David Gilmour sang w/ Roger Waters & will do so again
So here’s what happened. Last year, ‘The Hoping Foundation’ a charity that supports Palestinian refugee kids, (www.hopingfoundation.org) put on a fund raiser at Ronnie Scott’s Club in London, the idea of which was to raise money by auctioning karaoke performances by various celebrities. David was there as a supporter and was moved to perform an impromptu rendition of George Gershwin’s ‘Summertime?’ which he performed aided and abetted by supermodel Kate Moss.
In the wake of that evening, someone, I think it was David himself, came up with this ‘Wouldn’t it be funny’, idea. What if he (David that is) were to sing the old Teddy Bears song ‘To Know Him Is To Love Him’ with me (Roger that is), what with us having been so famously at each other’s throats for years and years. Get it!!!! Anyway he E-mailed me with this suggestion and I loved it, so then it was just a question of juggling dates and deciding to do ‘Wish You Were Here’ and ‘Comfortably Numb’ to round out our little set. Or so I thought, until he sent me a number of very musical and eloquent demos of how we could do the song in two-part harmony. I listened with a sinking heart, knowing that David, with his superior vocal skills, could sing either part standing on his head, whilst I would have to search for a different key and then struggle through hours and hours of routining a performance that lay way outside my vocal comfort zone. To my eternal shame I bottled out and told Dave I would happily do ‘Wish You Were Here’ and ‘C. Numb’, but that ‘To Know him is to Love him’ was beyond me.
Some weeks passed with David cajoling me from time to time, telling me how easy it would be, but I clung resolutely to my fear of failure until one day he made one final entreaty. I quote “If you do ‘To Know Him Is To Love Him’ for The Hoping Foundation Gig, I’ll come and do ‘C. Numb’ on one of your Wall shows”. Well! You could have knocked me down with a feather. How fucking cool! I was blown away. How could I refuse such an offer. I couldn’t, there was no way. Generosity trumped fear. And so explaining that I would probably be shite, but if he didn’t mind I didn’t, I agreed and the rest is history. We did it, and it was fucking great. End of story. Or possibly beginning.
PS. Just heard from David, he will decide in due course which gig he wants to do, it will be a surprise!
That apparently means that one show on the Roger Waters “Wall” tour will get the golden David Gilmour ticket. Six of those shows are in the NYC-area.
