After the departure of Syd Barrett, many may have wondered if Pink Floyd would have needed to bring in another guitarist to accompany David Gilmour.
Seeing as he’d been brought in as something of a safety net around the recording of A Saucerful of Secrets to cover for Barrett’s increasing unreliability, he was something of an unknown entity against the established members of the band. So would it have been necessary for them to invite another guitarist on board to bring the lineup back up to five members?
It turns out that it wasn’t at all necessary, and the impeccable musicianship that Gilmour offered to the group, as well as his ability as a vocalist and songwriter, quickly became integral to Pink Floyd. It was clear that barring any disasters, this would be the lineup for the foreseeable future, and that they could achieve greatness as a unit of four.
It is, however, fun to speculate who might have been a good accompaniment for Gilmour’s smooth and psychedelic style in the group, and who would have been able to play off his ideas in a way that didn’t compete, but complemented his work. If it were up to Gilmour himself, there’s one player whom he would undoubtedly have loved to work with, and it would have been a special collaboration had the duo both ended up being in the ranks of the legendary progressive rock band at the same time.
In a 2022 interview, Gilmour was questioned on the guitarists throughout history whom he admired most, and came to a rather unsurprising conclusion. “I have lots of favourite guitar players,” he began. “Probably the person who I have admired the longest and the most consistent is Jeff Beck, in the guitar playing stakes. A lovely guy.”
This was far from the first time that Gilmour had praised the former Yardbirds guitarist. In 1990, he claimed in an interview with The Observer that he was “the most consistently brilliant guitarist over the past 25 years”, He also spoke highly of him in a documentary about his career, calling him “a maverick guitar player who doesn’t like to repeat himself” and who took “big risks all the time.”
Given the number of times that Gilmour heaped his adulations on Beck’s playing, it’s no surprise that later in their careers, they managed to share a stage together, with Gilmour being thrilled to be invited on stage to perform alongside Beck during his 2009 appearance at the Royal Albert Hall.
However, it wasn’t just Gilmour who admired Beck’s work, and allegedly, the rest of Pink Floyd were keeping close tabs on Beck’s availability before they’d even considered hiring Gilmour in his role. In a 2002 interview with Guitarist Magazine France, Gilmour even shared that he was aware of their interest, but seemed to have more doubts about whether Beck would have been as appropriate for the role as he ended up proving to be.
“They always said they would have loved to recruit Jeff. He’s an amazing guitarist. But I don’t know if he would have been perfect for this job. We’ll never know,” he claimed, concluding: “The story would have been quite different.”
