Another turn from David Gilmour on his solo career and the Pink Floyd guitarist faces the same push-back which left listeners enamoured with his self-titled debut. About Face is not a change of pace or style but is a blowout of blues rock numbers. The 1980s was, in hindsight, where rock died. It is not the boom of new ideas but a failed crack at synth, which retaliated and crushed the usual route of guitar-heavy music. For the likes of Gilmour, it proved a fatal change in favour, and About Face suffers because of it. It is an album filled with cheesy, upbeat guitar works better left to the Flash Gordon soundtrack, not a blues-pitched rock effort where a leather-clad Gilmour sits in confusion on the front. Listeners at home experienced the same uncertainty on first listen.
Nothing, bar the guitar, feels inherently like Gilmour. The rest feels like a lack of studio confidence and the hopes of directing him someplace else with softer lyrics and impenetrable feelings toward his Pink Floyd days. Another for the “it sounds a bit like Pink Floyd” pile, especially Murder. Gilmour sounds like a guitar first, meaning second artist and it sinks About Face. His stand at attention is a confident one but the spots of trust in his work are misguided. Murder and Love on the Air call on Gilmour to deliver slick riffs and he can do this with no problem, it is the lyrical consistencies which are lacking. It is like current Mark Knopfler. Those talents are still burning away but the written word to them is a step too far, their moth-riddled notebooks too crusty to turn the pages of. They will forever repeat what they were known for and if Gilmour was trying to cement himself as a solo artist and not just the instrumental arm of Pink Floyd with About Face, he failed.
A shame he did too since his solo works can be enjoyable experiences. Love on the Air has a dulled Bruce Springsteen’s Darkness on the Edge of Town sound to it. And yet it is hard to argue with Blue Light, another of the Springsteen variety where the mixture pulls in any instrument in a ten-mile radius of the recording studio. Messy but sincere fun. Much of About Face is just that and then the subdued and floundering Out of the Blue shows up. There are moments throughout this piece which remind of a cooler time for Gilmour. Space-based antics of You Know I’m Right elevate the soggier parts of his material, the colder gaze and blank stare of his writing buried by loud, slick and often elongated guitar work. Cruise sounds like the sort of music played on a budget, boat-based mini-break. At least Gilmour is keeping in line with the tones of the time.
Something is missing from About Face. It is not heart or dedication for Gilmour is, like it or not, competing against ex-bandmate Roger Waters in the race to see which Pink Floyd member can make a bigger solo splash. With efforts like About Face, this fight was set to go one way only. Gilmour turns this album into a farcical experiment in where his guitar sound can go. Lyrically not worth noticing and instrumentally stretched to breaking point. It would be twenty-two years before Gilmour returned to his solo discography, choosing instead to shelter under the recognisable name of Pink Floyd. His record label may have pushed him back into doing so, but after listening to About Face, it sounds like reason prevailed.
Like with all new skills, the prospect of picking up a guitar for the first time is a daunting task. Especially when music history is full of legendary guitarists who make it look so easy, it can be tough to know where to even begin with such lofty aspirational figures to look up to. However, Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour believes all future players should begin with one album.
His advice is undoubtedly one to take seriously. As Pink Floyd’s guitarist, Gilmour has delivered some of the more iconic and formative guitar lines in musical history. From the moment he took up his post in the band, they rose to new heights of both fame and bold experimentation. With his playing at the helm, penning anthems like ‘Comfortably Numb’, ‘The Wall’ and ‘Wish You Were Here’, he pushed the group to the epic scale they’re best remembered for.
Gilmour is exactly the kind of player that generations of people picking up the guitar for the first time are looking towards. His abilities are a dream to aspire to and work towards over time as thousands upon thousands have spent countless hours pouring over chord charts and tabs, trying to learn his tracks.
But he wouldn’t recommend starting there. Instead, Gilmour points all new players towards an all too often forgotten album from 1966, where Eric Clapton joined the blues band John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers. “All of those guys were incredible,” he said of the group, which featured John Mayall, John McVie, Hughie Flint and Clapton. Clapton alone is obviously another guitarist that people look towards as a gold standard to reach, but within this group, Gilmour believes the troupe become a perfect teacher.
“I spent time trying to learn how to play their licks perfectly. I would suggest any young player should try to sit down and do that,” he said of the band’s debut record. “You will wind up knowing how to play their stuff quite well,” he continued.
But the true reason he recommends the record isn’t just that the combination of Clapton’s playing with the classic blues band setup is a great way to learn both foundations and style, which it is. It’s because the album seems to coax creativity out of any player. Gilmour found that, in time, merely playing along to the album morphs into playing with the band, leading to improvisations and adventuring.
“Eventually, you will find your own style from that. It forces its way out of the copying,” he said, suggesting that the record isn’t just a lesson in great playing but perhaps also in songwriting or jamming. For Gilmour, learning should always be about more than just the groundwork of technicality and know-how; guitar playing should always involve a level of fun, even right at the very start.
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