David Gilmour dusted the cobwebs off ahead of his first U.S. tour dates in eight years with a pair of warm-up shows in his native England. The Pink Floyd guitarist performed a pair of dress rehearsal concerts for 1,500 lucky fans on Friday and Saturday at the Brighton Centre in East Sussex.
Gilmour will play residencies in London, Rome, and Los Angeles through November in support of his new solo album, Luck and Strange, and on Friday performed several songs from the album live for the first time. The two-set performance saw the live debuts of “Black Cat”, “Vita Brevis”, “The Piper’s Call”, “Velvet Nights”, and “Scattered”. While Gilmour’s first new solo album in nine years is certainly something to celebrate, the guitarist knew that audiences might also be interested in his earlier work so he filled the show with Pink Floyd classics and deep cuts.
Somehow, Gilmour had gone 18 years without playing The Dark Side of the Moon‘s “Breathe (In the Air)” until Friday night. A run of “Breathe (In the Air)”, “Time”, and a reprise of “Breathe” preceded “Marooned” off The Division Bell, which Gilmour had not played in almost 20 years exactly. Not surprisingly, Gilmour’s Pink Floyd selections leaned on the 1994 album the pioneering psych-art rockers made with Gilmour at the helm following the exodus of Roger Waters.
While Gilmour highlighted the (whatever the opposite of fan-favorite is) post-Waters period with “High Hopes”, “A Great Day for Freedom”, “Coming Back to Life”, and A Momentary Lapse of Reason‘s “Sorrow”, he could not simply ignore the iconic music made with the volatile bassist and still included “Wish You Were Here”, “The Great Gig in the Sky”, and show-closer “Comfortably Numb”. Atom Heart Mother (1970) hidden gem “Fat Old Sun” also made a surprising appearance.
Gilmour played an identical show on Saturday, with the addition of his 22-year-old daughter Romany Gilmour who joined her father on “Between Two Points”. The father-daughter reimagining of The Montgolfier Brothers‘ 2015 pop-dream song appeared on Luck and Strange and got its live debut—sans Romany—on Friday.
Prior to this past weekend’s warm-up shows, David Gilmour gave his first public performance in four years with Romany at an open mic. He made another surprising appearance, this one in studio form, contributing to Ice-T-fronted Body Count‘s cover of “Comfortably Numb” released last week. The guitarist also made headlines in a recent MOJO interview stating he will not play “Run Like Hell”, “Another Brick in the Wall”, or “Money” on this coming tour.
Check out some videos from the David Gilmour warm-up shows in Brighton and find tickets and tour dates here.
David Gilmour — “Speak to Me”, “Breathe (In the Air)”, “Time” — 9/20/24
[Video: LittleEpic]
Setlist: David Gilmour | Brighton Centre | Brighton, England | 9/20/24
Set One: 5 A.M., Black Cat [1], Luck and Strange, Speak to Me [2], Breathe (In the Air) [3], Time, Breathe (Reprise), Fat Old Sun, Marooned [4], Wish You Were Here, Vita Brevis [1], Between Two Points (The Montgolfier Brothers) [1], High Hopes
Set Two: Sorrow, The Piper’s Call [1], A Great Day for Freedom [3], In Any Tongue, The Great Gig in the Sky, A Boat Lies Waiting, Coming Back to Life, Dark and Velvet Nights [1], Scattered [1]
Encore: Comfortably Numb
[1] FTP
[2] Song played from tape
[3] LTP 8/26/06
[4] LTP 9/24/04