David Gilmour rehearses ‘Luck and Strange’ ahead of UK tour

Exclusive: Pink Floyd star recalls ‘freezing’ recording session with his late bandmate, Richard Wright

David Gilmour rehearses the title song for his new solo album, Luck and Strange, in exclusive footage obtained by The Independent.

The album track features Gilmour’s late Pink Floyd bandmate Richard Wright, who died in 2008, on electric piano and Hammond organ. The first sessions for the song were recorded in 2007, in a jam at the barn at Gilmour’s home.

“I toured in 2006, and Rick asked if he could be in my band and I said ‘of course’, and when we finished that tour, in January, I got together that touring band and said, ‘come down to the house and we’ll jam for a week in the barn’,” Gilmour recalled.

“What was going through my addled brain I don’t know – it was f***ing freezing in that barn. Anyway, the first jam we did on the Monday morning was the one that became that song – I added a chorus and middle-eight, rebuilt the stuff on top with different chords.

“There’s bits where Rick’s playing a Hammond lick and I’ve put guitars on since and I’m playing with him, bouncing off his keyboards and it is a bit weird, but I’m not fazed by that element of Rick being there at all at the moment. I just think, ‘Ah, it’s Rick, it’s me, we’re playing.’”

The Pink Floyd artist released his latest project last week; it is on track to become Gilmour’s third No 1 solo album.

David Gilmour in a portrait taken for his new album ‘Luck and Strange' (Anton Corbijn)

“Luck and Strange ends with the thump of a slow’n’steady heartbeat, providing a counterbalance to the panic-attack pulse heard on The Dark Side of the Moon,” The Independent’s critic Helen Brown wrote in a four-star review.

“‘Yes, I have ghosts,’ sings Gilmour, ‘and they dance by the moon.’ A splashy concert piano-style solo brings the cold drama before the bass and guitar lock into a companionable groove, and the classical guitar thaws old fears into acceptance. Floyd used to sing that ‘hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way’, but Gilmour sounds happier than that. The darkening days ‘flow like honey’, he says. All Floydies will find succour here.”

Speaking to The Independent in a recent interview, he said the record, which was co-written with his wife, the author Polly Samson, was inspired by themes of mortality, love and society.

“Mortality is something I think about and have done so intensely since I was 13 in my bedroom, essentially a linen cupboard in my parents’ house,” Gilmour said.

“Probably with most of the songs I have written over the years, it is the main topic. But when you get to my age, one has to be realistic and say that immortality is no longer an option.”

Read the full interview here. Gilmour tours the album in cities including Rome, Los Angeles, New York and London from 27 September.