When writing or on the stage, regardless of the song, are you still that same kid in Cambridge listening to Bill Haley and Chuck Berry?
David Gilmour: [Laughs.] I think the same sources are there that have always been there at the heart of everything I do. I don’t spend much time now listening to new music in that obsessive way that I did then, and there are precious few moments nowadays that leap on me and knock me over like those early records did. Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock” was the first single that I bought and Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel” was a major thing as well, and still every time I listen to it, I think “How did they put something as perfect as that together?” But there are a thousand other influences that have sort of gone together — folk music, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Big Bill Broonzy, John Fahey, Joni Mitchell — there are thousands of players and singers who have directly influenced the music that I make and who have sort of created the bedrock of what you might call my style. It’s so deeply embedded in me that I have no idea where it comes from now or where it’s gonna go. But the influences that I had as a child are still very deeply embedded in me.
Via NPR
