Pop Quiz: David Gilmour

Pop Quiz: David Gilmour

Aidin Vaziri | David Gilmour could have taken the easy way out. After last year's once-in-a-lifetime Pink Floyd reunion with drummer Nick Mason, keyboard player Richard Wright and bass player Roger Waters at the global charity event Live 8, he could have spent a few weeks on the road with the old gang and watched his bank account swell even larger. Instead, he's forsaken cheap nostalgia for a new solo album, "On an Island," his first since "About Face" in 1984, and decided to play small theaters on his own.

David Gilmour
Q: Have you ever been tempted to make a two-minute punk-rock record?
A: No. I think a lot of things do influence me, but the influence mechanism is as such that these things dive into your brain and bury themselves into your subconscious and you're never quite sure where and how they're going to emerge. I don't think I really take direct influence.
Q: "Dark Side of the Moon" is one of the best-selling and most loved albums of all time. What would you change about it?
A: Oh, there's nothing I would change about it.
Q: What, you don't have George Lucas Syndrome?
A: Nope. We worked on it until we thought it was pretty well perfect. If one were to go change it, whatever you might add would be something you take away as well.
Q: It's like going back in time to the era of dinosaurs and stepping on a butterfly. The world would be totally different. There would be no laser light shows.
A: Exactly.