The following article appeared on Telegraph.co.uk May 28, 2003. Please visit Telegraph.co.uk to read more stories by this author or to view other stories published by this site.
Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour tells Cassandra Jardine why he is giving the proceeds of a £3.6 million property deal to charity
Last week, David Gilmour endured one of the most gruelling experiences of his 58 years. Shaking, unable to eat, he stood up in front of a small audience and talked about a charity project. "I was terrified," he says.
Tough love: David Gilmour, the 465th richest man in the country
After 35 years of performing with Pink Floyd in stadiums that hold 100,000 fans, it seems strange that such a small event could affect him so. But this was different: it was personal; he could see the whites of the audience's eyes and he had to speak. "It's different from standing on stage and saying what you are about to sing. It was only two or three minutes, but that was more than long enough for me. I'm not the most eloquent and clear thinking of people."
To his great relief, all went well. He didn't become muddled or tongue-tied. He managed to spit out to the assembled company the news that the £3.6 million proceeds of selling his home in Little Venice, west London, to Earl Spencer would be going to Crisis, a charity for the homeless. They will use it, he explained, as a deposit on a building that will show how the homeless can be reintegrated into society.
The Urban Village project is modelled on the conversion of the Times Square Hotel in New York which, nine years ago was turned into 400 or so flatlets, half of them for the homeless, the other half for low-paid city workers. Living there, the homeless are helped with drug and alcoholism problems, can get starter jobs in the building or the shops that occupy the ground floor. They also have normal neighbours.
"A lot of the homeless are not mentally well; they don't know how to move into other areas of society," says Gilmour. "This Crisis building is a way of giving them a community that could grow and multiply and make a major difference. It's such a brilliant idea that it speaks for itself. I would rather have been a shadowy figure but Crisis needed a figurehead and my shyness didn't make sense for them."
That shyness is in evidence at his new, much smaller London home, as he potters about making breakfast for his wife, novelist Polly Samson, and their youngest child, delaying the moment when I focus my attention on him. His new surroundings are comfortable but not grand - unlike the house he sold, which was far too large to be used, in effect, as "a holiday home".
"Polly and I live in the country and were only using it one or two nights a week, usually without the children, so we rattled around in it. It had been a home, so it made sense to give the proceeds to the homeless," he says, as if giving away money of that order means nothing to him.
Perhaps it doesn't. The latest published "rich list" reckons Gilmour's wealth from touring and albums at £75 million, making him the 465th richest man in the country, though he cannot say within 30 per cent whether the figure is accurate. What he does know is that he doesn't need all that money. "In the last 15 years, my wealth has entered an area where I couldn't conceivably spend it."
He has never liked ostentatious giving, the kind of parties at which people shake their diamonds at each other in a good cause. "Those evenings where you go out with your mates and have a good time and put £50 in a bin at the end do nothing to raise money or awareness. Far more would be achieved if the two richest people in the room just put their hands in their pockets.
"I would like to see the 464 people above me on the rich list give more. When you are worth £500 million, you could give £400 million away and not notice it." Personally, he adds, he would love to "drop off the end" of that list. "I don't feel comfortable there, it doesn't feel like me. My intention is to pretty much get rid of my wealth by the time I go." This may be bad news for his children - eight of them from two marriages - but he does not want them to have "expectations" of riches. "Children who are given money are emasculated. It's a big disincentive to making your own way in life and I want my children to have the satisfaction that I have had from making my own way." Each of his children can expect a one-bedroom flat and any amount of advice and non-financial support, but they have to earn their own money.
When he is not putting together one of his solo concerts, Gilmour spends his time cooking and playing with his younger children at their Sussex home. Not for him, any longer, the excesses that traditionally come with the rock star life and that caused the downfall of Syd Barrett, the founding genius of Pink Floyd.
"I've seen a lot of people go off the rails," he says, "because you get into a tiny community where all the things that are frowned on in other communities are smiled on. Everyone takes drugs and carouses their way around the world and gets loved for it."
In his time, he has enjoyed all the toys that come with extreme wealth - cars, planes, houses he rarely visits. Now, he has pared his life but he is not making out that he wears a hair vest under his loose-fitting shirt. "I'm not going for saintliness," he says. "I have every intention of enjoying my own wealth. But I don't want to hand it on to my children."
Stardom, he admits, has provided mixed blessings. An awkwardness in front of cameras in his youth has spared him the horrors of being recognised in the street. But he has still had to cope with friendships ruined by disparities in wealth, loans that are never repaid or gifts that are misused. New friendships are vexed by obsequiousness or by others having an encyclopedic knowledge of his life while he knows nothing of theirs. "Sometimes, but not always," he says, "I wish my life had been more ordinary."
His balanced approach to wealth seems related to a background in which it was never overly admired. His parents, both academics, were distraught when he chose the guitar over university. Making it big relatively late also helped. "We were old and experienced enough by then not to be swept away." Ironically, "it was Money that made us the money", Gilmour points out. Money being a song of "self-rebuke and warning" about greed which appeared on Dark Side of the Moon, the album that in 1973 shot the Floyd to "stratospheric" success. From the start, he gave away a fair proportion of his income to charity through trusts - but always, until now, quietly.
In the Eighties, he couldn't afford to be so generous because an accountant defrauded the band of millions. Being "strapped for cash" was once again beneficial; it forced him out of the back row in the band and into the forefront. "We had something to prove. When Roger Waters left, he said, 'You won't get it together without me.' We were smarting from that, but we also didn't know if we could pay the taxman what we owed." Two tours and two new albums in the late Eighties and early Nineties revived Pink Floyd but also boosted Gilmour's finances to an unspendable level. For the past 15 years, he has been giving an average of £400,000 a year to charities.
The plan to sell the house was his wife's idea, he says. With Gilmour's money as a down payment, Crisis is looking for a central London site large enough to house 400. The NHS is prepared to fund flatlets for nurses, and several businessmen - happy to meet a rock hero at the launch - are talking about corporate donations.
Gilmour knows he may be seen as a "gong chaser", like many of the more generous members of society. To date, he has not received so much as an OBE, while tax exile Mick Jagger has his knighthood.
"I'm just a pop star," he says, unperturbed. "I really don't mind what people think. This is such a good project that it needs someone to stand up and give it the best kick start it can get."
Crisis, tel: 0870 011 3335; visit CRISIS to find out more and to learn how you can help.
