David Gilmour Talks About The Only Time He Saw Pink Floyd Live

Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour looks back at the only time he witnessed Pink Floyd perform live. How, you may ask? Gilmour said it happened when he was too “pissed off” to participate in an encore performance.

During the second installment of the limited-edition Pink Floyd podcast, The Lost Art Of Conversation, Gilmour shared the adversities they faced trying to take Pink Floyd back to touring shape, just shortly after Roger Waters exited the band. The succeeding tour, titled A Momentary Lapse Of Reason, occurred from 1987 to 1989.

Gilmour recalled their rehearsal sessions, “I can remember the moment I thought, ‘This has all gone to shit – it’s awful!’ … The trouble with being in the band and having to do the singing and the playing is that you can’t be out there in the audience at the same time… Some of the time, with a radio mic on my guitar, I could go out front, playing a little bit while they’re playing, then stopping them and doing something. But if you’re a distance away, you’re so out of sync because of the time it’s taken for the sound to come to you.”

He then said that the only problem being in the band was you never got to see it in action from an audience’s perspective, save for one moment during a show at Montreal stadium in 1977. “The only time I’ve ever seen Pink Floyd live was the encore in Montreal stadium in 1977 – the last gig of the Animals tour, the one that Roger spat on someone at, I think. I was so pissed off about something, and I can’t even remember what it was, that I refused to play the encore, and went out to the mixing desk to watch whatever encore it was, with Snowy [White] playing [my] parts. That was the only moment I saw a tiny bit,” Gilmour said.