Will the last remaining true classic-rock guitar-god frontman turn out the lights? And then, naturally, put on a big light show?
David Gilmour may not have sole rights to that title (Eric Clapton preceded him in passing through L.A. just two weeks ago), but there is not a lot of competition for the place he holds in rock culture. It’s safe to say that the four shows he’s doing in SoCal would be a significant draw even if he toured more than once every eight years (that’s the interval since the last time he came around, anyway, if not the average)… and even if his North American “road trip” this time wasn’t limited to just two cities. Throw in the scarcity created by the aforementioned factors and it’s no wonder that there is an element of David Gilmour Tourism in the Southland this week, with national and even international Pink Floyd fans flying in and posting “Wish you were here” messages to their socials from beautiful downtown Inglewood.
Gilmour’s first U.S. show since April 2016 took place Friday at the Intuit Dome, a one-off in that nearly brand-new venue booked to precede the three dates he’s doing this week in the more familiar climes of the Hollywood Bowl, on Tuesday through Thursday. From there, it will be off to New York’s Madison Square Garden for five nights, Nov. 4-10. And then, Brigadoon recedes into the mist, and we get him back in… when? 2032? Possibly in a shorter interval than that, since he’s indicated that recording his fifth solo album, “Luck and Strange,” charged him up to make music on a more regular schedule. Or possibly never, since Gilmour seems like the kind of guy who might honestly love the English countryside more than he loves us.
Either way that Gilmour’s touring regimen might or might not turn out in years to come, the Intuit Dome was a fine place to be alive and living in the moment Friday, under the spell of a man who is very careful with that axe. As much as ever, he sounded like a rocker gifted with two voices: the one coming out of his mouth, which has acquired just a touch of a rasp around the edges with age, and the one coming from his hands, which feels as emotionally expressive as any literal vocalization ever could. The eternal irony stands: Gilmour, utterly nonchalant and affectless as a stage personality, effectively breaking into tears once or twice per song, via the gently weepiest solos known to man.
Gilmour’s U.S. opening-night setlist matched what audiences in Europe saw a few weeks ago in his smattering of dates in England and Rome. It extended to about three hours with an intermission, including a healthy mixture of selections from Roger Waters-era Pink Floyd (seven numbers), solely-Gilmour-led, post-Waters Floyd albums (five songs), Gilmour’s previous solo album, “Rattle That Lock” (three numbers) and “Luck and Strange” (all nine of its tracks).
No doubt there will be a few fans who would’ve liked to have heard still more classic Floyd cuts in place of a couple of the new ones — but better to have an artist who is motivated and engaged than one who feels contractually obligated to play “Money.” The songs are good, and sometimes not just good but all-timers, but what everyone is most paying their money for here is the solos. And to that end, he could just about get away with singing “Pink Pony Club,” as long as he busted out his chops as part of the deal. This isn’t to diminish the new songs — mostly written with his wife, Polly Samson, as ever, from 1994’s “The Division Bell” forward — as delivery systems for those instrumentally spectacular payoffs. Up to a climactic point, the biggest standing ovation of the night, surprisingly, came for the fireworks Gilmour delivered to cap off one of the new songs, “The Piper’s Call,” early in the second half. A rousingly effective solo like that doesn’t scale its summit all by itself, and maybe there is something in the warnings that Samson wrote into those lyrics that somehow acts as a piper to lure out the best in Gilmour when he finally lets it rip.
But the best song off “Luck and Strange” might be one that is neither co-written nor sung by Gilmour. That would be “Between Two Points,” a cover of a cult-favorite Montgolfier Brothers song that is now being delivered on tour, as on record, by the artist’s daughter, Romany Gilmour. Ironically, the sadly sarcastic, fatalistic lyrics read as the closest the album come to the kind of cynical words that used to be turned out by Roger Waters, and Romany’s simple, affectless delivery adds a kind of poignance to them that might not have been there if the senior Gilmour had just delivered the cover himself. Of course the concert version ended in yet another burst of firepower from Dad, taking to his instrument to sound sad on his daughter’s half, or maybe explosively protective, for a few fierce minutes.
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