Pink Floyd, David Gilmour: RaiPlay airs the documentary “Conversazioni rock” to celebrate the guitarist's 80th birthday

To mark the 80th birthday of David Gilmour (born in Cambridge on March 6, 1946), starting Friday March 6 Rai Teche is making available on RaiPlay the episodes of "David Gilmour – Conversazioni Rock", a selection of interviews with the guitarist recorded by Italian television back in the 1980s.

The collection opens with a segment broadcast on 15 April 1984 as part of Blitz, the show hosted by Gianni Minà. On that occasion Gilmour talks about his solo experiences and his relationship with the other members of Pink Floyd, also touching on the evolution of rock and the growing use of new technologies in music production.

The journey continues in October 1987, during the Pink Floyd world tour that followed Roger Waters' departure from the band. Gilmour returns in front of Rai's cameras alongside drummer Nick Mason for an appearance on Giallo, hosted by Enzo Tortora. Speaking via satellite link from New York, the two musicians field questions from an unusual interviewer: director Dario Argento. Among the topics covered are the new phase of the band ushered in by the album “A Momentary Lapse Of Reason”, along with curiosities about recurring dreams, nightmares, personal quirks and small superstitious rituals.

Around the same time, Gilmour and Mason also appear on the music show D.O.C., where they reflect on the relationship between sound and image and on the differences between working in the studio and the experience of live performance.

Last year David Gilmour returned with a new solo effort, "Luck And Strange", which hit No.1 on the UK Chart (the third time for one of his solo records), along with a world tour that also saw him play a run of dates at Rome's Circus Maximus.

Those shows yielded the concert film "Live at Circus Maximus. Rome", which also reached Italian cinemas, and the double live album "The Luck And Strange Concerts". A work that takes on particular significance, as it could turn out to be a kind of definitive statement, especially if the rumors that this was the English guitarist's last tour are confirmed. What's more, the record inevitably ends up in dialogue - and contrast - with the contemporaneous "This Is Not A Drill" by Roger Waters, since the human and artistic distance between the two has never seemed so stark.

It was at Circus Maximus, in the heart of Rome, that the "Luck and Strange Tour 2024" kicked off, the guitarist's first tour in almost ten years of silence. Six consecutive sold-out nights launched a run that sold out everywhere it went: from the warm-up dates at the Brighton Centre to the London shows at the Royal Albert Hall, on to the American gigs at the Intuit Dome and the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, wrapping up with five nights at Madison Square Garden in New York. In total, all 23 dates of the tour sold out, confirming the artist's extraordinary following.

The film "Live at Circus Maximus. Rome", directed by longtime collaborator Gavin Elder, captures the magic of those Roman nights against the imposing backdrop of the Circus Maximus ruins. Distributed internationally by Sony Music Vision and Trafalgar Releasing, it will be screened in cinemas and IMAX theaters worldwide; in Italy it will arrive as a special event through Nexo Studios, with Virgin Radio as official radio partner and in collaboration with MYmovies and D'Alessandro e Galli.

"Luck And Strange", Gilmour's fifth solo album, topped the charts in the UK, Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Portugal and Austria. It reached No.2 in France, Italy and Belgium, the Top 5 in Spain, Japan, Norway, Denmark and Hungary, and the Top 10 in the United States, Australia, Finland, Sweden, Ireland and New Zealand.

Tickets and the list of venues (standard and IMAX) are available at davidgilmour.film and nexostudios.it.

But that's not all, because David Gilmour is also planning to make a new studio album. In an interview with Record Collector, picked up by the site Floydiani.it, the guitarist and voice of Pink Floyd revealed that this time the wait between one record and the next could be shorter than usual: “I'm planning to make another record”, he stated, adding that he hopes to soon be able to immerse himself in the work with his usual obsessiveness.

Gilmour's solo career has always been marked by long gaps between albums: "David Gilmour" (1978) was followed by "About Face" (1984), then "On An Island" (2006) and "Rattle That Lock" (2015), up to the recent "Luck And Strange" (2024). If he keeps his promise, the next wait could be the shortest of his recording career.

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