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This Is the archived news from 2015 with oldest article's first
(12/31/2015)*
Mansion Studio Used By Bowie, Pink Floyd To Reopen
Prog) The French mansion studio that became known as the Honky Chateau has reopened for business - and its new owners aim to expand its activities beyond recording music.
Chateau d'Herouville, built near Paris in the 18th century, became an icon of 1970s excess when it was used by Pink Floyd, David Bowie, Rick Wakeman, Iggy Pop, the Grateful Dead, Ritchie Blackmore, Fleetwood Mac, T Rex and many others.
It opened in 1970 and got its nickname from the 1972 album Elton John recorded there. It was also known as "France's Abbey Road." Owner and composer Michel Magne became celebrated for his hospitality at the live-in location, offering a bohemian lifestyle that included drink, drugs and sex parties. He committed suicide in 1984 while being pursued for debts run up after the studio's glory era had passed. Read more here.
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(12/29/2015)*
Pink Floyd and Nick Drake fans urged
to find photographs of 'lost' gigs
During his short lifetime, the musician Nick Drake was known to be an extremely shy and reclusive figure. So reclusive in fact that not a single image of the celebrated songwriter performing live exists in an archive.
Now fans of Drake, as well as other musicians and groups, are being encouraged to open their attics and picture albums after a call went out to the public to unearth photographs from “lost” gigs.
Today, camera phones mean even the smallest gig in the backroom of a pub is recorded. But there are no known photographs for some defining performances in British rock and pop music history from earlier decades – such as the Sex Pistols’ stage debut or Radiohead’s first gig in an Oxford pub.
Getty Images has called on the British public to search their attics, garages and archives to fill in the gaps of great gigs that have no known photographic record.
The photo agency has teamed up with Endeavour London, a publisher which specializes in books with images from Getty’s archives, and live music subscription service Jukely for the drive.
Charles Merullo, owner of Endeavour, said: “Images can pop up in the most surprising ways. It is amazing how much many people know about individual concerts. We hope this will capture people’s imagination.”
Drake died of an overdose from anti-depressants at the age of 26 in 1974. He largely failed to find an audience in his lifetime but posthumously built up a cult following and influenced musicians including R.E.M. and Robert Smith of The Cure – who named the band after a line in one of Drake’s songs. Brad Pitt also numbers himself as a fan.
It is estimated he played fewer than 20 live performances at venues including The Roundhouse in London, Birmingham Town Hall and the Goodwill to All pub in Middlesex, but Getty hopes the Drake fanatics may have photographed him.
There are significant gaps in the archives for popular music history, according to Getty, and if people come forward with photos for gigs that are not covered, they could be added to its archive. Getty will then license and monetize the image worldwide on behalf of the owner.
Among the images sought are of The Who playing at the Marquee Club in London in 1965, Otis Redding at the Finsbury Park Astoria in London in March 1967, and Pink Floyd at the 14 Hour Technicolour Dream at Alexandra Palace the following month.
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(12/22/2-15)*
Roger Waters' ex-wife calls Pink Floyd founder
an 'a*******' as she demands return of £20,000
Rolex watch-
Laurie Durning insisted that Roger Waters must give her the watch back during multi-million pound divorce settlement
Roger Waters’ estranged wife called him an ‘a******’ in court as she demanded he return her £20,000 Rolex watch as they finalized their divorce.
Laurie Durning told the Pink Floyd co-founder: "I want my watch, that’s all" during a row that threatened to derail their multi-million pound settlement at the last minute.
She told Waters: "What an a****** you are" as the hearing began at the Manhattan Supreme Court.
Waters is said to have responded by shrugging his shoulders.
The spat came as Durning, 52, Waters’ fourth wife, set out the final details of their split.
Waters, 72, married her in a secret ceremony in 2012 after they had lived together for 10 years but they grew apart and split up.
During the hearing Durning told Justice Lori Sattler that she had tried to get her gold Daytona Rolex from the repair shop but staff refused to give it to her as it was being held in the name of Waters’ assistant.
Giving evidence she said: "When I handed his personal stuff back to him, he should have handed me the watch".
Waters’ lawyer Robert Dobrish told her: "It’s your watch. Pick it up at the store."
Justice Sattler ordered both parties to sign an additional agreement on top of their divorce settlement which gave Durning the watch.
The details were not released but Waters is said to be worth £110 million.
During the separation, Waters lived in the couple’s 7,000-square-foot Manhattan townhouse while Durning stayed in their £10 million mansion in Bridgehampton on Long Island.
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After the hearing Durning said that the divorce "wasn’t amicable".
Her lawyer Peter Bronstein, said: "Laurie is pleased to have this behind her".
Waters declined to comment.
Waters left Pink Floyd in 1985 and fought a lawsuit over the band’s name with the rest of the group, which he lost.
In recent years he has reunited with Dave Gilmour and Nick Mason for Pink Floyd performances in 2005 and 2011.
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(12/15/2015)*
Opening Night | David Gilmour Kicks Off South American Tour-
On Friday night, Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour kicked off a South American Tour with the first of two performances at Allianz Parque in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Gilmour focused on material from his most recent solo albums with a heaping helping of Pink Floyd classics.
The guitarist and his band played nearly the same setlist at each of the two shows in Sao Paulo. On Saturday, Gilmour added Pink Floyd's "Coming Back To Life" to his second set, the only difference between the two setlists. Both shows were split into two sets with Pink Floyd classics "Wish You Were Here," "Money" and "Us & Them" among the songs in the first set as well as solo cuts such as "5 A.M.," "A Boat Lies Waiting" and "In Any Tongue."
Both second sets in Brazil started with "Astronomy Domine," "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" and "Fat Old Sun." Other tunes performed in each second set were "On An Island," "The Girl In The Yellow Dress," "Today," "Sorrow" and "Run Like Hell." David Gilmour's shows on Friday and Saturday came to a close with an encore of "Time," "Breathe (Reprise)" and "Comfortably Numb." The tour continues tonight in Curitiba, Brazil.
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(12/01/2015)*
First Look: David Gilmour Cover Story-
The December issue of Relix features a cover story on David Gilmour along with articles on Dead & Company, John Fogerty, Widespread Panic, Dave Rawlings Machine, Grace Potter, Kurt Vile, Glen Hansard, Drive-By Truckers, Alex Bleeker And The Freaks, our annual Holiday Gift Guide and much more. Here’s a first look at the Gilmour feature…
David Gilmour's guitar sound is completely distinctive: the tone, the touch, the phrasing. Anyone with a passing familiarity with Pink Floyd—which is to say anyone who’s turned on a radio in the last 40 years—knows Gilmour’s work and has at least one of his riffs buried deep in his or her cerebral cortex.
Seconds into his recent solo album, Rattle That Lock, Gilmour’s guitar introduces itself and reminds you of all this. The album opens with a swirly, atmospheric intro to the instrumental “5 A.M.” before the guitar blasts through like a high-powered beam of light slicing through dense London fog. It may as well scream, “I am David Gilmour and this is my album.”
Gilmour laughs at this thought. While at his London studio prepping for a short European tour, he admits that he’s certainly aware of the distinctive power of his guitar. He doesn’t shy away from the idea that those first notes are a means of saying hello and reminding listeners of who he is.
After all these decades as a singular player, does Gilmour still have to work to achieve this distinct sound?
“No, I don’t,” he says. “It’s something that just arrives naturally at this point. I’ve no idea how or where it comes from. It’s nothing I ever attempted. I don’t know if anyone could actually set out to sound as distinctively as possible. It was just one of those strange mysteries. I think there’s some kind of strange peculiarity or my lack of coordination between hands that gives it something rather off and, thus, distinct. I’ve thought about it a lot but I can’t come up with precisely what it is. It’s a gift, I suppose.”
In many ways, it is a gift that just keeps on giving. Pink Floyd were the biggest band in the world during their peak—a remarkable six-year run that included 1973’s The Dark Side of the Moon, 1975’s Wish You Were Here and 1979’s The Wall, all multi-platinum hits worldwide. Bassist Roger Waters wrote the lyrics for these epochal works, but Gilmour composed much of the music and sang the most memorable songs. His guitar playing was magnificent throughout, with parts that were essential to the songs, not mere adornments or instrumental passages.
“David Gilmour wrote solos that millions of people can hum,” says Warren Haynes, who has studied Pink Floyd’s music for years and recently released a live reworking of their music, The Dark Side of the Mule. “You can’t separate his guitar parts from the songs and that’s incredibly rare. He created something uniquely him, which is the ultimate accomplishment as an instrumentalist.”
Gilmour’s distinct tone, lyrical playing and singing voice run like a continuous thread through the work of Pink Floyd and his four solo albums. Yet, Gilmour doesn’t feel burdened by any pressure to live up to his own esteemed history.
“I work pretty hard, tirelessly and obsessively on any project until I think it’s about as good as I can get it,” he says. “You always think you can take it a little bit further, and I finally feel ready to finish when I’m hovering over, wondering what else I can possibly do to a track. By then I’m always pretty convinced that what I’ve done is good, and I sort of suffer shocks later if people don’t like it.”
Much of Rattle That Lock is a collaboration between Gilmour and his wife, writer Polly Samson, who penned the lyrics to half the songs, including the title track. “Rattle That Lock” is inspired by John Milton’s 1667 epic poem Paradise Lost, which explores man’s downfall in 10 books—not exactly typical rock fare.
“Polly’s a writer and just had a book out earlier this year called The Kindness, which had a theme that was very related to Paradise Lost,” Gilmour says. “She spent a lot of time reading the book and trying to understand what it’s all about and, having spent the last three or four years working on that, she found she couldn’t let go of Paradise Lost that easily and it made its entrance again on this song.”
Many of Samson and Gilmour’s collaborations come about after she hears pieces of her husband’s music, sometimes even unfinished songs, and feels lyrical inspiration. Some of the snippets and different pieces of music were assembled by co-producer Phil Manzanera. The Roxy Music guitarist served in the same role on 2006’s On The Island, Gilmour’s previous solo album, and he also plays in his touring band.
“Phil is a very old friend, and he’s full of enthusiasm and a great help when putting together these things,” says Gilmour. “I have thousands of little bits of demos that I occasionally go through, but he loves doing that kind of hunting. And he’ll make little notes, join things together on tape and say, ‘You could do this and have a lovely song.’ A couple of tracks started out that way. ‘Today’ and ‘Faces Of Stone’ both came about through that sort of process.
“Songs have to reveal themselves to you in a way,” Gilmour continues. “Some of the choosing process is the songs choosing themselves. One of them might inspire Polly to write words, for instance. If that happens, the song will move right up the priority list. Same if I hear a vocal melody presenting itself. I consider myself a singer as much as I am a guitar player and I love the popular song—the voices and everything mixed together that makes a song a song.”
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One of Samson and Gilmour's collaborations is “A Boat Lies Waiting,” a bittersweet reflection on the death of Pink Floyd keyboardist Rick Wright, who passed away in 2008 following a battle with cancer. The song also includes gorgeous harmony vocals by Graham Nash and David Crosby.
“Rick had a 60-foot yacht and he loved sailing it around the world,” says Gilmour. “The music to ‘The Boat Lies Waiting’ was written first and the rhythm of the piano reminded Polly of a rolling boat on the ocean, and it’s very easy to make the connection to Rick—for those of us who knew him well. Other people, of course, knew Rick primarily as a musician, but he was an old seafarer for much of his life. It was as much a part of his identity as being a musician, and as much how we thought about him.”
Wright left Pink Floyd in the late 1970s, during the recording of The Wall, at a time when his bandmates felt that he was not pulling his weight. He returned to the band almost a decade later, though only as a contributing musician instead of an official member. (He was eventually restored to being a partner in the band.) Whatever issues there were between the old collaborators seemed to have been fully buried, and Wright regularly performed in Gilmour’s solo touring band until his death. The guitarist has profoundly felt the loss of his longtime friend and musical collaborator.
“Sometimes, you don’t realize what you’ve got until it’s gone,” says Gilmour. “There have been many moments since [Rick’s death] when I have been looking for something—a keyboard, a piano, a certain sound to complete a song, and the person I would naturally go to for those things is no longer around. It is difficult developing that kind of rapport—a telepathic musical relationship—with people I do not know as well.
“Our relationship developed over many years and we knew what the other was thinking. We could communicate so much without saying more than a few words or nothing at all. We were a step ahead of each other all the time. I knew what he was going to do next and he knew what I was going to do next. That’s not something that’s easily replaced.”
In the world of Pink Floyd, no keyboardist could possibly come up with more complementary parts to a David Gilmour melody or guitar line than Rick Wright. Throughout their greatest works, Gilmour and Wright’s musical ideas mesh seamlessly into one.
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David Gilmour Adds Final Show To North American Tour-
(12/01/2015)*
Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour will embark on his first North American Tour in a decade in late March and has just added a final date to the run. Gilmour will play the iconic Radio City Music Hall in New York City on Sunday, April 10; a venue he visited in 2006.
The new date is the guitarist's third of the tour in NYC as it will be followed by a pair of shows at the much bigger Madison Square Garden April 11 and 12. Later this month David Gilmour heads off for a South American Tour.
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(11/24/15)
David Gilmour, Royal Albert Hall, review: 'the full Floyd experience in all but name'
There is no such thing as “scaled back” Pink Floyd. It would be like AC/DC without the amps or Glastonbury without the Pyramid Stage. So it was a relief that David Gilmour, on his first tour in almost a decade, gave us the full Floyd experience in all but name.
This concert, the first of five at the Albert Hall, was a stadium show in a relatively intimate setting. Much of Gilmour’s backing band were Floyd veterans, more than half the set list was made up of Floyd songs and the production was designed by the band’s long-term collaborator Marc Brickman. Above the stage hung the band’s trademark “Mr. Screen”, a vast circular projection canopy surrounded by 50 swivelling lights. There were lasers, dry ice and guitar solos loud and high-pitched enough to bring the dogs of Kensington scurrying to the Albert Hall’s gilded doors. In fact, the only thing preventing this from being a full-on Pink Floyd show was the absence of Nick Mason on drums and Roger Waters on guitar and vocal duties. But given that Gilmour and Waters don’t get on as well as they once did, that was never going to happen.