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.
Once Romany emerged for “Between Two Points” late in the first half, she remained on stage for the remainder of the show, taking her place along the three other women who formed a vocalist-instrumentalist chorale, the Webb Sisters and Louise Marshall. Romany occasionally picked up a portable harp, complementing Hattie Webb’s larger one; this surely was the only rock show in L.A. Friday night to boast any twin-harp-attack moments.
Not to seem to be diminishing the star’s vocal numbers, but arguably the best number of the evening Friday was yet another one in which Gilmour ceded his position as lead singer to female vocals. “The Great Gig in the Sky,” the track that Clare Torry legendarily wailed on to end Side 1 of “The Dark Side of the Moon,” can be a concert highlight if either of the touring Floyd frontmen find a way to pull it off… which they both have. Waters did a tour where he got the vocal duo Lucius to impressively double up on Torry’s powerful vocal part. It would have seemed difficult for Gilmour to top or even find a different approach to that… and the last time he toured the States, he left the tune off his setlist. This time around, he’s offering an ingenious arrangement in which it is sung by all four women on stage — Romany, Marshall and Hattie and Charlie Webb — seated around the piano Marshall is playing, while the frontman plays his trademark lap-steel part on the other end. This is a wordless vocal number in which almost anyone who ever attempts it tries to bust a lung, a la Torry. But here, the four women took the approach of singing the whole thing softly… truly going gentle into that good night, and going gorgeously.
That’s somehow symbolic of a softer approach that Gilmour takes in almost all regards. Waters’ approach to Pink Floyd emphasized material that was brooding, even menacing. Some of that remains inherent in certain songs that are still part of Gilmour’s set, like the “Breathe”/”Time” medley from “Dark Side,” which has served as a news alert to several successive generations of young people that they are going to die someday. (It’s a dirty job, but some song’s gotta do it.) But that kind of material has never seemed like it’s coming from exactly where Gilmour lives. The early Floyd song in the set that feels most reflective of this artist’s actual atom heart is the vintage solo composition “Fat Old Sun,” which, if it isn’t the most cheery song in the band’s catalog, certainly comes close.
There’s a peacefulness in Gilmour’s overall ethos that is at odds with the anxiety his ex-partner instilled. And so when you go to one of his concerts, you know, for better or worse, that there it’s not going to be a message show… beyond the message that life is bittersweet. There will be inflatables, but not a giant pig one, where you’re going to be nervous about what disturbing logo might’ve been branded onto it. Rather, for “High Hopes,” the tune that ends Act 1, giant balloons are launched out into the audience, sending everyone out into the lobby ebullient as they wait for what the second half holds.
David Gilmour at the Intuit Dome
Courtesy Intuit Dome
It’s not a super-high-tech show, or at least an obviously envelope-pushing one, by Floyd standards. The big screen behind the band often has visuals presented in a giant circle, just like in the ‘70s. In the divorce, Gilmour even got (or at least shared) the rights to the vintage “Time” animations of roving clocks. There is a monochrome, pencil-sketch animation of soldiers menacing children in wartime, showing that the artist is not afraid of introducing a momentarily disturbing visual, amid the overall placidity. Less tense is a colorful new animation for “Dark and Velvet Nights.” The lighting scheme has some fresh wrinkles — notably, in the Act 2 opener “Sorrow,” when the entire stage seems to be enveloped from bottom to top in a strobe-packed lightning storm. But toward the end, what really makes the audience ooh and aah is some green lasers… same as it ever was.
The show ended with its sole encore, “Comfortably Numb,” which in strictly thematic terms is not a great way to end a concert, on a note of drugging oneself into oblivion. But Gilmour can’t help it if he and Waters wrote a sad song that no more upbeat song can reasonably follow. It contains not just one but two of the greatest guitar solos ever conceived that did not appear on a Steely Dan record, and Gilmour, at 78, is going to blow your mind again with expansive versions of both of them.
His playing throughout all this is bluesy — much bluesier than it’s usually given credit for — but of course it’s a peculiarly ethereal version of the blues, transmitted up to and transmuted back from the heavens. Gilmour could have been called “Slow Hand” if that label hadn’t been slapped on Clapton first; after hearing his playing in a show like this one, fans might feel ready to finally transfer the “…Is God” title, too.
Setlist for David Gilmour at the Intuit Dome, Inglewood, Calif., Oct. 25, 2024:
Set 1:
5 A.M.
Black Cat
Luck and Strange – instr
Breathe (In the Air)
Time
Breathe (Reprise)
Fat Old Sun
Marooned
A Single Spark
Wish You Were Here
Vita Brevis
Between Two Points
High Hopes
Set 2:
Sorrow
The Piper’s Call
A Great Day for Freedom
In Any Tongue
Short Talk
The Great Gig in the Sky
A Boat Lies Waiting
Coming Back to Life
Dark and Velvet Nights
Sings
Scattered
Comfortably Numb
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