The one live act David Gilmour says he could have turned into a ‘damned good’ show

One live act could have been a “damned good” show according to David Gilmour, if he had been given a chance to work on it.

The Pink Floyd veteran is known for putting on visually impressive performances, with his recent Luck and Strange tour offering a strong adaptation of solo works and songs from the Roger Waters-featuring band. Gilmour says he saw an all-time great artist perform in the United States, though he said it was an underwhelming gig. Though it “wasn’t great”, he did say there were obvious improvements that could be made. Gilmour went on to compare the act to another all-time great, saying the latter show at Wembley Stadium was a far better experience.

He told Q Magazine in 1990: “I saw Michael Jackson in an indoor arena in America, and it wasn’t great. When I see something like that, I think, My God, put ‘me’ in charge for a week and I’ll turn this into something ‘good’!

“There’s no doubt in my mind that I could have turned something like the Michael Jackson show from a pretty average to pretty damned good, given a few days and bucks. There are corners that can be cut and corners that can’t – just a million little details that one could look at. But I went to see Prince at Wembley and he was bloody good.

“He definitely does things from the right attitude; I think he goes out of his way to get the best people to do the best job, and he thinks about every detail. He gets people around him who share his belief that it will come right if you get it right, which is our attitude.”

Gilmour also had praise for Sinead O’Connor, who he said was “doing things right.” He added: “I think Sinead’s show is great – again, by my rule book, she’s doing things right.

“We have sessions where people throw their hands up in horror at the things we decide to do, but in the end, if you get your show right, then the money will take care of itself.”

The Pink Floyd guitarist is no stranger to staggering live shows, with Gilmour sharing the headache-inducing details of a Venice live show. Pink Floyd would perform standing on top of a barge with hundreds of thousands of people watching on.

Though the performance is now legendary with fans, putting it together was a horrific time for the band, who were promoting their first album without Roger Waters at the time.

Gilmour confirmed: “Along one of the main waterways is an island called the Giudecca, and they’ve got a pontoon bridge all the way across, which they’d agreed to open up for us early the next morning to let us float the whole stage through, towed by tugs.

“They then refused to open it, so we had to tow this vast stage the size of a football pitch out into the open sea. Then the sea police came up and boarded and said, ‘You can’t come this way’.

“We said, ‘They won’t let us through that canal where they’d agreed’… so we had to pay out. Initially, Steven was very against the idea of playing Venice, saying it would be too difficult.”