David Gilmour Feels the 'Magic' of Working with His Family on His New LP 'Luck and Strange' (Exclusive)

• ‘Luck and Strange’ is former Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour’s fifth solo record and first in nine years
• The album features contributions from his wife Polly and their three children Romany, Charlie and Gabriel
• “It’s all smiles right now. I’m really enjoying it,” he tells PEOPLE

On Happiness and strangethe upcoming solo album by former Pink Floyd guitarist and singer David Gilmour, it’s all in the family. His wife, the novelist and journalist Polly Samson, wrote the lyrics, and Gilmour’s three grown children – daughter Romany and sons Gabriel and Charlie – contributed singing and songwriting to the record. For Gilmour, the presence of his family members on the new album was a release from what he had done on his previous solo outings.

“I don’t feel like I have to do things a certain way,” the British rocker, 78, tells PEOPLE. “I don’t have to use a certain type of musician or anything.” He also adds, “There’s something about voices from the same family that I think has magic.”

Featuring Gilmour’s signature guitar playing and voice that have been synonymous with Pink Floyd for decades, Happiness and strange (released on Friday, September 6) is his first new album in nine years – an occasion he is marking with a series of concerts in Rome, London, Los Angeles and New York starting on September 27. Gilmour is so enamored of his latest album — which also features musical veterans such as drummer Steve Gadd and bassist Guy Pratt — that he recently described it as the best work he’s done since Pink Floyd’s 1973 masterpiece. The dark side of the moon.

David Gilmour.

Anton Corbijn

“The joy I had making this album, the joy I still have listening to it every day, what I do on every car trip and everything – I’m still really madly in love with it,” says o Happiness and strange. “I think it’s really good work. Polly’s lyrics are the best she’s ever written. Everything is smiling at me right now. I really enjoy it.”

This is not the first time that Gilmour has collaborated with his family on music. Between 2020 and 2021, during the pandemic, he launched Von Trapped series, which consisted of livestream music performances from his home, where he himself is accompanied by his family members. But don’t call it nepotism because Gilmour says it’s different.

“Romany writes, plays the harp and sings,” he says. “She has a beautiful voice. It’s something she’s earned. Charlie is an excellent writer himself. He wrote a very good book [Featherhood] and he writes another one. Polly is an odd author. We had a lot of fun doing it [livestreams].”

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Gilmour’s enjoyment of recording the new album can be attributed in part to producer Charlie Andrew, whose previous credits include indie rock acts Alt-J and Marika Hackman. Andrew’s unfamiliarity with Pink Floyd’s music was interesting to Gilmour, who had previously worked with longtime producers Bob Ezrin and Phil Manzanero.

David Gilmour.

Anton Corbijn

“I felt a new approach was needed,” says Gilmour. “I was telling Polly about my frustrations at finding this perfect person and she jumped on the internet and started looking for producers. And she found this Charlie Andrew, who won the Mercury Prize. Polly was listening to Alt-J and other stuff he was producing and she said, “Hey, listen to this. This is interesting.” So I listened and said, “Yeah, let’s try.” He came down and listened to some things, and he said he was very willing to join.”

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Verses on Happiness and strange Samson, 62, who has been Gilmour’s songwriting partner for 30 years, touches on themes of aging and mortality, which have gained greater resonance during quarantine.

“Then we thought [COVID] was a death sentence for especially old people,” says Gilmour. “It was really quite scary. It was rumored that 20% of the population would die from this thing and we were very scared. Mortality was a topic that we [in Pink Floyd] what was talked about then and since then – this is one of my themes that goes back to “The End of Childhood” and “Sadness”. It’s something we all have to think about at some point. These songs were created one by one over a period of time and were just conversations we had for years about the world we live in.”

The album’s soulful and bluesy title track poignantly features ex-Pink Floyd’s Richard Wright on keyboards. It is based on a 15-minute jam recorded in Gilmour’s barn in 2007, a year before Wright’s death at age 65.

“We felt that to the end [the 2006 On an Island] a tour that we really prepared and played really well together as a band,” says Gilmour. “So I invited the core of the band to come down and play a bit. The morning we started, I turned on my Gretsch Duo Jet guitar and played that little riff, and everyone joined in one by one. People pricked up their ears like, ‘Oh, something’s going on.’ We cut some of the joints down a bit, but the whole intro and lyrics are that first jam.”

One of the intriguing tracks from the new record is “Between Two Points,” a cover of an obscure 1999 song by British indie music duo the Montgolfier Brothers; Gilmour’s new performance features Romany, 22, on lead vocals.

David Gilmour.

Anton Corbijn

“That song is a Polly that I knew and loved very well,” says Gilmour. “Polly said, ‘Why don’t you cut a backing track and see where we go?’ So one afternoon I put the rough thing together and sat down in front of the microphone with the lyrics and read them and thought, ‘Actually, I’m just not this person in these words. They’re fantastic, but they’re vulnerable and troubled in a way that I don’t think people think I am.’ Polly said, “We could get Romany to try it.” She was very grumpy, but eventually she sang and the magic happened before our eyes.”

Also, keeping it within the family, Gilmour’s son Gabriel, 27, sings backing vocals on the album, while his older brother Charlie, 35, co-wrote the magnificent, orchestra-laden track “Scattered.” A line from that song — “A man stands in a river, pushes against the stream/Time is a tide that disobeys and it disobeys me” — inspired the album cover. “He wrote two or three lines,” says Gilmour of Charlie’s contribution, “a few lines are mine and a few other brilliant interjections came from Polly. That idea of ​​a man standing in a river trying to hold back the flow is a very visual and appealing idea.”

The latest single from the album, the fast and rhythmic “Dark and Velvet Nights,” is based on Samson’s song for the couple’s wedding anniversary. “It was sitting on my desk in my studio,” Gilmour recalls, “I put it in demo form and I wanted to sing something on it, just to see how the words would sound on it. So I took Polly’s song and it had that serendipitous thing where they just fit together.”

The beautiful “Sings” is probably the most romantic song on Happiness and strangesomewhat uncharacteristic of the reflective and somber music Gilmour was creating with Pink Floyd. “The warmth and tenderness and deeply personal thought of those words are matched with the music, which is like sitting in a warm bath or curled up in bed. Before he had lyrics, [producer Charlie Andrew] had a blackboard on the wall with songs and sheet music and what should happen. And next to it was written ‘Lyrics, urgent’. He loved it.”

As he prepares for his upcoming tour, the rewarding experience of creating Happiness and strange it has already inspired Gilmour to make a follow-up album. “I have songs and pieces of music and half-formed things that go back years,” he says. “So I have a library of stuff and I have new songs. Polly and I can’t wait to continue doing another one. I know I say that after every album… but we’re really going to keep going with this, and Polly’s going to push me until we really get it going.”

Meanwhile, Pink Floyd’s music is still more popular than ever, even though the band has been on hiatus. Last year marked the 50th birthday dark side of the moon and its monitoring, i wish you were here and will celebrate its golden anniversary next year. Gilmour, however, is looking forward, not back.

“I love what I do 1725685843,” he says, “I’m getting ready to do some shows with a bunch of exciting musicians who are mostly a little younger than me, and I’m looking forward to starting some new work in the new year. So I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about it The dark side of the moon and I wish you were here’birthdays, I’m afraid.”

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Source: HIS Education