Location: telephone line
Interview date: 11.09.2012
If you’re looking for someone who isn’t a member of the current Pink Floyd but is the handiest musician in that galaxy for keeping the Pink Floyd legacy alive through the »tribute to Pink Floyd« band Brit Floyd, you can’t go wrong picking Damian Darlington!
On top of holding the baton in Brit Floyd, in the sense of musical conducting, this extremely gifted guitarist and singer spent more than 17 years, before founding Brit Floyd, playing in an earlier incarnation of a »tribute to Pink Floyd« outfit called the Australian Pink Floyd Show. All the other members of today’s Brit Floyd lineup also played alongside Damian in that band (before Brit Floyd), though not all of them for as long as Damian did.
Damian was even asked to perform the Pink Floyd classic Comfortably Numb at a birthday party thrown by original Pink Floyd man David Gilmour for his 50th. For that occasion, original Pink Floyd member and keyboardist Richard Wright joined Damian on stage too!
Damian Darlington has played almost a round 1,300 concerts in his career! Among them, it’s worth singling out the ones in the most famous venues in Great Britain, like Royal Albert Hall, O2 Arena and Wembley Arena, as well as elsewhere in the world, such as Montreal’s Bell Centre (Canada) and Los Angeles’ Nokia Centre (USA).
RockLine: »Hello Damian?«
Damian: »Yes.«
RockLine: »It’s Aleš here from RockLine Slovenia. Can you hear me okay, is the connection alright?«
Damian: »I can hear you very well.«
RockLine: »Great, then! How are you doing?«
Damian: »Perfect, thanks.«
RockLine: »Alright. Let’s get started, then.«
Damian: »Okay.«
RockLine: The summer tour of Great Britain is behind you. What are your impressions, what can you tell us about it, and how’s your foot?
Damian: The UK tour was very successful. We played all over Great Britain. My foot’s gotten better. I broke it right before the tour kicked off. In the first part of the tour I got around on crutches, and during the shows I sat on a stool.
RockLine: For this UK tour you joined forces with a charity that looks after people with mental health conditions, called Squeaky Gate. Clients who attend the organization even played on stage with you at the concerts of the latest British tour. How did this collaboration come about?
Damian: Yes. Squeaky Gate is an organization that looks after people with mental health difficulties, and it also runs a special department with a music school, where clients learn to play instruments, practice, … Rosemary Breen, the chair of the foundation, who’s always been a huge Pink Floyd fan, showed a lot of interest in working with us. We talked together about whether we could maybe raise some money for charity through the shows, money to go toward the care of patients with mental health conditions. Musicians who attend Squeaky Gate joined us on stage. We played together at quite a few concerts, including in London, at the Royal Albert Hall, as well as in Cambridge, which is actually the birthplace of Pink Floyd. We had a great time together.
RockLine: The new tour is called »A Foot In The Door«. What kind of concert spectacle concept comes out of the tour title itself?
Damian: We took the title from a Pink Floyd »best of« compilation that came out recently on a CD called »A Foot In The Door«. It came out right at the end of last year. Live we play absolutely every song from that compilation, plus other well-known Pink Floyd songs, as well as longer pieces, like Echoes in its entirety. We also perform the original section of the album The Wall, which is very close to the stage version of the spectacle Roger Waters took on tour last year. The set covers everything in the repertoire. From the earliest Pink Floyd albums, so songs with Syd Barrett, to Pink Floyd’s final works, and the latter include pieces from the album »Division Bell«.
RockLine: I assume the concept of your concerts changes from tour to tour. How do you agree among yourselves in the team on which songs will go into the repertoire for each tour?
Damian: Every repertoire, for every tour, is usually built around a section that rounds up Pink Floyd’s best-known songs. Most people know them, and they can’t be missing from the set. Not from any set. Those include Wish You Were Here, Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Comfortably Numb, Another Brick In The Wall, etc … and of course pieces from the album Dark Side Of The Moon. On top of that we keep an eye on anniversaries, jubilees, say the round-number release year of a particular Pink Floyd album, or in the case of the upcoming tour, the recently released compilation »A Foot In The Door«. And we adapt the repertoire to that, as well as the stage sets. But for every tour we try to put together as varied and diverse a setlist as possible, to cover all the creative periods of Pink Floyd’s music. Every Pink Floyd fan can find something in these setlists that especially drives them to come to the shows where Pink Floyd music is played.
RockLine: For you, as a highly accomplished musician, playing Pink Floyd is probably pretty much routine by now, even though you enjoy it. You’ve surely turned to other projects and musical challenges too. One of them is Acoustic Unlimited. What can you tell us about it and the other projects running alongside Brit Floyd?
Damian: Definitely. When I’m not on tour with Brit Floyd or otherwise busy with them, I devote myself to other musical things. One of them is, as you mentioned yourself, Acoustic Unlimited. The acoustic guitar has been a great love ever since my childhood, when I started playing it as my first instrument. I enjoy reworking arrangements of famous rock and jazz artists, as well as a few classics, by giving them an acoustic makeover. Besides me, the band includes my brother Gareth, my sister Johanna, our Brit Floyd keyboardist Rob Stringer and my musical mentor Steve Gaffney. We’re definitely looking for live gigs with Acoustic Unlimited too. On top of that, I’m involved in another similar project, Classic Rock Show, where we cover well-known work by major acts of the seventies and eighties, like Led Zeppelin, Dire Straits, Fleetwod Mac, The Eagles, etc… That one gives me a massive kick too, and above all it helps me unwind.
RockLine: Before founding Brit Floyd, you played a full 17 years in another »tribute to Pink Floyd« outfit called the Australian Pink Floyd Show. Can you point out the key differences between the Australian Pink Floyd Show and Brit Floyd?
Damian: Brit Floyd are an upgrade on the Australian Pink Floyd Show. With Brit Floyd we’ve gotten to perfection in re-creating the Pink Floyd sound. We’ve polished every single note down to the finest detail. Note by note. With the arrival of Brit Floyd, the re-creation of the Pink Floyd sound is actually closer to the original than ever before. The same goes for the use of stage sets and the visual side of the concerts. On top of all that we now also include animated video projections, which are copies of the originals but created in a modern way. In that sense, the experience a concertgoer gets is very close to the original. The Australian Pink Floyd Show were on the road to finding the perfect approximation of the real Pink Floyd, one of our stepping stones in development, and with Brit Floyd we’ve definitely stepped right past it.
RockLine: How did the original Pink Floyd camp react when they first heard Brit Floyd, and how did you sort out the copyright on using the original visuals and stage design at your concerts?
Damian: I met David Gilmour in 1994. A few years later I was invited to his birthday party, when David turned a round 50. Nick Mason and Rick Wright were there too. Both incredible guys. Of the original members of Pink Floyd, the only one I haven’t met in person is Roger Waters. We played as a »tribute to Pink Floyd« band at Dave’s birthday party, and during Comfortably Numb, Rick Wright joined us on stage on keyboards, which was an incredible experience for me personally and a huge honor, to share a stage with one of the original members of Pink Floyd. When it comes to the visual side of recreating Pink Floyd, we don’t need to ask for any permissions – in our attempts at re-capturing and re-creating Pink Floyd iconography on stage, that is. We don’t need to get any special permissions beforehand.
RockLine: How important is it to you that Pink Floyd’s music, alongside the live performance, also has to be delivered to the audience through guided video animation and with the help of special stage sets? How do you see the importance of this aspect in the stage re-interpretation of Pink Floyd’s music? Brian Kolupski helps you a lot there too.
Damian: As I matured as a musician, over the years a desire awoke in me to perfect the staging of Pink Floyd’s music through carefully crafted visuals, the video projections themselves. I also started getting drawn to the technique of producing DVDs of individual concerts, as well as a special stage lighting program built in Germany, special light effects for the concert itself. Pink Floyd’s music is definitely vitally tied, in its stage interpretation, to a combination of videography and special lighting effects. It’s hard to imagine Pink Floyd without that. For me it’s a big challenge, this re-interpretation of the film animation of the Pink Floyd show. We certainly don’t have as much money as Pink Floyd themselves, but we do our best. The guy who handles animation production is Bryan Kolupski. He’s a great friend and someone I’ve been working with for the last ten years. He has a superbly developed feel, I’d even say an exquisitely refined one, for bringing Pink Floyd’s music to life through film animation, especially when it comes to converting Pink Floyd iconography from a two-dimensional presentation into a three-dimensional effect. Bryan also has a great feel for creating videos tied to a particular concept of Pink Floyd’s music.
RockLine: Besides playing all the main guitars in Brit Floyd, you’re also a singer. Which vocal range suits you better? The one that belongs to Roger Waters, or the one that belongs to David Gilmour?
Damian: Definitely David’s. My voice isn’t suited to imitating Roger Waters’ vocals, but it’s perfect for imitating David Gilmour’s. Our Brit Floyd bassist Ian Cattell handles Roger Waters’ vocal lines. Ian gets very close to Roger Waters, so with Brit Floyd’s vocals we’ve studied and reworked the vocal arrangements in great detail, which is how we try to really leave a mark on listeners, and that’s also the element and the guarantee that brings a lot of satisfaction to the people at our concerts.
RockLine: Quite a few excellent guitarists come from the British Isles who, in their approach, are inspired by the guitar style typical of Pink Floyd, or David Gilmour. Steve Rothery (Marillion) or Dave Kilminster, for example. Has an opportunity ever come up for you to maybe work with any of these musicians? Maybe even with the pioneers of guitar sound and style in progressive rock, like David Gilmour, Andrew Latimer or Steve Hackett?
Damian: The musicians you mentioned are truly fantastic, and I’d love for the chance of that kind of collaboration to come my way someday. I met Dave Kilminster in person years ago, but we never got as far as any serious talks about a possible musical collaboration.
RockLine: Do you perhaps plan to release a solo studio album?
Damian: Right now I’m focusing on Acoustic Unlimited, in the sense of finding a window when Brit Floyd take a break, so that in that gap we can record songs and put out our own acoustic album. I definitely want to put something together on my own too, but it’s hard to predict anything in the short term. Probably in the coming years, though of course it all depends on how many obligations I have with Brit Floyd.
RockLine: You don’t have to answer the next question at all if you don’t want to. How do you experience this never-ending feud between David Gilmour and Roger Waters? What’s your personal take on it?
Damian: Luckily this thing doesn’t have that endless epilogue anymore. So it’s kind of wrapped up. In recent years they at least appear in public together, they perform together. They’re certainly not best friends, but at least they communicate normally. And that’s a wonderful thing we get to witness. I also hope they’ll play even more shows together in the future. I’m convinced we won’t get a proper Pink Floyd reunion for any new tour, but it’s nice to see both of them, Roger and David, on stage together at least.
RockLine: This November you’re heading out to the old European continent. In an extensive tour schedule, Brit Floyd will, among other places, visit the Slovenian capital Ljubljana. What can we expect from your show?
Damian: You can expect a really, really dense roster of Pink Floyd music that we’ll be playing. We’ll cover all the creative eras of Pink Floyd’s music, and on top of that deliver a spectacular video show, including the famous pigs and everything else that goes with it. So you’ll witness everything a classic Pink Floyd concert is supposed to offer. I’m really looking forward to, among other things, our visit to Slovenia, where we’ve never played before. We really look forward to hanging out with Pink Floyd music fans in your country.
interview by: Aleš Podbrežnik
text translated and edited by: Aleš Podbrežnik
photos: Brit Floyd photo archive
Brit Floyd will perform on 09.11.2012 at Ljubljana’s Hala Tivoli! All the details about this concert spectacle and info on buying tickets are available HERE.
Photo gallery
