David Gilmour celebrates his 74th birthday today. The legendary Pink Floyd guitarist and vocalist was born on March 6, 1946 in Cambridge, England. Gilmour would join Pink Floyd at a pivotal moment in the band’s early career when founding guitarist and lead singer Syd Barrett left the group.
Gilmour became the band’s guitarist and singer in late 1967, playing briefly with Barrett, until Pink Floyd’s last tour in 1994. During that time, Floyd would make some of their most critically and commercially successful, not to mention iconic, albums beginning with 1973’s The Dark Side Of The Moon and continuing with Wish You Were Here (1975), Animals (1977) and The Wall (1979). But it was during the making of the latter that tensions in the band began to take over beginning with bassist Roger Waters firing founding member and keyboardist Richard Wright in 1979. Continued creative differences between Waters and Gilmour would eventually lead to Waters leaving the band in 1985 and Gilmour taking control along with drummer Nick Mason.
In 1986-87, Gilmour produced Pink Floyd’s penultimate album of the 20th century, A Momentary Lapse Of Reason, which largely dealt with the turmoil of Waters leaving the band. Floyd’s first album without Waters also saw the return of Wright. Pink Floyd would conduct a massive world tour around the LP that spanned between 1987 and 1989. In early 1988, Floyd conducted extensive residencies in Sydney and Melbourne, Austalia. For this edition of Full Show Friday and to celebrate David Gilmour’s birthday, here is a look one of the Melbourne concerts on February 19, 1988 in the Tennis Center at Melbourne’s Olympic Parks.
The band pretty much stuck to the same setlist for most of the tour with the first set featuring songs from A Momentary Lapse Of Reason save for the opener, “Shine On You Crazy Diamond Parts (Parts I – V)” from Wish You Were Here. Gilmour and Pink Floyd would deliver a song-for-song performance of the album’s second side with “Yet Another Movie,” the instrumental “Round and Around” (at the time “Yet Another Movie” and “Round And Around” were presented as one song with later printings listing them as separate songs), “A New Machine (Part 1)” the instrumental “Terminal Frost,” “A New Machine (Part 2)” and “Sorrow” midway through the set sandwiched between the album’s singles including “Learning To Fly” and “On The Turning Away” among others.
The second set contained Pink Floyd classics like “Time,” “Wish You Were Here,” “Welcome To The Machine,” “Money” and “Another Brick In The Wall, Pt. 2.” Floyd would close out the evening with “Comfortably Numb,” which features Gilmour playing one of the greatest rock guitar solos of all time. Listen to the complete show via live audio below:
Setlist via live audio:
- 1. Shine On You Crazy Diamond
- 2. Signs Of Life
- 3. Learning To Fly
- 4. Yet Another Movie, Round And Around
- 5. A New Machine I
- 6. Terminal Frost
- 7. A New Machine II
- 8. Sorrow
- 9. The Dogs Of War
- 10. On The Turning Away
- 11. One Of These Days
- 12. Time
- 13. On The Run
- 14. Wish You Were Here
- 15. Welcome To The Machine
- 16. Us And Them
- 17. Money
- 18. Another Brick In The Wall II
- 19. Comfortably Numb
