapid mid-solo repeating lick raises the bar before a game of question-and-answer with a haunting overdubbed guitar leads into that last flurry and bend. As we say, it’s all about the composition: licks that track the chord changes, the contour of the melody and the pacing of the widdly bits all take the listener on a journey.

Three takes were recorded (the other two allegedly still survive, presumably locked in a Led Zeppelin vault somewhere), all of them improvised, although Page has reportedly said that he had worked out the opening line. But while we’re all certainly curious to hear those solos, let’s face it: They’re not going to be any better than the one we’ve come to know and love all these years.

2. Van Halen | “Eruption”

GUITARIST: Eddie Van Halen (1978)

Eddie’s iconic solo that shook the world.

With its mix of fast legato hammer‑ons and pull-offs, pinched harmonics, whammy-bar dives and two-hand tapping, Eddie Van Halen’s mind-blowing instrumental guitar solo inspired a generation of guitar heroes. While the tapping gets the attention, his tone, blistering legato and creative note choices are all equally important. Amid all that virtuosity, Eddie still played with joyous rock and roll abandon.

Remarkably, Ed was never completely happy with the released recording. “I didn’t even play it right,” he told Guitar World. “There’s a mistake at the top end of it. Whenever I hear it, I always think, Man, I could’ve played it better.”

His admission aside, the track is a technical opus. The first eight bars are a bluesy affair, whose virtuoso legato licks perhaps recall the mojo of Jimmy Page’s breakdown solo in Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love.” It’s a theme Eddie develops over the following eight bars, taking notes from the major and minor pentatonic scales to add chromatics.

His tapping finale is probably one of the least understood solo sections in rock history. Eddie’s taps are not always on the beat, which makes for tricky timing changes as he switches from tapping the first and fourth sextuplet notes to the third and sixth notes. From start to end, “Eruption” is a masterpiece that would take most guitarists a lifetime to perfect.

1. Pink Floyd | “Comfortably Numb”

GUITARIST: David Gilmour (1979)

Gilmour’s greatness comes through in waves.

In a 1992 interview with MTV’s Ray Cokes, Gilmour was asked what he thinks of Keith Richards’ theory that songs, lyrics and guitar solos are “just out there in the air and you sort of grab them.” Gilmour agreed. “I think he’s right. They sort of appear as if they are out there in the air. But I don’t know how they get there.” But the best ones he said, just happen. “The best ones do, but often you work very hard and struggle over them.”

Gilmour's two "Comfortably Numb" solos are certainly among his best, and it’s easy to understand why our readers voted his efforts to be the number-one pick in our poll. But the real question is, which of those two solos qualifies for inclusion? Whichever way you go — and granted, most fans prefer the first solo to the second — there's certainly plenty to justify the song's position at the top.

The tone is legendary. Gilmour’s signal chain consisted of his iconic black Strat, then featuring a DiMarzio FS-1 bridge pickup, into a HiWatt DR103, with the essential EHX Ram’s Head Big Muff pedal. The FS-1’s fatness and the Big Muff’s smoothness leave no hint of the harsh treble that can plague Strats. With some extra help from an MXR Dyna Comp, Gilmour had so much sustain that he could hold notes as long as he wanted. As in his live rig, he combined a WEM 4x12 cab with a Yamaha rotary speaker lower in the mix, to add subtle modulation. The epic delay was added in the mix.

The first solo, in D major, uses the Strat’s neck and bridge pickups together, permitted by a custom switching arrangement. His phrasing here is the more unconventional of the two, with arpeggios and sliding passages. Gilmour’s use of the bar for vibrato – aided by its shortened tremolo arm – again distinguishes him from typical bluesers, inspiring many a fusion player in the process. He rakes into the beginning of many of the phrases, similar to Brian May, extracting all the excitement he can from every note.

By comparison, the outro solo’s licks are more standard, with phrases similar to Hendrix’s. The passages at 4:57 and 5:12 could be from “All Along the Watchtower” or “Foxey Lady,” but in this epic track few listeners would make the connection. It sounds both masterful and improvised at the same time. Gilmour has explained he created this impression by recording five or six takes and compiling the finished solo from the best bits of each. The result is stunningly well written, with a combination of repetition and development that keeps the excitement building for two minutes. The Hendrix-style blues lick returns at 5:27, longer and more intricate than before. The aggressive double-stops first appear at 5:15, and by 5:35 he has turned that idea into a motif.

For the climax, Gilmour shoots up an octave just when it seems he’s wrung every inch of expression from his maple neck. He descends back down the neck, incorporating one of his spectacular three-fret bends on the way, and finishes with another take on that double stop motif. It has all the excitement of an improvised performance, and all the structure of a careful composition.

Both solos share brilliant rhythmic awareness. Gilmour uses triplets, sextuplets, 16th and 32nd notes freely, within the same phrase. And check out the effect at 5:10 when he plays a lick in 16th notes and then immediately repeats and expands in sextuplets. A good solo can have great tone, rhythms, melody or expression, but only a work of rare brilliance features them all to this degree.

"David Gilmour is my favorite guitar player,” producer Bob Ezrin tells Guitar Player. “That's the truth. I love his work. What makes David my favorite guitar player is the combination of beauty, dignity, power and memorability that he musters up every time he picks up a guitar and plays something. I've said in the past that if you gave that guy a ukulele and a Pignose amp, he'd make it sound like the solo in ‘Comfortably Numb.’ He just has a way of massaging sound out of the guitar.”

Ezrin is well qualified to make that statement. The Canadian-born producer helmed three albums for Pink Floyd: The Wall, A Momentary Lapse of Reason and The Division Bell.

But of all the moments he committed to tape with Pink Floyd, Ezrin’s favorite by far is the first solo in “Comfortably Numb,” from 1980’s The Wall. Of the song’s two guitar solos, it’s the first that many guitarists name as their favorite of Gilmour’s many six-string excursions.

"The soaring melodic tone is an inspiration for me to try to find the right notes and really play from the heart,” Steve Morse told Guitar Player in its November 2024 issue in a tribute to Gilmour. “I've had the honor of working with Pink Floyd producer Bob Ezrin on many projects, and he always jokes with me when I'm having difficulty finding a solo he likes. He would remark, 'You know, Gilmour played the solo on 'Learning to Fly' in one take on a little practice amp,' which would elicit a predictably dour comeback from me about how we all can't be David Gilmour!"

Joe Perry is another fan of the first solo in “Comfortably Numb,” and credits both GIlmour’s tone and note selection for why it’s so good. “He’s got probably the best Strat tone I can think of,” Perry tells Guitar Player in the November 2024 issue. “He relies very little on distortion, and the stuff just sounds so sweet. It’s almost like what he doesn’t play that’s most important because he’s such a tasteful guitar player. It’s not about what speed; it’s about telling a story. He’s one of those guitar players who is few and far between, who really understands that.”

Ezrin agrees with that sentiment. When it comes to what makes Gilmour so exceptional, he says, “It's just a unique combination of musicality and sound and power that I don't see in anybody else, at least not that perfectly combined.

“There's two sides to David Gilmour,” he continues. “There are the amazing rhythm parts that he comes up with and the riffs that drive a song. They're all so simple, musical, memorable, and they stand repetition without ever getting boring because they are just so perfectly constructed. They're economical. There's no wasted notes, and every note that that is there plays a role towards advancing the overall idea of the riff. I think his playing is cinematic.”

At the heart of it all is Gilmour’s ability to communicate with listeners through his guitar, expressing emotion as clearly as if speaking words.

“David tells stories with his guitar parts,” Ezrin says. “He has a very narrative style. There's a beginning, a middle, and an ending, especially to his soloing."

As Ezrin sees it, the formula works something like this.

“It starts off with a declaration: 'This is the emotion that I'm feeling at this moment, and this is where I'm about to take you.' And then he lays out a melodic structure that's in its way very classical. It almost goes through movements by the time it comes around to the end, and it refers back to itself several times during the process. It's a remarkable talent. It's never about flash with him, and he'll be the first one to say he's not the flashiest, he's not the fastest and he's not the most technical player out there. It's always about the melodic and sonic structure, and he is very, very aware of his sound.

And it all starts with Gilmour’s choice of gear.

“It's about the instrument he selects, and the combination of that plus whatever pedal it might go through and the amplifier that it ends up in,” Ezrin notes. “That's something that he does that he's very precise about and he's very considered about.”

But once the gear has been selected and it’s time to perform, Gilmour tends to lose himself in the moment.

“The parts themselves, most of the time he doesn't predetermine them,” Ezrin explains. “He gets into a zone and just starts reacting to the music. When soloing, he'll get the sound he wants, he'll mess around a little bit, and then the music will fly, and he finds the story that he wants to tell within the music, and usually very quickly. This is not hunt and peck. This is not somebody who's just playing shapes and looking for sound and continuity. He actually knows what it is that he's putting out there. And if he can hear it, he can play it. I think that's a remarkable talent.”

Part of it is down to an individual quirk of the guitarist. As Ezrin tells Guitar Player, much of Gilmour’s lyrical style of soloing is the result of him vocalizing the notes he’s playing. And as he points out, it's this technique that's at the heart of what makes his playing so emotive and affecting.

“Most of the time, he's singing along with what he's playing,” the producer explains. “It's sometimes audible in the room, but whether it's audible or not, you can see it on his face the way his cheek muscles move or the way his mouth moves, that he’s singing along and he knows what he's playing.”

All these elements came together in one magical moment when Gilmour cut the first solo in “Comfortably Numb.”

As Ezrin explains, the two solo were cut at different times, with different producers. “The solo at the end of the song was done when Roger [Waters] and I were in a different studio, and David did that with James Guthrie,” he explains.

“But the solo in the middle of ’Comfortably Numb' is the one that I think is the classic solo.”

As for how they achieved the solo Gilmour and Ezrin have different recollections. While both agree Gilmour used his famed Black Strat through a combination of Hiwatt amplifiers and his Yamaha rotary speaker cabinet, Gilmour recalled to Guitar World in 2015 that the solo is a composite of several takes.

“I banged out five or six solos,” the guitarist said. “From there I just followed my usual procedure, which is to listen back to each solo and make a chart, noting which bits are good. Then, by following the chart, I create one great composite solo by whipping one fader up, then another fader, jumping from phrase to phrase until everything flows together. That’s the way we did it on ‘Comfortably Numb.’ ”

Ezrin, on the other hand, recalls that the first solo was one complete take and quite possibly the very first of the bunch.

“That was essentially a first take” the producer states. “He played that part that's on the record his first time, ripping on top of the guide track that we were doing. Then he spent a bunch of takes trying to make it better. And my recollection, as is his, was that we went back to the original take; if not the original take, we went back to one of the very early ones.

“But that melody — that unbelievable, uplifting, memorable, bring-people-to-their-knees melody — that just came out of him all at once. We got the sound and we had a guide track that we were working with. The track wasn't even finished yet. We didn't have all the elements that would end up being on the record.”

Despite his achievement, Gilmour was reportedly unexcited by what he had created.

“David is one of the most understated and even tempered people that you've ever met,” Ezrin says. “He would never register extreme displeasure nor would he register extreme joy over a part that he played. He would play it, and he might turn and say, ‘That wasn't bad.’ He's a master of understatement, as many British people are.”

Ezrin, on the other hand, was thrilled by what he heard. “I fell on the floor when I first heard this solo,” he says. “For me, it's the most memorable I've ever heard. And for me, that solo is actually the emotional high point of the song. And as much as I love the lyric, which I think is one of the most brilliant that's ever been written by anybody, that solo just rises above everything as being the transcendent moment. A moment of pure musical joy.”

(Note: The solo begins in the video below at 2:38.)

Though it would be another year and change before they went supernova with The Dark Side of the Moon, it was in 1971 that Pink Floyd laid down one of their greatest epics, the side-length prog-funk odyssey Echoes.

Having spent years attempting to settle on a sonic direction in the wake of the departure of Syd Barrett in 1968, Echoes was the sound of a band finally locking into place, and was arguably the moment David Gilmour became one of rock's preeminent guitar heroes.

Though one can't discount his sublime, funky, none-smoother soloing throughout, perhaps Gilmour's most famous moment on the song comes at around the halfway mark, when the guitarist creates a series of otherworldly, screeching, bird-like sounds on his electric guitar.

“That,” Gilmour explained to GP in a 2009 interview, “is an oscillation created by having a wah pedal plugged in the wrong way around, and it has nothing to do with the strings.

“The noise it makes is unbelievably loud and horrible, so you have to have a volume pedal after it, and then a delay, and you have to turn the volume pedal way down. You put your heel all the way down on the wah, and then those noises come out when you manipulate the volume and tone controls on the guitar.”

The wah pedal quirk, Gilmour says, was far from intentional, and came about as “a serendipitous accident that happened in about 1969 or 1970.

“A roadie had plugged the wah in the wrong way, and I stomped into it and got this incredible screaming noise,” Gilmour told GP. “But, you know what they say – waste not, want not.”

Aside from its tonal innovations and Gilmour's inspired performance, Echoes also showcased Floyd's ability to balance envelope-pushing arrangements and concepts with memorable melodies and genuine hooks, a balance the band would take to the pop charts less than two years later on Money, and to the very top of the pops in 1979 with Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2.

David Gilmour’s iconic Black Stratocaster became the most expensive guitar sold at auction when it fetched just under $4 million in 2019. The guitar was his go-to, and a legendary instrument from Pink Floyd's heyday on which he'd played his soul-searching solo in "Comfortably Numb." It was even featured in the classic Pink Floyd lineup's final show at the 2005 Live 8 concert.

But Gilmour has no regrets. For one thing, he regards guitars as “tools of the trade.” For another, he contends his Fender signature model, the Black Cat Strat, is every bit as good.

“Fender did a David Gilmour model, so now I’ve got the Black Cat Strat,” he says. “And it’s the same, you know? It does what it says on the tin.”

The signature model was released in 2008 after the design had met the exacting standards of Gilmour and his team, making the final product a worthy addition to his tool kit.

“Phil Taylor, my guitar tech, insisted on a lot of affection from Fender before we’d agree to do it,” he goes on. “The David Gilmour Signature Strat is a fine, fine instrument — and we make sure it stays that way. We’re on their case about it regularly. I think they’ve done an extremely good job in making a beautiful guitar.”

Pressed on whether it would pass a blindfold test against the original Black Strat, which is now lovingly owned by Jim Isray, he replied: “It certainly would with me. Why wouldn’t it?”

In addition, Gilmour has championed how the money raised by its sale has gone to a worthwhile cause.

“The charity the money went to, ClientEarth, is doing the most extraordinary work throughout the world,” he says. “Every day — I got one this morning — there’s an email about a court case they’ve won somewhere in the world, against countries where they break their own laws on climate change and emissions, or against people who are building plastics factories or cutting down medieval forests in Poland.”

Gilmour is currently on tour for his album Luck and Strange, which he promoted at a small British pub with a performance of the Pink Floyd classic Wish You Were Here featuring his daughter, Romany, on vocals.

When discussing the guitars that were crucial in the making of the record, Gilmour made his arguments for why vintage guitars will always sound better than their modern counterparts. But it seems in the case of the Black Strat versus the Black Cat, there will always be an exception to the rule.

In the video below from Gilmour's YouTube channel, he discusses the Black Strat prior to its sale.

London's Brixton Academy has hosted its fair share of epic events in its history as a live music venue. However, few of those featured two generation-defining guitarists sharing the same stage — which is exactly what happened in November 1985 when Pete Townshend and David Gilmour came together for what would be known as Deep End Live.

The project, billed initially as Pete Townshend with Dave Gilmour and Deep End, played two nights (the second of which thankfully was captured on film) at the U.K. venue in support of Townshend's Double "O" charity, aiding those with drug and alcohol issues, and victims of domestic violence, as well as providing support for underprivileged musicians.

The Deep End band, which included Townshend, Gilmour and a whopping 16 other members, featured session greats such as Simon Phillips on drums and Chucho Merchán on bass, as well as a full brass section.

Highlights of the nearly 90-minute performance include Townshend's version of “After the Fire,” originally written for Roger Daltrey's album Under a Raging Moon, Screamin' Jay Hawkins’ “I Put a Spell on You,” the Who anthem “Won't Get Fooled Again” and the Townshend solo tune “Give Blood” — the latter, driven by the intricately cascading assault of Gilmour's looping riff. Townshend and crew never sounded better performing this underrated classic, which closes the show on a high.

A third show was expected to take place in Brixton, with talk of a potential tour that included international dates. But surprisingly poor ticket sales led to those plans being axed.

In an interview with David Letterman just weeks after the shows took place, Townshend explained how the project freed him up creatively. "I played anything I wanted to play,” Townshend said of the show's eclectic set list. "I did ‘Put a Spell on You,'… I did a Miles Davis song called ‘Walking.’ I did old blues things, and I did kind of early Who things. I had such a good time. It reminded me that music first has to be fun."

Gilmour was armed on the night with a couple of 1984 reissues, including his now iconic EMG SA single-coil–loaded Candy Apple Red Strat (which would go on to sell at auction in 2019 for $615,000), which he played through a combination of two Fender Twin Reverbs and Mesa/Boogie Mark I. His effects included a Boss HM-2, CE-2 Chorus and DD-2 Delays, as well as his famous MXR rack-mounted Digital Delays.

Townshend kept it simple with a pair of thinline Washburn acoustics, which he occasionally swapped out for a Takamine EN-10C, now housed within London's Hard Rock Cafe Vault.

Deep End wasn't the first time the pair had worked together, as just the year prior, Townshend had penned lyrics for the tracks “Love on the Air" and “All Lovers Are Deranged” from Gilmour's second studio album, About Face. Gilmour would return the favor by lending guitar parts to tracks on Townshend's fifth solo record, White City: A Novel.

Had this project been a success, you can't help but wonder what might have been — particularly as both Gilmour and Townshend were in transitional periods with Pink Floyd and the Who, respectively. Luckily, we have this performance captured for us to enjoy.

Earlier this month, David Gilmour released his sixth solo studio album, Luck and Strange, with tour dates kicking off next month that include stops at the Circo Massimo in Italy, the Intuit Dome, Madison Square Garden, the Hollywood Bowl and London's Royal Albert Hall.

Meanwhile, Townshend celebrated 60 years of the Who in 2024 and expects more shows from the band in the future. He recently dropped a solo collection Live In Concert 1985–2001, a 14-CD box set which features even more cuts from the Deep End shows, including a fun performance of the Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup–penned track (later made famous by Elvis Presley), That's All Right, Mama.

Shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, David Gilmour recruited Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason and bassist Guy Pratt for Hey Hey, Rise Up, a new song featuring Ukrainian musician (and soldier) Andriy Khlyvnyuk on vocals.

Gilmour sought to use the Floyd name to raise as much awareness of, and money for, the Ukrainian cause as possible, and in that he certainly succeeded, with the song helping raise over $600,000 for relief efforts. Beyond this one-time effort, though, Gilmour says that he has put Pink Floyd “to bed.”

In a new interview with Guitar Player, Gilmour – while maintaining that he was proud of his work with the band – stated that their journey was over.

“I put the whole Pink Floyd thing to bed many, many years ago,” he said. “I mean, it’s impossible to go back there without Rick [Wright, Floyd's late keyboardist], and I wouldn’t want to. It’s all done.

“I’m very happy and satisfied with the little team I’ve got around me these days. We had a lot of offers to go and tour and so on and so forth, but I’m in this selfishly lucky position of having more than enough money and having had more than enough fame. I just don’t need that stuff these days.”

Though Hey Hey, Rise Up was released in the period between them, Gilmour's comments on the future of Pink Floyd are quite similar to those he made the last time GP sat down with him, in 2020.

“I’m done with it,” he said at the time. “I’ve had a life in Pink Floyd for quite a lot of years, and quite a few of those years at the beginning, with Roger. And those years in what is now considered to be our heyday were 95 percent musically fulfilling and joyous and full of fun and laughter. And I certainly don’t want to let the other five percent color my view of what was a long and fantastic time together.

“But,” he continued, “it has run its course, we are done, and it would be fakery to go back and do it again. And to do it without Rick [Wright] would just be wrong.

“I’m all for Roger doing whatever he wants to do and enjoying himself and getting the joy he must have had out of those [2010-2013] Wall shows. I’m at peace with all of these things. But I absolutely don’t want to go back. I don’t want to go and play stadiums. I’m free to do exactly what I want to do and how I want to do it.”

To read Gilmour's full interview with GP – which covers gear, guitar solos, and the making of his first solo album in nine years – pick up a new issue of the mag at Magazines Direct.

David Gilmour says he has little aversion to selling his guitars, shirking any sense of sentimentality they may have been simply deeming them “tools of my trade.” But there are three guitars he says he won’t sell.

The Pink Floyd guitarist has sold many guitars over the years, most notably his legendary Black Strat, which is now in the hands of Jim Isray. Its sale at $3.98 million made it, at the time, the most valuable guitar ever sold at auction, and it seems he'd be fine with more of his six strings meeting the same fate.

Having just released his first solo album in nine years – a record he believes is his greatest since The Dark Side of the Moon – he adorns the cover of the latest issue of Guitar Player.

During his tell-all chat, which charters the making of the record, gear, and guitar solos, he was asked what guitars he has that he’d never sell. His answer was short and telling.

“Well, you know, I have my old beat-up Tele that I’m very fond of,” he says. “I have a Gretsch Duo Jet that I love and wouldn’t sell. I have a Martin D-18 from 1945 I wouldn’t sell. But most things, you know, they’re the tools of my trade. You can change them if you need to.”

It may seem a cold answer to some, but it explains why he wasn’t precious about holding onto his Black Strat, despite it being by his side throughout his Pink Floyd career and beyond.

While those first two guitars hint at the prog legend not being entirely bereft of nostalgia, his preference for his 1945 Martin D-18 echoes a claim he made earlier this year that vintage guitars will always sound better than their modern counterparts.

He reasoned that time helps evoke their greatest magic, saying “All these pieces of wood gradually become in harmony with each other over years of playing.”

The relationship with his Martin has led to him getting a signature D-35, which he recently took with him for a surprise duet of Wish You Were Here with his daughter, Romany, in a British pub.

Head to Magazines Direct to grab a copy of the latest Guitar Player issue, which includes conversations with Adrian Belew and Steve Vai as they embark on the BEAT tour, Doug Gillard, and Luther Dickinson.

It’s not often a British seaside pub can share something in common with Pompeii and the Royal Albert Hall, but David Gilmour has offered one watering hole that unlikely connection after he joined his daughter, Romany, for an impromptu performance of Wish You Were Here.

Gilmour’s storied career has seen him play in some incredible venues, but his latest and more intimate setting was special for a whole different reason.

The Pink Floyd legend has been taking an interesting campaign trail to promote Luck and Strange, his first solo album in nine years, which he believes is the best album he’s done since Dark Side of the Moon.

Alongside more traditional routes like talking about the guitars behind the record – and explaining why vintage guitars will always sound better than new builds – he’s also snuck lyrics into local newspapers across the UK. Now he’s played one of Pink Floyd’s biggest hits during a surprise performance at a tiny pub last Sunday (September 8).

Romany, his 22-year-old daughter, was playing a short set of covers at The Neptune Inn in Brighton and Hove when her dad popped by for an unexpected duet.

“Oh my gosh, you're here. And you've brought your guitar,” Romany was caught on camera exclaiming, with genuine surprise on her face.

Of course, it’s normally not very cool when your dad tries to muscle in on your set – in fact it sounds like a nightmare for the common guitarist – but when your dad is David Gilmour, it’s a little different. Still, Romany feared the worst.

“You're going to come and upstage me?” she laughed. “OK, great.”

Gilmour Sr. suggested Floyd’s 1975 hit while unpacking his Martin D-35 signature acoustic out of its hardshell case, before their guitars and voices entangled during the special cover version.

Ben Worsley and Guy Pratt, the guitarist and bass player in Gilmour’s solo band, Ugly Kid Joe vocalist Whitfield Crane, Romany’s brother Gabriel, and Prog Magazine's Jerry Ewing were also in attendance. It seems everyone but Romany was aware of what was to unfold.

Gilmour’s children played key roles in Luck and Strange, with Romany playing the harp and handling lead vocals on their tender reimagining of The Montgolfier Brothers’ Between Two Points. She also features on Gilmour's standalone single, Yes, I Have Ghosts, which sees the pair duet.

Speaking in a press release around the song's release several years ago, Gilmour explained how the duet was a happy accident after plan A had fallen apart.

“I was working on this song just as we went into lockdown and had to cancel a session with backing singers,” he says. “But, as it turned out, the solution was right here and I couldn’t be happier with the way Romany’s voice blends with mine, and the beautiful harp playing has been another revelation.”

Gabriel, meanwhile, provided backing vocals on The Piper's Call and A Single Spark, while Charlie Gilmour contributed to the lyrics of Shattered.

Gilmour will take Luck and Strange on the road later this month, with dates in more familiarly large settings, including London’s Royal Albert Hall and Madison Square Garden, scheduled.

Head to David Gilmour for the full list of tour dates.

Stars of Jim Irsay’s renowned guitar collection will be on display at Indiana University Bloomington for the next year as part of an exhibition called Amped IU.

Aside from his day job as the owner, chairman, and CEO of NFL's Indianapolis Colts, Irsay is an avid collector of history-steeped six-strings, and the new exhibition aims to celebrate the music and stories that ice his collection.

The wider exhibition highlights the story of modern guitar and will be housed in the McCalla building of IU Bloomington’s campus. It will run from September 27, 2024, to September 2025.

Among the businessman's collection is Kurt Cobain's Smells Like Teen Spirit Fender Mustang, bought by Irsay at auction for $4.5 million in 2022. At that time, it became the second most valuable guitar to be sold at auction, beaten only by another Cobain guitar – his heavily modified Martin D-18E MTV Unplugged acoustic guitar.

That gives a sense of perspective as to how illustrious many of the guitars in Irsay's ever-growing collection are.

But, as Irsay himself says, the collection isn’t simply buying up guitars for his own personal glory. He wants to preserve key pieces of music history, and share them with the world.

“I am thrilled to preserve and protect another piece of American culture that changed the way we looked at the world,” Irsay said of his eye-watering Mustang purchase in '22.

Moreover, a portion of the proceeds went to Kicking The Stigma, Irsay's national initiative to raise awareness about mental health issues, and erase the stigma around them. This, he said, made the purchase “even more special to me.”

The initiative was also the beneficiary of a mammoth auction of Steve Vai gear later that year. The collection included a myriad of electric guitars, acoustics, rack effects units, amplifiers, and even a motorbike.

David Gilmour's Black Strat, heard on Comfortably Numb, Shine on You Crazy Diamond, and Money, and bought for $3.975m, and Bob Dylan’s infamous Newport Folk Festival Stratocaster, are also key parts of Irsay's collection. The latter was bought for nearly $1m after it was found in the back of a woman's attic.

The new exhibition will hold a grand opening event on September 27 (12-5 p.m.), which coincides with the IU Family Weekend.

It will feature, for one day only, the gems of Irsay's stable, among them guitars played and owned by Jerry Garcia, Kurt Cobain – expected to be that multi-million dollar Mustang – Eric Clapton, and many other legendary musicians.

There will also be a guided tour of the gilded collection on opening day, alongside performances from IU Jacobs School of Music students.

Some of the vintage guitars set to be on display for the full duration of the exhibit include an 1850s CF Martin guitar, a 1910 Gibson Model U Harp Guitar, and a 1939 Rickenbacker Silver Hawaiian Lap Steel, together helping chart the instrument’s evolution.

Two ‘59 builds – a Sunburst Fender Stratocaster and a Gibson Les Paul Standard – will also feature, alongside a 1964 Firebird V.

Beyond guitars, it will feature artifacts from game-changing artists such as The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Holly, and Paul Stanley.

Irsay has been adding to his collection, driven by a love for music, history, and pop culture, for decades. It has been exhibited across the USA in recent years as a “traveling museum,” while numerous artifacts have also been loaned to museums and nonprofits for display and research.

Readers can register for self-guided tours via the IU website.

David Gilmour’s first solo album in nearly a decade, Luck and Strange, is set for release next month, and it's been bolstered by a production team whose “lack of respect” for Gilmour’s heritage helped him create, what he feels, is his best work since The Dark Side of the Moon.

Produced by Gilmour and Charlie Andrew (ALT-J, Marika Hackman), the co-producer’s decidedly non-prog rock background helped the Pink Floyd guitarist expand his horizons for the better.

Speaking in the new issue of Prog magazine, he’s uttered its title in the same breath as Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon – one of the best-selling albums in music history – believing nothing else he’s created since that 1973 LP matches it in terms of quality.

“It’s over 50 years now since The Dark Side Of The Moon,” Gilmour reflects. “My feeling is that this album is the best album I’ve made in all those years since 1973 when The Dark Side Of The Moon came out.”

It’s quite the statement, and one sure to whet appetites that haven’t been satiated with a new Gilmour album since 2015’s Rattle That Lock.

So far two singles, The Piper’s Call and Between Two Points, have been released, alongside a series of videos showcasing the guitars behind the record's creation. Among that collection is a 1945 Martin D-18 acoustic guitar, one that led Gilmour to voice his opinion that vintage guitars will always sound better than modern builds.

Indeed, the fact that Andrew arrived for the studio sessions unphased by Gilmour’s illustrious history – that includes a slew of Grammy wins, a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and a reputation as one of progressive rock’s most important figures – helped him get the best out of the guitarist.

“We invited Charlie to the house, so he came and listened to some demos,” Gilmour said in the record’s PR. “[He] said things like, ‘Well, why does there have to be a guitar solo there?’ and ‘Do they all fade out? Can’t some of them just end?’.

“He has a wonderful lack of knowledge or respect for this past of mine. He’s very direct and not in any way overawed, and I love that. The last thing you want is people just deferring to you.”

Expanding on that relationship in his conversation with Prog, he said: “Our plan is just to get this one out and run it and then do another one straight away, I will be working with all these people again.

“I’ve had this problem in the past, of wanting to throw myself in the studio with a few people and just kick stuff around, but not knowing who those people should be.

“And that is now a pressure that’s evaporated because I’ve got these phone numbers. It feels like a team and I love being in a team – I didn’t choose to be a solo artist.

“When you have achieved the higher levels of success, most of the people that come into your sphere are going to look to you,” he continues. “They’re not going to be like Charlie Andrew – Charlie is the kind of refreshing thing that you want to have happen to you.”

Alongside his video series documenting his Luck and Strange guitars – which survived his instrument cull that resulted in a huge 2019 auction – Gilmour also recently demonstrated his trademark swell technique. The soloing trick is created using delay pedals, rather than the volume knob, as many have (wrongly) assumed.

Luck and Strange will release on September 6 and is available to pre-order now.

In a recent video, David Gilmour cited his belief that vintage guitars will always sound better than their modern counterparts. 

Speaking about his beloved 1945 Martin D-18 acoustic guitar as part of a YouTube series that sees the Pink Floyd guitarist detailing the guitars that feature on his forthcoming album, he’s provided evidence for his argument. 

“No new guitar sounds quite as good as an old one in my experience,” he says with the Martin – that’s “older than me” – in his lap. 

“I think a guitar like this gets better and better with age, maybe something the glue that's holding it all together, and these different pieces of wood gradually come in harmony with each other over years of playing.” 

Granted, the 78-year-old is simply stating his opinion. But given the fact that his vast guitar collection – some of which sold for a record-breaking $21m during a Christie's auction in 2019 – includes a staggering amount of instruments, he can certainly talk with a degree of authority. 

The other guitars thus far showcased by Gilmour ahead of the release of his fifth solo album – Luck & Strange, which arrives in September – includes ‘Alice,’ a late '70s acoustic named after his daughter built for him by luthier Tony Zemaitis. 

Zemaitis has been dubbed the “king of custom-made guitars”, having built instruments for Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, and Ronnie Wood. 

This particular guitar was commissioned for Gilmour's children to learn to play on, but “it was so nice and so beautiful that I didn't let them play it.”  

The others were his Rickenbacker Frying Pan lap guitar, which features on lead single Piper's Call and Velvet Nights, and a black Gretsch electric guitar which he's owned since the mid-'70s and has “a very particular hi-fi sound.”

It’s noticeable, then, that all these guitars were crafted some decades ago, backing up his theory. 

Even ‘Alice’, which the guitarist fell in love with when he first played it, was ultimately “forgotten” until it came to writing his latest record, presumably with older builds taking his fancy instead. 

It isn't the first time he's championed the aura of older guitars, however.  In 2019, he told Guitar World: “I do unrepentantly like the old ones. Older instruments have a tonality of their own that often takes years to develop.”

And so, his latest solo release is rich with vintage instruments. His first solo LP since 2015’s Rattle That Lock, it was produced by Gilmour and Charlie Andrew (ALT-J, Marika Hackman). 

Contrary to his vintage-honoring instrumentation, he has praised Andrew for his “lack of respect” for the guitarist’s heritage. Gilmour said that Andrew's challenges to his creative decisions elevated the record. 

“We invited Charlie to the house, so he came and listened to some demos, and said things like, ‘Well, why does there have to be a guitar solo there?’ and ‘Do they all fade out? Can’t some of them just end?’,” Gilmour reflects.  

“He has a wonderful lack of knowledge or respect for this past of mine. He’s very direct and not in any way overawed, and I love that. That is just so good for me because the last thing you want is people just deferring to you.”

The album features eight new songs, including a reworking of The Montgolfier Brothers’ Between Two Points, with the title track featuring late Pink Floyd keyboardist, Richard Wright. 

His contributions were taken from the recording of a 2007 jam in a barn at Gilmour’s house. It represents a final tribute from Gilmour to his former bandmate.  

Polly Samson, Gilmour’s co-writer over the past thirty years, penned most of the record’s lyrics, with Gilmour talking up her contributions to the record, helping unshackle him from his past.  

• David Gilmour's Luck & Strange is set for a September 6 release via Sony Music. It can be pre-ordered here.

The following interview was published in the April 2021 issue of Guitar Player magazine.

When I interviewed Nick Mason and Roger Waters and asked about the likelihood of a Floyd reunion, Nick said, “I love touring and I live in hope.” Roger said it was “out of the question”…  

Pink Floyd so far is a three-act play. Will there ever be a fourth act? 

“No. I’m done with it. I’ve had a life in Pink Floyd for quite a lot of years, and quite a few of those years at the beginning, with Roger. And those years in what is now considered to be our heyday were 95 percent musically fulfilling and joyous and full of fun and laughter. 

“And I certainly don’t want to let the other five percent color my view of what was a long and fantastic time together. But it has run its course, we are done, and it would be fakery to go back and do it again. And to do it without Rick [Wright] would just be wrong.

“I’m all for Roger doing whatever he wants to do and enjoying himself and getting the joy he must have had out of those Wall shows. I’m at peace with all of these things. But I absolutely don’t want to go back. I don’t want to go and play stadiums. I’m free to do exactly what I want to do and how I want to do it.”

Give me an example of a Pink Floyd moment that you re-run in your head over and over again because it was magnificent. 

“Oh, the great moments are legion. I have thousands of snapshot memories that are great. Meddle was a great moment for us. It showed the way forth, and it was successful. 

“But then so was A Saucerful of Secrets. The Dark Side of the Moon obviously was the breakthrough moment and was terrific, and we suddenly moved up from the medium-time to the mega-time.” 

How about a moment when you curl up, thinking about the horror of it all? 

“I don’t have any that embarrassing. Though if I watch Live at Pompeii, I cringe.”

What do you remember of the brief period when you and Syd were both in the group?

“It was tragic, really. There were five gigs we did together and he would… [sighs]. We’ve got a bit of film of Syd in a dressing room somewhere at one of those gigs, and he dances this little jig – a little dance – and he’s all smiling and laughing. But you just look at him and go, ‘Oh God, no, tragic.’ Poor chap. I can’t remember much about it. I was brand new, and I think they knew I’d be taking it over.”

What are your memories of performing at Live 8? [Gilmour, Waters, Mason, and Wright performed for the first time in 24 years at the 2005 event.] 

“I thoroughly enjoyed it, though we had a few days of very tense rehearsals. Roger and I hadn’t spoken to each other for years.”

How did you decide what to play?

“We made suggestions and Roger made suggestions, and I didn’t care for Roger’s suggestions. In the end, I thought, ‘Actually, we’re Pink Floyd and he’s our guest, and he can just do what we tell him to do or fuck off.’”

What did he suggest?

“He wanted to do Money – which we all did actually – and Another Brick in the Wall and In the Flesh.”

And he was overruled.

“Basically, yes.”

Roger once told me that musicians who achieve the level of success you achieved ‘must have holes in our psyche that only adulation can fill.’ That’s quite an honest thing to say. 

“It is an honest thing to say. And I think he’s right, actually. But hopefully I don’t have that hole in my psyche any longer, as I don’t see the need for that sort of adulation on that scale. 

“Also, the strange thing about stadiums is you have no way of telling if it’s going well. It’s a crowd – in the singular. You can’t retain them as individuals. The power and energy of their love, so to speak, is a wonderful drug to boost your ego to the point where it’s overinflated.”

This week, 17 years ago, the guitar world lost one of its most mysterious yet influential pioneers, Syd Barrett. 

A rare musical visionary, Barrett spearheaded London’s psychedelic rock scene of the Swinging ‘60s as singer, guitarist and principal songwriter of Pink Floyd.

Following his departure from the band in 1968, he embarked upon a solo career, releasing The Madcap Laughs in 1970, followed by Barrett later the same year.

But it would be Pink Floyd’s 1967 singles – including "Arnold Layne" and "See Emily Play" – along with the band’s Summer of Love debut album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn that Barrett became more widely known for.

In this kaleidoscopic clip of Pink Floyd’s epic instrumental opus "Interstellar Overdrive", Barrett can be seen playing a Danelectro model 3021 and his famous reflective disk-covered Fender Esquire.

Combining a Binson Echorec Baby delay machine with an improvised slide (thought to be either a ruler or Zippo lighter) Barrett stirs up the kind of tripped-out textures that made Pink Floyd a hit in London’s UFO Club.

Though the band went on to achieve monumental success during the '70s and beyond following Barrett’s departure, his influence endured – not just within the Pink Floyd camp but throughout the music world at large.

Indeed, many guitarists and songwriters – including Graham Coxon and John Frusciante – have cited Syd Barrett as a major inspiration.

Over the years, Barrett has remained a cult figure of psychedelic rock – an enigma whose reclusive life only fueled the interest of curious fans.

Aiming to address some “unanswered questions” about the troubled artist is a brand-new documentary titled Have You Got It Yet? The Story of Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd that begins screening in theaters across North America later this month.

Directed by Roddy Bogawa and the late Storm Thorgerson, Have You Got It Yet? features fresh interviews with family, friends and lovers of Barrett, plus input from his Pink Floyd bandmates Roger Waters, David Gilmour, and Nick Mason.

“You know you couldn’t over emphasize his importance, because he was, he was that, the creative genius,” said drummer Mason, whose own band – Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets – continues to celebrate the songs of Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd.

One might establish the first “session” toward the making of The Dark Side of the Moon as the band meeting at Nick’s place, at which Roger’s idea of a continuous conceptual piece about things that “make people mad” was first sketched out. This was followed by Roger hiding away in his garden shed studio out back of his Islington home and creating a few demos of the material they had collectively begun writing. Next came working on the material through 12 days of rehearsals at Decca Studios in West London, followed by the live-show rehearsals at the Rolling Stones’ 47 Bermondsey Street warehouse and then, innovatively, the touring of the “Eclipse” suite.

Inextricably linked with EMI, Abbey Road Studios had at times been state of the art and sometimes not. Pink Floyd had recorded there regularly over the years (although not exclusively), with the most significant recent visits being for 1970’s Atom Heart Mother and portions of 1971’s Meddle. Significantly, the band felt they had to move on from Abbey Road to finish “Echoes” (comprising all of side two of Meddle) because, at the time, it was limited to eight-track recording. Nearby, both AIR and Morgan had 16-track facilities, which Abbey Road acquired in time for Dark Side.

For a mixing board, Abbey Road now had an EMI TG12345, its first solid-state, replacing the REDD .51, which was vacuum-tube based. The new console featured 24 microphone inputs and eight tape outputs, which came in handy, given the complexity of the sound effects the guys wanted on the album. Alan Parsons, engineer on the project, is emphatic, however, that the making of the record was essentially a 16-track production (“24 channels into 16 groups”), with many of the tracks being second generation because the band had run out of tracking room and had to consolidate and bounce first-generation tracks (the “Money” loop alone took up four tracks). The mix was conducted off the second-generation recordings, i.e. second-generation basic/backing tracks plus overdubs.

As Parsons told me, “Being an engineer for Pink Floyd was arguably the biggest challenge I ever gave myself. They’re so sound oriented; they used the studio to the absolute maximum. So it was a big challenge as an engineer. But I think I learned a bit, and I think they learned from me as well. It was a really good team effort overall.”

Asked about his Abbey Road employers George Martin and Geoff Emerick, Parsons says, “They were both mentors to me. George, I consider that probably, to a certain extent, I modeled myself on him because he commanded enormous respect from every artist he worked with and he respected them, and so that’s why he was the perfect inspiration.”

Of course, Abbey Road had essentially served as headquarters for the Beatles. Floyd would return there for work on Wish You Were Here and portions of The Final Cut and The Division Bell. The two Syd Barrett albums – 1967’s The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and 1968’s A Saucerful of Secrets – were cobbled together there, and Roger as a solo artist would use the facility as well.

Work on The Dark Side of the Moon began at Studio 3 on June 1, 1972, after the band had returned from dates in West Germany and the Netherlands, the culmination of about 40 shows playing the whole album live. Typically the band worked from 2:30 in the afternoon until midnight. The first song worked on was “Us and Them,” with the band sticking with Studio 3 for three days. Parsons had worked with the Beatles by this point but had also served as assistant tape operator on Atom Heart Mother, so he knew the guys well.

Work then shifted to Studio 2, from June 6 to 10, where the basic tracks for “Money” were recorded on June 7 and “Time” the following day (Gilmour’s use of a Kepex processor for tremolo can be heard on “Money”). [Made by Allison Research, the Kepex was a compressor/expander that could be triggered by an external source. Gilmour reportedly used a sine wave from the band’s EMS Synthi AKS synthesizer to trigger the Kepex and create an amplitude-modulated effect.] Roger had originally captured the sound effects for “Money” by recording on a Revox A77 the sounds of coins and other items tossed into a mixing bowl in his wife’s pottery studio and then splicing tape the old-fashioned way, working with the song’s 7/8 time signature. But this got re-recorded in the studio, given the possibility of improving it for the planned quadraphonic mix. One can hear a cash register (from a sound library record), an adding machine (Alan’s contribution) and paper tearing. Nick recalls drilling holes in old pennies and threading them onto strings to help create the innovative sonic symphony.

After two days off, it was back to work again at the same locale, June 13 to 17, followed by a move back to Studio 3, June 20 through 25, where the basic tracks were recorded for “The Great Gig in the Sky” on the final day.

Besides the new mixing board, also crucial to the process was the cutting-edge EMS Synthi AKS synthesizer, which allowed the band to create loops of sequenced notes, most famously for “On the Run,” where Gilmour and Waters collaborated on the effect. This was also used for the solo on “Any Colour You Like.”

As for Waters’ and Gilmour’s individual tools of the trade, Roger’s weapon of choice was the Fender Precision bass he’d been using since 1970, modified at this point with a maple neck by Charvel and Kluson tuning machines. David used his black 1969 Fender Stratocaster, which he later modified many times, soon with an additional switch that allowed him to manipulate the pickups to evoke the sound of a Fender Jazzmaster, and then with a Gibson PAF humbucker in time for the shows with Roland Petit’s Ballets de Marseille in early 1973. Also, notably on “Money” (and probably “Brain Damage,” “Us and Them,” and “Eclipse”), Gilmour played a 1970 mahogany-body custom Bill Lewis guitar with 24 frets. On “Money” this was used specifically to get the high notes in the third part of his solo. On “Breathe” and “Great Gig in the Sky” you can hear a Fender 1000 twin-neck pedal steel.

For effects, Gilmour used a Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face (BC108), a Colorsound Power Boost, a Univox Uni-Vibe, a Binson Echorec 2 and PE 603, the aforementioned Kepex processor, and the EMS Synthi Hi-Fli guitar effects processor, which was a prototype version Gilmour bought from the manufacturer in 1972 at great expense. But effects were minimal, given there was nothing digital out at the time. Parsons indicates that most of his sounds were coming right out of the cabinets, augmented perhaps with a plate reverb or tape delay.

In the amp department, Gilmour used Hiwatt DR103 Custom 100-watt heads, a Fender Twin Reverb silverface 2x12 combo, a Maestro Rover rotary speaker, a Leslie rotary speaker cabinet (plus effects simulating Leslies), and WEM Super Starfinder 200 cabinets, which Parsons mic’d with Neumann U87s or U86s placed a foot in front of the cabinets. The classic Leslie rotary speaker effect can be heard on “Breathe.”

Concerning the legendary cacophony of alarm clocks on “Time,” that was something that Parsons had previously put together for a quadraphonic test record for EMI, recording each clock separately in an antiques shop in Hampstead. Quad was being touted at the time as the next evolution beyond stereo, and Parsons and Pink Floyd were ready participants – Atom Heart Mother, Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here would all come out on quad. Parsons took a portable tape machine to the shop and had to have the proprietor stop all the clocks so Parsons could capture them one at a time. Also on the effects front, explained Alan, “the footsteps on the intro to ‘On the Run,’ that was me and my assistant engineer, Pete James, pacing the floor at Number Two studio at Abbey Road.”

After some time off (but also more shows), there were further Dark Side sessions on October 10 through 12 and 17, 1972, followed by a show at Wembley Empire Pool on October 21. Work resumed October 25 to 27, but then the band was sent back on the road in mainland Europe in November. Work would often be interrupted to watch Monty Python’s Flying Circus, or to allow Roger to cheer on his beloved Arsenal FC. Parsons has said that he’d stay behind and keep working during the breaks for Monty Python, recalling that this is when he’d get some of his best ideas down on tape.

Rehearsals in advance of the final recording sessions took place January 9, 1973, with the band recording sporadically over two weeks beginning January 18 in Studio 2 before moving permanently to Studio 3. At this point the band recorded “Brain Damage,” “Eclipse,” “Any Colour You Like,” and “On the Run,” plus overdubs needed for the basic tracks from earlier sessions. Mason recalls that “Any Colour You Like” was a two-chord jam cooked up on the spot to fill space, with the highlight being Gilmour’s guitar solo. Dick Parry’s sax parts were recorded for “Money” and “Us and Them” (using a 1969 Henri Selmer tenor sax) plus four female backing vocalists – Doris Troy, Lesley Duncan, Liza Strike, and Barry St. John – were brought in to sing on “Brain Damage,” “Eclipse” and “Time.” Their voices were fed through a pitch shifter to achieve a sweeping effect. Of note, also on the vocal front, Parsons double-tracked most of the lead vocals, adding effects like reverb and delay.

Clare Torry’s vocals for “The Great Gig in the Sky” were recorded on January 21, with the sessions wrapping up February 1. Noted Parsons, “I suggested calling up Clare Torry to sing ‘Great Gig in the Sky’– they were unacquainted with her. There were a few specific instances like that where I injected some ideas.”

Torry did three or four takes, with Parsons indicating that the final performance was a composite. Torry remembers fondly the excellent mix Parsons got between her voice and the music in her headphones and greatly enjoyed closing her eyes and belting it out. Torry also recalls that the guys (other than Dave) looked completely bored during the process and she was ushered out quickly after she was done, feeling that she probably was not going to make the record.

At the end of the process, producer Chris Thomas was brought in to check out the final mixes. He recalls picking up the task at midnight and then driving over to AIR to work until 5 a.m. on Grand Hotel, his third of what would be four records in a row for Procol Harum.

Although he doesn’t admit to any disputes, apparently there was vehement disagreement about the final mix, with Roger and Nick wanting a drier sound emphasizing the sound effects and David and Rick wanting more echo, emphasizing the songs and melodies. Thomas was called in as mediator; both David and Rick would hover over him at different times, willing the faders to move their way, to the point where both ended up in the control room with him (Gilmour says he got his way). Parsons wasn’t happy with Thomas’s propensity to “limit” the drums, and later regretted that the drum sound could have been better.

Notably, Thomas was also at the Clare Torry session on “The Great Gig in the Sky,” and proved instrumental in synchronizing the echo on “Us and Them.” Parsons recalled that Chris had rode him hard to locate the “magic” rough mixes for the Rototoms used at the beginning of “Time,” but they were unsuccessful in their search. In the final analysis however, after three weeks of work, all parties were more than pleased with The Dark Side of the Moon. All that was left was to tour a record that actually existed.

Excerpted from Pink Floyd and The Dark Side of the Moon: 50 Years, by Martin Popoff (Motorbooks, 2023, $50). Copyright 2023 Quarto Publishing Group USA Inc. Used by permission.

I’m rarely surprised by the response when interviewers, including those for Guitar Player, ask musicians, “Did you have any idea your record would be a hit?” The answer is almost always “no.” It’s the rare artist who knows when he or she has on a hit on their hands. It’s a question David Gilmour has been asked many times about The Dark Side of the Moon, and while his answer has always been a definitive “no,” he could be excused for saying “yes.”

After all, Pink Floyd worked the album on the road through the first five months of 1972 before entering Abbey Road Studios to record it, then continued to tour their magnum opus while putting the finishing touches to tape.

From all reports, the fans were ecstatic about what they heard at those shows, even if the work’s concepts eluded them.

50 years on from its release (and around 45 million copies later) The Dark Side of the Moon continues to thrill as generations of fans discover, and rediscover, this seemingly timeless record.

Discovering how another person experiences and interprets music – or anything, really – is an opportunity to shape or reshape our own perceptions, and in doing so broaden our minds and gain new insights that possibly give us a fresh spin on art, politics, life... pretty much anything you can think of.

So join us for a track-by-track tour of the Dark Side, as we take a look at some of the concepts, gear and stories behind Pink Floyd’s best-selling LP...

“Speak to Me”

Credited to drummer Nick Mason, this sound collage lasts slightly longer than a minute and is an unsettling introduction to the album, fading in slowly and prompting listeners to turn up the volume, only to find the track surging to menacing sound levels in its final 10 seconds.

The cut is an overture of sorts, foreshadowing the various sounds – clinking coins, ticking clocks and haunting voices – yet to come over the album’s two sides, all of it over a steady tom-tom (according to David Gilmour) standing in for a heartbeat. Together, they evoke the emotions explored on the album, including fear, anxiety and pressure, as well as birth, time and death.

The organ-like tone that groans in toward the end is a piano chord played by Rick Wright, recorded backward.

“Breathe (In the Air)”

Featuring music by David Gilmour and lyrics by Roger Waters, “Breathe (In the Air)” releases the tension of “Speak to Me” with a languid soundscape over which Gilmour sings and plays his pedal steel, as well as a rhythm guitar through a Univox Uni-Vibe.

Gilmour’s majestically minimal guitar work reveals his gift for choosing the right notes and tones to evoke just what the song requires.

As his pedal steel establishes a sort of free-floating idyll, Waters’ busy bass lines suggest the perpetual movement of time and humanity that scrapes against our inner peace.

“On the Run”

In early shows, this sequenced synthesizer track was a jam known as “The Travel Sequence,” performed with keyboards and guitars.

Thematically, it’s about the pressures Pink Floyd faced from constant touring and, specifically, air travel, as well as the fear of death that went with it.

In the studio, the tune became something entirely different when Waters programmed an eight-note line into the sequencer of an EMS Synthi AKS synthesizer. Gilmour says he created the sound and worked the controls. “He made that little sequence up,” the guitarist said, “but I had got the actual original sound, and I actually was the one doing the controlling on the take that we used.”

The group then added Mason’s hi-hats and sound effects, including a backward guitar and an airplane engine.

“Time”

Opening with a cacophonous recording of ticking and chiming clocks that engineer Alan Parsons compiled for a quadraphonic test record, “Time” is a study in musical contrasts. The atmospheric intro, featuring Mason’s tuned Rototoms and Gilmour’s heavily reverberated “spaghetti western” guitar stylings, sets the stage for high drama.

Waters’ aggressive vocals punctuate the spiky verses – on which GIlmour turns in some fine funk-infused licks – while Gilmour and Wright lend their dulcet voices to the shimmering sustained choruses, which includes backing vocals fed through a pitch shifter, according to Martin Popoff’s research, although they sound heavily flanged.

Gilmour’s biting guitar solo was performed using the F# minor pentatonic scale and recorded at high volume through his Hiwatt amp. It’s an excellent example of his flair for exploiting the fretboard’s range with a combination of fast lines and slow sustained notes to full expressive effect.

“The Great Gig in the Sky”

Wright’s creation, this tune was originally an instrumental work and featured readings from the Bible and the British satirist Malcolm Muggeridge.

Most of the music was recorded on June 25, 1972. Roughly six months later, on January 21, 1973, the spoken-word bits were replaced by the wordless gospel stylings of 25-year-old session singer Clare Torry during a three-hour session.

Torry said the band seemed so indifferent to her efforts that she wasn’t sure her vocals made the cut until she saw her name in the album credits while visiting a record shop.

“Money”

The opening track on the original vinyl album’s second side, “Money” was mostly recorded on June 7, 1972.

Waters developed the unusual (for rock) 7/8 bass riff in the studio, then created the coins-and-cash-register audio collage in his wife’s pottery studio, using a Revox A77 tape deck, before remaking it at Abbey Road with assistance from his bandmates and Alan Parsons.

The resulting audio loop he devised served as a metronome for the song, over which the band performs at its funkiest. Gilmour strums a psychedelic stuttering tremolo guitar, Wright plays his Wurlitzer electric piano through a wah pedal, and Gilmour’s old chum Dick Parry blows a mean sax solo.

But the song’s 7/8 time signature goes out the window once Gilmour launches into a trio of furious blues-based guitar solos midway through the track. He performs the first two on his Black Strat, while the third is played using his 24-fret Bill Lewis electric, after which the band swings back into 7/8 time for the final verse before riding the fade out in 4/4.

Oddly – for Pink Floyd – “Money” was released as a single in the U.S. and reached number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100.

“Us and Them”

Tracked on the first day of Dark Side’s studio recording sessions, June 1, 1972, “Us and Them” began as an instrumental composition that Wright wrote for the band’s contribution to the soundtrack of the 1970 film Zabriskie Point.

Although the song was rejected, it found a new life when combined with Waters’ lyrics juxtaposing distinctions of rank, race and class to illustrate life’s inequities.

The stereo-panning echoes on Gilmour’s vocals, which occur on the beat, required some ingenuity to create at the time. Parsons says that he achieved them using a 3M eight-track tape recorder: Gilmour’s vocal was sent to one pair of tracks and bounced along to the next pair and so on, to achieve four distinct echoes that could be panned within the stereo spectrum to give the sense that the echoes were traveling from speaker to speaker.

“Any Colour You Like”

This instrumental is essentially a reprise of “Breathe” – it’s even called “Breathe (Second Reprise)” in some tab books – as it uses roughly the same chord pattern as that song’s verses, transposed from Em to Dm.

Gilmour has said he based his guitar tone on Eric Clapton’s guitar in the Cream song “Badge,” using either a Uni-Vibe or a Leslie rotary speaker to achieve his liquid tone.

As for the title, Waters – the only Floyd member not credited on the song – explains that it comes from hawkers who would visit his Cambridge neighborhood selling china sets from the backs of trucks. “If they had sets of china, and they were all the same colour, they would say, ‘You can ’ave ’em, 10 bob to you, love. Any colour you like, they’re all blue.’ And that was just part of that patter. So, metaphorically, ‘Any Colour You Like’ is interesting, in that sense, because it denotes offering a choice where there is none.”

“Brain Damage”

Originally written, but not recorded, for Pink Floyd’s 1971 album, Meddle, “Brain Damage” was alternately titled “The Dark Side of the Moon” and “The Lunatic Song.”

Waters wrote it for Floyd founder Syd Barrett, making it both an anchor for the Dark Side of the Moon album and a forerunner to Floyd’s 1975 tribute to Barrett, Wish You Were Here.

Gilmour plays a Beatles-esque fingerpicked pattern on his guitar through either a Uni-Vibe or a Leslie. According to Waters, the lyric “The lunatic is on the grass” was inspired by the square in Cambridge between the River Cam and King’s College Chapel and is meant to connote the idea that those who don’t follow society’s rules are dangerous, when in fact the real insanity is refusing to let people enjoy the beauty of the grass.

“Eclipse”

Segueing from the previous track, “Eclipse” transitions to a dramatic 6/8 time signature led by Wright’s Leslie organ and Gilmour’s arpeggiating guitar lines, played at a higher register than in “Brain Damage.”

Running just slightly over two minutes in length, “Eclipse” feels less like a song of its own than a coda to its predecessor.

Lyrically, the song speaks to the themes of light and dark that run throughout the album, concluding with the line that “everything under the sun is in tune, but the sun is eclipsed by the moon.”

Speaking of the song’s lyrics, Waters said, “I think it’s a very simple statement saying that all the good things life can offer are there for us to grasp, but that the influence of some dark force in our natures prevents us from seizing them.”

Order The Dark Side Of The Moon 50th Anniversary Deluxe Remaster here.