Ahead of his massive guitar auction, David Gilmour explains how he fell into collecting instruments and his history with some of the more than 120 guitars hell be selling in a new video. The four-and-a-halfminute clip shows him playing the 12-string on which he wrote Pink Floyds Wish You Were Here, as well as a close-up of him playing the iconic opening notes of Shine On You Crazy Diamond on his famed Black Strat an instrument that auctioneers Christies expect will fetch between $100,000 and $150,000 this summer. That instrument, he says, was on every track he recorded from 1973 through the mid-Eighties.
My dream and ambition was to have a Fender, preferably a Stratocaster, Gilmour says in the clip. I loved it from the beginning. Buddy Holly played one. Hank Marvin played one. And that was enough for me. I just wanted a Strat.
The video also shows off his Fender Stratocaster with the serial number #0001 and a gold Les Paul he used for the solo on Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2). He says in the video that he hopes the guitars make a lot of money for charity.
In a wide-ranging interview with Rolling Stone this week, Gilmour said that he didnt want people to interpret the auction as a move towards retirement; this is simply cleaning house. Retiring is not a hard and fast thing for me in my life, he said. I dont really have to retire. I dont have to say those words. I dont have to state that have retired or anything like that. If I retire, it will be a quiet, unnoticeable process at some point. But Im not at that moment.