Words: Mark Blake
The Neptune Inn on Hove’s Victoria Terrace, is a traditional old boozer squeezed in beside an alleyway and a beauty parlour. It’s a well-known haven for live music and hosts a weekly open-mic session for veteran musicians and novices alike.
At the back of the tiny stage stands a frog mascot rotating on a turntable, a spoof of The Beatles's Sgt Pepper sleeve and a sign that reads “Where words fail, music speaks” – appropriate considering the natural reticence of Pink Floyd's David Gilmour, the musician getting up tonight for his first public performance of his own material since 2016.
Come 7.30, the pub is getting full, and staff and regulars, which includes Whitfield Crane, the lead singer from grunge-era brats Ugly Kid Joe (yes, he’s local) eye the newcomers – mainly regulation black T-shirted music biz blokes – with a degree of curiosity.
Gilmour and his band are rehearsing in the rather dilapidated-looking leisure centre nearby, so it’s a short walk for him to the Neptune. Refreshingly, word hasn’t got out about his planned appearance, and there aren’t any earnest fans queuing outside, clasping copies of Obscured By Clouds for him to sign.
But first, Romany Gilmour, his 22-year-old daughter, has plotted up with her acoustic guitar to sing and play. Romany is a big presence on Gilmour’s new album, Luck And Strange, duetting with her dad on the melancholic single Between Two Points. Tonight she sings charming versions of Leonard Cohen’s If It Be Your Will and Joanna Newsom’s This Side Of The Blue and a similarly folky composition of her own, currently called Lily Of The Roses “unless anyone can think of a better title.”
Wish you were there? Romany (left) and David Gilmour step up at The Neptune Inn's open-mic night.
It's only during the song’s closing chords that MOJO notices her old man standing behind us, leaning on his guitar case. As the applause dies down, Romany cheerily invites him to “upstage me”, and Gilmour strolls on, whips out the Martin D-35 and suggests Wish You Were Here “to cheer people up.”
It's a peerless song elevated by the presence of a second familial voice and the intimate, unfussy nature of the performance. Naturally once the Gilmours reach the poignant line “We’re just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl year after year”, they’ve been joined by a choir of pub regulars, those music-biz blokes and Gilmour’s new guitarist Ben Worsley, whose youthful voice mercifully cuts through the boozy bawling around him at the bar.
Sadly, that five-note guitar figure at the end of Wish You Were Here spells the end of tonight’s performance. Father and daughter leave the stage, and the next act of the night take over, and try to ignore the guitarist from Pink Floyd now parked at a table nearby supping a pint of lager.
No showbiz airs and graces; tonight was a lovely, un-starry family affair. The Gilmours came, they saw and, as promised, they cheered us up.
“I have no regrets about it whatsoever…” Speaking exclusively in the latest issue of MOJO, David Gilmour discusses the making of his remarkable new album Luck And Strange, Covid survival, fallen Pink Floyd comrades, false nostalgia and *that* Roger Waters tweet. CLICK HERE to order your copy now!
