“You could see this thing on people’s faces – this awakening”: David Gilmour recalls the moment he came up with the Shine On chord

David Gilmour has recalled the moment he came up with the famous arpeggio from Pink Floyd’s Shine On You Crazy Diamond in a new interview with Rick Beato.

The track formed part of the band’s 1975 concept album, Wish You Were Here. The song was a tribute to original founding member Syd Barrett, who departed Floyd in 1968 due to struggles with his mental health.

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In a clip shared to YouTube Shorts from Beato’s upcoming interview with Gilmour, Beato says, “David, you came up with the most famous chord in rock history.”

“Technically speaking an arpeggio but yeah, I’ll take it,” he replies, before further adding, “I was in a rehearsal room doing all sorts of little things and that one [came] out. Something in your brain goes, ‘there’s something to that’. And you do it again, and after a while other people in the room stop. You can see this thing on people’s faces, this awakening moment. People are going, ‘there’s a possibility here, there’s something here’. And basically the whole of Shine On grew out of that moment.”

Last October, it was reported that the Pink Floyd catalogue was sold to Sony Music in a $400 million deal. The transaction was believed to include the band’s recording catalogue, neighbouring rights, and name and likeness rights. It did not, however, include publishing rights. Gilmour had previously said that selling the catalogue was “his dream”.

Gilmour has been busy with his solo work more recently, and released a new album titled Luck And Strange last September. He told Prog of its title, “It’s the luck of the very strange moment, that me, and baby boomers in general, have had such a fortunate moment with so many positive ideas that one thought was moving us forward but we’re back in a much darker time. This is normality. What was before the lucky strange moment isn’t the norm.”

David Gilmour’s Luck and Strange is available to stream or buy now.