David Gilmour had a bumper 2024, releasing Luck and Strange, his first solo album in nine years, and globe-trotting in support of it.
Apparently, he’s not done.
In a new Christmas message to his fans, the former Pink Floyd guitar virtuoso says there is more to come in 2025, a year he promises will be just as busy for him.
“We’ve had a very long, busy year making the album, bringing it out, going on tour, meeting me new people, new collaborators.,” he says with a dulcimer in his lap. “One way or another we’ve wound up with a team of people that are an absolute joy to play with and to be with,” he continues, “and I’d like to do it again… starting now!”
With that, the prog legend treats us to a bit of music on the dulcimer, one of several intriguing instruments included on Luck and Strange, along with a Cümbüş guitar and his 1945 Martin D-18. .
“It’s a very ancient instrument that came from Europe at some point,” Gilmour says of the dulcimer, which features on “The Piper’s Call.” “It’s been widely adopted in America — the Appalachian dulcimer. This one was made in Italy. An Italian friend of mine, his girlfriend’s father made it for me. I’ve had it for over 40 years, but I don’t really know how to play it.”
If its thin but rich tones sound familiar, that’s because Brian Jones played one on the Rolling Stones’ track “Lady Jane,” released in 1966. Jones had adopted the instrument after becoming fixated by American folksinger Richard Fariña.
In related news, Gilmour has just released a special live version of “The Piper’s Call.” Recorded at the opening night show of the Luck and Strange tour in Brighton, it features his daughter Romany — whom he recently played a surprise duet with in a Brighton pub — on vocals.
To bring the song to life, Gilmour delved deep into his guitar collection. Its rhythms were tracked on a Stratocaster, and its solo comes from a Les Paul, while a Rickenbacker Frying Pan lap steel and an oddball 12-string are also featured.
Luck and Strange arrived in September shortly after Gilmour hyped it up as the best thing he’d written since Dark Side of the Moon. Thankfully, his words weren’t just hyperbole. The record finds the Pink Floyd man at his best and people seem to agree: It topped the charts in eight countries.
GIlmour told Guitar Player about recording “The Piper’s Call” in his cover feature for the November issue,
“The song started with me strumming on a ukulele,” he says, “A Martin ’50s ukulele I think it is — and that’s the two chords that I swap over at the beginning. There’s a lot of Strat on there as well, going through my Zoom [multi-effects] processing box that I’ve used for 30 years; I can’t even remember what it’s called, but it’s got a lower octave and a vibrato, and that’s somewhere in there.
“The other thing in there is a 12-string fretless banjo made by a guy in Turkey. I bought it there in a little shop in a coastal village. It’s very tricky to play ‘cause it’s got 12 strings and it’s fretless. It’s got a very Eastern sound to it, which I love.”
Yet, despite his addiction to acquiring intriguing and rare pieces of gear, Gilmour isn’t precious about most of the instruments owns. Instead, he’s deemed them “the tools of my trade,” and says there are only three guitars he’d never sell. Gilmour’s once-mainstay Black Strat became the most expensive guitar sold at auction when it fetched just under $4 million in 2019.
Meanwhile, superstar producer Bob Ezrin has revealed Gilmour’s little-known secret behind his enviable guitar tone, saying: “If you gave that guy a ukulele and a Pignose amp, he’d make it sound like the solo in Comfortably Numb.”
