Though The Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall helped solidify David Gilmour as a cornerstone of rock history, the Pink Floyd guitarist has never shied away from calling out the missteps in his discography—even when they’re his own. In fact, Gilmour has openly criticized one of his earliest solo-written tracks, labeling it a product of “desperation” and admitting he hasn’t listened to it in decades.
For Gilmour, artistic growth has always involved a healthy dose of self-reflection. Despite being a major creative force behind some of music’s most influential albums, he remains blunt about the uneven road it took to get there. One of the tracks he’s most critical of is “The Narrow Way,” a suite from Pink Floyd’s 1969 double album Ummagumma. Not only did Gilmour write and perform the entire piece himself, but it marked his first solo composition for the band—an experience he remembers with little fondness.
“Well, we’d decided to make the damn album, and each of us was to do a piece of music on our own,” Gilmour told Sounds Guitar Heroes in 1983. “It was just desperation really, trying to think of something to do, to write by myself. I’d never written anything before, I just went into a studio and started waffling about, tacking bits and pieces together. I haven’t heard it in years. I’ve no idea what it’s like.”
This wasn’t the only time Gilmour voiced regret over Pink Floyd’s earlier material. Speaking to Der Spiegel in 1995, he called Ummagumma and its follow-up Atom Heart Mother “pretty horrible.” While he spared the live disc of Ummagumma some faint praise, saying it “might be all right,” he still noted its poor recording quality.
Even the universally acclaimed The Dark Side of the Moon wasn’t safe from Gilmour’s critical lens. Despite the album’s towering legacy, Gilmour once expressed unease over how Roger Waters’ lyrical dominance started to overshadow the music itself. “My problem with Dark Side—and I’ve said it before and I’ll no doubt say it again—was that I thought that Roger’s emergence on that album as a great lyric writer was such that he came to overshadow the music in places,” he told Guitar Player.
In a field where egos often run unchecked, Gilmour’s honesty about his creative regrets is rare and refreshing. His early attempts at songwriting may have missed the mark, but they laid the groundwork for the brilliance to come. While “The Narrow Way” might not stand tall in the Pink Floyd catalogue, it marked the start of Gilmour’s evolution from a hesitant contributor to a musical giant.
