PINK Floyd guitarist David Gilmour has been excited about the release of “Live in Gdansk,” his first-ever live solo CD and DVD, for some time. But when the project finally arrives in stores on Tuesday, the occasion will be bittersweet.
Playing alongside Gilmour at that 2006 concert was his longtime friend and Pink Floyd keyboardist Richard “Rick” Wright, who succumbed to cancer last Monday at the age of 65.
Wright, one of the lower-profile members of a band dominated by Gilmour, Roger Waters and the late Syd Barrett, established many of Floyd’s soundscapes, and wrote classic songs such as “Great Gig in the Sky” and “Us and Them.”
Gilmour, who spoke to The Post before Wright’s passing, said that Wright rarely received the recognition he deserved for his contributions to the psychedelic Pink Floyd sound.
“It’s important to remember that within that dynamic – those four people – if you take one of them away, it changes it,” he says. “Rick’s role was vitally important.”
Gilmour felt Wright’s presence on the 2006 tour made it that much more special for him.
“He’d been through a bit of a quiet, fallow period,” he says, “and he really came back to the foreground and changed the way the whole tour went. He made his presence very felt, and it was great to have him back in that sort of form, and to realize what a great telepathy and synchronicity we have together.”
Wright is the second member of the Floyd family to pass away in recent years, following guitarist Barrett, who died in 2006. While the public image of Barrett for many is of his later, mentally ill years, Gilmour has fond memories of the songwriter’s more lucid days.
“When we were both about 17, 18 years old, we were at the same college in Cambridge,” he says. “And we used to spend our lunch times teaching each other stuff. I remember having great fun doing ‘Come On’ by the Stones, and Syd was really into Bo Diddley, as well. He used to do a brilliant, slow version of a Bo Diddley song called ‘Cops and Robbers’ that was always hilarious. He was just a very, very witty, funny guy. Great to be around.”
Gilmour has rarely said the same of Waters, with whom he famously feuded. As such, it was a shock when the classic post-Barrett lineup reunited three years ago for the Live 8 concert.
“The actual moment, the half-hour onstage, was lovely – fantastic,” Gilmour says of the event. “It was thrilling to play those songs in front of that audience. But I was in the middle of recording my album, and it distracted me at a fairly important moment. But I don’t want to be churlish about it. We had a great time.”
And while he and Waters rarely communicate – Gilmour quashed any possibility of a reunion tour with a staunch “forget it” – the two do occasionally e-mail each other.
“He sent me a joke last week,” says Gilmour. “I don’t know if he meant to send me a joke. It wasn’t a very good joke.”