Brit Floyd is celebrating the 40th anniversary of Pink Floyd's classic double album The Wall. Guitarist Damian Darlington recently spoke with KMUW about his love of Floyd guitarist David Gilmour's playing.
Interview Highlights
Let's talk about the guitar on The Wall and David Gilmour's contributions, because I think it has some of his finest playing.
Very definitely so. They are beautifully constructed guitar solos all the way through this album, whether you're looking at "Another Brick in the Wall" or "Mother" or one of the finest rock guitar solos of all time on "Comfortably Numb."
There are sublime guitar moments taking place on that album, so you can't argue with it as a guitarist and it certainly had an impact on me when I first heard it from that perspective as well. I wanted to go away and learn how to play these guitar solos as soon as possible.
Gilmour is fundamentally a blues player when you get down to the basics of it. He also has a wonderful sense of melody. He wasn't afraid to use effects. What was available, what was being developed at the time and to explore creating new guitar sounds, which inspired his playing to a certain extent as well. At the base of it, there's a wonderful sense of space and melody and feeling there. That's what remains so appealing for people right to this day when it comes to listening to him as a guitar player.
You mentioned the technology which, for him, was cutting edge and for us is antiquated. How do you go about replicating [the sound]? Do you have new gear or do you look for vintage gear?
I very much go down the road of using the modern equipment to recreate these guitar tones. Wonderful as the vintage gear is, it tends to take up quite a lot of space and it tends to need a lot of care and attention, whereas there are some amazing modern tools out there now that really do a very fine job of recreating these vintage guitar tones.
Am I correct that Brit Floyd is now approaching something like a decade?
It's eight-and-a-half years, I'm another year out. It's another couple of years before we get to our tenth anniversary. But before Brit Floyd ever started, I was in another Floyd band for 17 years. I've just had my 25th anniversary playing Pink Floyd music professionally.
[Laughs.] That's amazing. I was going to say that, after all these years, you continue to add dates and the show continues to be a draw. It has to be an incredible feeling to see it come along like this.
When I got an opportunity, a quarter of a century ago as it is now, to join a Pink Floyd tribute show, I had no notion whatsoever that I would be playing as many shows as I am and playing in the sorts of venues that I get to play in around the world. I think there's another thing I can safely say about myself: I think I am somebody who has played more Pink Floyd shows than any other person on this planet. I'm pretty confident in saying that: More shows than Pink Floyd and more shows than any tribute-playing musician. It's something like two-and-a-half thousand Pink Floyd shows that I've played now.
Brit Floyd brings its celebration of Pink Floyd's classic double album The Wall, which is now 40 years old, to Wichita's Orpheum Theatre on Friday, June 7.
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