Being a successful and well-known musician requires a great deal of skill and dedication. Still, some musicians, like Paul McCartney, are multi-instrumentalists who can record full albums with all of their instruments played. Therefore, it is indisputable that he is among the most significant artists in music history and is one of the select few who achieved great success as a solo artist and band member.
McCartney is known for being a phenomenal bassist, vocalist, and composer over the years, but he is also a phenomenal guitarist who contributed heavily to several Beatles songs. During his career, he was often questioned about other guitarists, and he even identified one that he greatly admired.
The guitarist that Paul McCartney said he admires
After The Beatles broke up in 1970, Paul McCartney had the opportunity to collaborate with a plethora of amazing guitarists, aside from George Harrison and John Lennon. David Gilmour, the lead singer and guitarist for Pink Floyd, was one of them. He accepted McCartney’s invitation to play guitar on the timeless song “No More Lonely Nights.”
In his book “The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present,” published in 2021, McCartney expressed his admiration for Gilmour and referred to him as a genius.
Paul said, “David Gilmour plays the solo on the record. I’ve known him since the early days of Pink Floyd. Dave is a genius of sorts, so I was pulling out all the stops. I admired his playing so much, I’d seen him around; I think he’d just done his solo ‘About Face’ album. So I rang him up and said, ‘Would you play on this?’ It sounded like his kind of thing.”
“No More Lonely Nights” was originally released on the album and movie soundtrack “Give My Regards To Broad Street.”
Paul McCartney visited Pink Floyd in the studio when they were making “Dark Side of The Moon”
Since the 1970s, McCartney and Gilmour have been close friends, and the Pink Floyd member is an avid fan of The Beatles. He’s already stated that it was a band he would have preferred to be in.
However, Paul was acquainted with Pink Floyd before Gilmour, as the band was there at Abbey Road Studios in 1967 while The Beatles were recording “Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band.” They were recording “The Piper At The Gates of Dawn,” their debut album, and Gilmour was still not a part of the group at that point.
These two albums are still regarded as having laid the foundation for the development of progressive rock music. An entire generation of musicians gained a fresh view of their studio possibilities because of the experimentation on those recordings. It demonstrated their ability to create things that had never been done before.
However, McCartney also saw them while they were recording “Dark Side of the Moon,” their best-selling album. While the Progressive Rock group was there, he was simultaneously recording at Abbey Road with his band, The Wings. He recounted that occasion in an interview with Rick Rubin for the documentary “McCartney 3,2,1.”
Paul remarked, “Floyd came in after us, Pink Floyd. (They) did a lot of cool experimental stuff. This was more Wings period, they were next door making ‘Dark Side of The Moon’. That was pretty cool. Yeah (I’ve listened at the time). The engineers were quite exchangeable. So the engineers who would work on their stuff would work on ours. He played us some stuff of ‘Dark Side of The Moon’.”
They performed together at the Cavern Club in London
In addition to working together in the middle of the 1980s, they were able to perform together in 1999. Just after the Beatles performed a unique concert at Liverpool’s famed Cavern Club. Paul found great significance in that location since it symbolized the Fab Four’s formative years. So he enlisted several talented musicians to play alongside him.
In addition to asking Gilmour, he invited guitarist Mick Green, organist Pete Wingfield, accordionist Chris Hall, and Deep Purple drummer Ian Paice.
During the MSN Webcast that year, Gilmour responded to inquiries. He told stories of how great it was to perform at the Cavern Club with McCartney. Gilmour said, “I’ve completed all the stuff that Paul has so far asked me to do with him. I don’t know if he’s doing anymore. But it was really good fun to get back to that kind of music for a change. Getting to be a Beatle for that night at the Cavern was unforgettable.”