INTERVIEW
How to get David Gilmour’s sound: expert advice from the guitarist who makes his living going exactly that – Steve McElroy from The Australian Pink Floyd Show
With over ve million tickets sold for performances all across the globe, The Australian Pink Floyd Show are undisputed champions when it comes to recreating the music of the world’s most celebrated prog rock band. And they even come with an o cial stamp of approval –David Gilmour was so impressed by them, he invited the group to perform at his 50th birthday party.
Here, Steve cElroy, the guitarist who helped start the project all the way back in 19 , talks us through the tools needed to emulate those genre-de ning sounds and explains why the Pink Floyd guitarist is in a class of his own when it comes to channelling emotion David Gilmour and Fender Strats are, quite simply, amatch made in heaven. Why do you think the formula works? It’s rare to see photographs of David playing anything else, though he has very occasionally used Telecasters and even Les Pauls. He was such a big Hank Marvin fan, so the revered Strat was what he gravitated towards. Syd Barrett [original Floyd guitarist and vocalist] played Danelectros and Telecasters, so when David joined, he was expected to use the same instruments, but obviously he had his heart set on the Stratocaster.
Abig factor was the tremolo arm –the way he uses it is so unique and precise. That guitar clearly gave him the power to unlock the voice he had inside and that sound he wanted to get out. The instrument became an extension of his body.
It’s funny, David’s wife Polly Samson has said he’s aman of few words at home and tends to speak through his guitar instead. He gets his emotions out through his Strat. Luckily for us, he got a lot of it down on tape and we get to enjoy it!
It makes perfect sense that such aversatile player would require aversatile instrument…
That’s it! The number of tones you can get out of a Strat is just incredible. I just saw an old Je Beck interview where he’s sitting in aTV studio talking to the host, explaining the extreme versatility of a Stratocaster –from jazzy blues with the tone rolled back on the neck pickup to full-out rock on the bridge, while also backing o the volume to show how it can clean up. In two minutes he went through a whole catalogue of sounds and I thought, ‘My god, it’s a phenomenal guitar, isn’t it?!’ Leo Fender and his team knew what they were doing when they built it. And it hasn’t really been improved upon that much since, has it? We’re talking about a 70 year-old design that’s timeless! Think about every song that’s been recorded with one… it’s unbelievable.
Starting with the instruments in your hands, how do you go about authentically reproducin
