Quote Of The Day By David Gilmour: 'Our Music ... Will Be Forgotten ...'

British musician David Gilmour became one of the most celebrated guitarists of his generation with Pink Floyd, the group he joined in 1968. With visionary co-founders including Syd Barrett and Roger Waters, Pink Floyd dealt in experimental, folk-tinged psychedelia through the 1960s before enjoying increasing commercial success with their Waters-led concept albums of the 1970s.

1973's "Dark Side of the Moon" is arguably the group's masterpiece, showcasing their grand musical vision as well as highlighting Gilmour's exploratory yet melodic guitar style. Another commercial peak came in 1979 with "The Wall," again masterminded by Waters. However, Waters left the group in the early 1980s and instigated a legal challenge against the band when it became clear that Gilmour and the remaining members planned to continue without him.

Despite continuing to release the occasional album and tour under the band's name, in recent decades Pink Floyd has waned as a group, with Gilmour increasingly establishing himself as a solo performer with numerous albums and tours to his name. He is repeatedly ranked among the world's best guitarists by music magazines and was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Pink Floyd in 1996, but as our Quote of the Day from Gilmour makes clear, he is unconcerned when it comes to his own legacy.

"I think our music will continue to be played for a while. Then it will be forgotten like everything else will be forgotten. How long will that take? A hundred years, a thousand years, a million years? I have no idea."

Today's Quote of the Day came from an interview David Gilmour gave to Billboard magazine in 2006, a decade after Pink Floyd entered the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. The previous year, the band had reunited with Roger Waters to perform at the Live 8 charity concert. Their set was warmly received, and there were rumblings that the group had received a lucrative offer to tour as a complete unit once again. However, Gilmour turned the offer down amid continuing bad blood with Waters, and Pink Floyd became inactive.

Amid discussion of these events, Gilmour was asked what he thought his legacy might be. "Legacy? What's a legacy?" he replied, before giving us our Quote of the Day. Interestingly, Gilmour chooses the phrase "our music," suggesting that he is thinking about the impact of his iconic group rather than his own solo work, even though by 2006 that was what he was primarily interested in. The quote is somewhat flippant, highlighting how little Gilmour dwells on the band's legacy, although he makes it clear that he doesn't expect Pink Floyd to be considered a musical institution for the rest of time.

"This is not something I think of very much," David Gilmour concluded when asked what his legacy might be. It suggests a healthily humble attitude from the legendary guitarist when it comes to reflecting on his impact on the world of music — a characteristically British attitude, it could be argued.

Popular culture is consumed with the idea of artistic greatness, with the assumption that greatness equates with immortality — at least in the public's imagination. But many great artists have been aware of the fact that even the grandest lives will eventually be forgotten, lost in the sands of time. The British Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley's famous poem "Ozymandias" paints the image of an abandoned statue found in the desert, that is nothing more than a pair of disembodied legs on a pedestal and a shattered face-piece nearby. The poem tells us that the inscription reads: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: / Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

For Shelley, there is hubris in trying to secure one's legacy, suggesting that Gilmour is right to give it such little thought. Instead, Gilmour is more concerned with everyday life, telling Billboard: "I have no idea what the future holds. I hope that I am going to get through my tour and enjoy it, and then I will be back home looking after my children, while my 16-year-old boy gets ready for his exams. And I shall be trying to steer and guide my children into their future."

"I have no interest in going on a tour to make money without making new product, new art. So just going out and replaying our old hits again on a tour does not appeal to me at all."

"I think a guitar solo is how my emotion is most freely released, because verbal articulation isn't my strongest communication strength. My wife thinks that I should do interviews by listening to the questions and playing the answer on guitar."

"I don't even think whether I play the blues or not, I just play whatever feels right at the moment. I also will use any gadget or device that I find that helps me achieve the sort of sound on the guitar that I want to get."

"I think the music industry is a tough one these days, and for people who are recording in it, the rewards are not justifiable. The rich and the powerful have siphoned off the majority of this money."

"I'm an atheist, so I hate to say it out loud, but there are times when it feels like music is channeling itself when I'm writing. It doesn't always feel like it's something I've done — it somehow just comes through me."

"I would advise forgetting technique! Don't worry about it. Just play notes and melodies that appeal to your heart and mind and let them out."

"My ambition is to keep going. As soon as this tour is finished, I'll get back to work in my studio creating more music. I don't have higher ambitions than that."