No tours, no albums, no stress - just family and fresh air: On his 75th birthday, David Gilmour is taking it easy and visibly mutating into a Buddha. A man who has finished with the music business, with band hierarchies and his own status as a rock star and wants to spend his old age in the most contemplative way possible. He is allowed to do so ..
Anyone who has ever met David Jon Gilmour knows that the man, who will be 75 on March 6, is not an easy person to talk to. On the occasion of the hand-picked interviews about his latest solo album "Rattle That Lock" he insists on being addressed by media representatives as "David" instead of "Dave" - he wants to be treated "with respect". And questions about Pink Floyd are completely forbidden because he's "fed up" with it: "I've simply said everything about that, and it just gets boring at some point. Apart from that I don't want to live in the past and that's why I don't talk about my relationship with Roger or what we did in 1975 or whenever. Pink Floyd was great, but it's over - life goes on. Some people don't want to acknowledge that, so I have to politely ask them to respect my views."
He says this in a tone that brooks no contradiction - as he sits cross-legged in the bow of the MS Astoria, receiving on the Thames. He is barefoot, wears a T-shirt with shorts, a light parting, a full white beard and a handsome belly. A real Buddha, who has set up a sophisticated recording studio in the 1911 ship that has been converted into a studio and is anchored in the posh London suburb of Hampton
But he only uses it for representative purposes or to rent it out. Because: Pink Floyd are definitely passé for the father of eight, and he also considers his solo career as "actually done". He doesn't want to spend the time he has left working, but rather enjoy every moment to the fullest - on walks with his wife Polly, making music with his children and, of course, eating good food. You can't blame him for that. After all, since that fateful day in December 1967 when Nick Mason asked him to join Pink Floyd, the band of his old school friends from Cambridge, he has been on the road a lot and has often been under extreme pressure. In other words: despite the success of 250 million albums sold and a private fortune of 115 million British pounds, he was often anything but happy
