“To me, progressive rock is very serious players who can really do their stuff”: David Gilmour “never thought Pink Floyd were prog rock
A conversation about prog rock titans is hardly complete without mention of Pink Floyd. But as David Gilmour explains in a recent interview with Rick Beato, he was never keen on the label.
He says that he and his bandmates “never talked about style”, and that they were creating the music they were creating “long before” the ‘progressive rock’ moniker came around.
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“I’ve never talked about progressive rock, or thought that we were – whatever – progressive rock,” Gilmour tells Beato [via Louder Sound]. “To me, progressive rock is very, very serious players who can really do their stuff.”
“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.’”
He concludes: “The whole idea of labelling – it’s become more essential in this day and age. But I’m not keen on it.”
Arguably, the genres by which certain bands are described are done so by fans, while artists both old and new prefer not to pigeonhole themselves as purveyors of one style of music only.
Regardless of Gilmour’s position on the ‘prog rock’ moniker, Pink Floyd are widely considered to have been behind some of the best prog albums of all time, including The Dark Side of the Moon, The Wall, and Wish You Were Here.
In other news, David Gilmour recently explained why he’s “never learned” the classic Pink Floyd guitar solo in Comfortably Numb.
“To me it’s just different every time,” he said. “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?”
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