Polly is his Yoko Ono

[Djgilmour]

Gilmour gives Samson full credit for his transformation. “There aren’t many women who would have the strength that Polly had to deal with it,” he says.

It came down to an ultimatum from her. “It really was, ‘If you do that again, I am out of here,’ says Samson. “I am going here with an incident that illustrates it, but is also quite funny.

“At a charity dinner at one of those big hotels on Grosvenor Place [in Belgravia], David disappeared in the middle of dinner to the loo with his then manager, and when he came back, I knew what he had been doing, as it was something he promised he wouldn’t do; very early on he promised me. I just said, ‘Have you just taken cocaine?’ And as he can’t lie to me, I had a glass of champagne in my hand and I went to throw it in his face. But he ducked. I got Douglas Adams (author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), and I was so appalled at what I had done, I ran out.

“The story gets worse. I ran down Park Lane, really upset, and he was scampering after me, saying, ‘I’ll never do it again.’ ‘Too late, too late, you’ve blown it.’ I was gathering speed, and then the police see this man following after me and they ask if he is bothering me. I said yes, and they went to grab him, but then the policeman said, ‘You’re Dave Gilmour.’ At that, we both start laughing, and it was then so funny. It kind of saved the situation as I found it both awful and funny.”

It was the last time he took cocaine.

And as to Gilmour saving Samson’s life? Soon after they began seeing each other, she was suffering from deeply serious glandular fever, was almost broke, and had a young child to care for on her own. In despair, she turned to him when she was an emotional and physical wreck, and stayed with him. “He took care of me and Charlie, and I really do think that he saved my life. I was so thin and utterly on the edge, so ill and he was so caring.”

And the rest is sort of history. As he cared for her, he was recording songs for the 1994 Pink Floyd album The Division Bell, and would come home and play some tracks. “And then I would sort of mumble in this kind of semi-hallucinating sense what I thought might work. And I mean, never thinking I was writing lyrics; and he started kind of trying out these things, and ‘That’s not right. No, no, why don’t I rewrite that for you?’ And so that’s kind of where it all started.”

[Keith Jordan]

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-ente ... 05731.html

Do you think Polly has been a negative force calling her Yoko?

[Hadrian]

I believe there is something to this, yes. The full arrival of Polly into David's life (they married in 1994 during the Division Bell Tour) coincided with David essentially turning away from Pink Floyd after being very firm about continuing with it since Waters left. He changed, his attitude toward Pink Floyd changed (180 degrees), and so did his behavior. It is very reminiscent of John Lennon's transformations once Yoko was in the picture in 1968-69. I don't believe in coincidences when it comes to human behavior.

[Djgilmour]

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-ente ... 05731.html

Do you think Polly has been a negative force calling her Yoko?

Yes, I do. She was a beautiful woman when Dave met her, I can understand he fell for her looks. But now she is old and not good looking, I would have traded her in for a new wife.

Anyway, I think she is an evil woman, the way she publicly insulted Roger in her tweet, and her being around 24/7 with her camera. Dave would be better off with cocaine.

[Jimi Dean Barrett]

But can you apply Beatles logic to Pink Floyd? They get called The Beatles of the 70's but that's more for their studio experimentation wasn't it?
I'm happy we're getting creative stuff from Dave Gilmour and smiling he has somebody to grow old with.
And more than happy she got him off cocaine!

[cigar73]

I couldn’t care less who Gilmour marries etc but there’s just something about her I don’t like. She shouldn’t have been anywhere near writing lyrics for a behemoth like Pink Floyd, that’s for sure. It completely devalues the “brand”. Could you imagine Yoko Ono writing lyrics for The Beatles??

[snifferdog]

I think Polly looks great for a 62-year-old and am appalled at the idea that David should discard her simply because she has aged. In case you hadn't noticed, Gilmour isn't the pretty boy he was in Pink Floyd's heyday either. If he took up with a 30-year-old people would recycle that old Mrs Merton joke "So...what attracted you to millionaire David Gilmour?" and they'd be right. None of us knows what the Pink Floyds are truly like, so to declare she's evil just because you don't like her is quite a stretch. Maybe just maybe they're a well-suited couple who've enjoyed solid a 30+ year relationship?

It is fair to say that we'd all be better off if they squabbled in private. It's all very ugly indeed and that's just from the glimpses of what we've seen. I seem to recall Roger making disparaging comments about her writing lyrics for The Division Bell back in the day, so it isn't as if the insults have been flying in one direction. David and Roger were fighting viciously decades before Polly came along and it's safe to say that far far worse things have been said behind the scenes.

From a Pink Floyd fan's point of view, I wish Polly wasn't involved. I don't care for her lyrics and don't think they're a patch on what Roger wrote at his peak. There's no doubt she has benefitted from being married to him, though his wealth and fame still dwarfs hers. From a selfish point of view, I wish David hadn't taken a 10+ year hiatus before making On an Island. I feel that any new Pink Floyd album made between The Division Bell and In an Elevator would've been better than his solo stuff. On the other hand, when I wear my middle-aged human's hat, I very much understand why he took a step back from making music and concentrated on his family. Going back to the Yoko Ono comparison, that's roughly what was happening to The Beatles when they were splitting up. If you look at Get Back, you'll see the other wives and kids hanging around the sessions as well. True, they aren't blatantly in the middle of the band like Yoko was but the point I'm making is that every Beatle was changing by 1970. They were never going to be the bunch of lads who went to Hamburg - they were now starting to form their own families and were growing up. They were always going to split and Yoko just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

Some of the commentary reminds me of how friendships change once your friends start getting serious about their latest boyfriend/girlfriend. Suddenly hanging around with you is no longer their top priority and all too often, their plans include their other half. It's all too easy to become resentful of the Pollys and Yokos of this world when in fact it's an evolution of life.

[Gslatner]

I think we should be happy for any music we got out of David Gilmour after the split with Roger and Pink Floyd. To me Pink Floyd was more about the sound than the words so the Polly issue is not on the radar for me. Roger’s lyrics were certainly great, but quite frankly he crashed and burned after The Wall/Final Cut with short high point at Amused to Death. Can you really imagine Pink Floyd making Pros and cons or Radio Kaos? It would have destroyed their legacy. So this argument Polly ruined something is just crazy to me because that was Pink Floyd’s imminent future. I think David just carried on doing what he did best, playing music and he had no real desire/ability to write lyrics so Polly filled that void for him. I respect David’s pursuit of making excellent music and do think that Luck and Strange is his best solo album.

[Hadrian]

Polly clearly did not prevent David from creating, releasing, and touring his new music, but I do think that she effectively influenced his decision to retire Pink Floyd as a band when he was only 49 years old. They had three children (Joe, born in 1995; Gabriel, born in 1997; and Romany, born in 2002), which likely put a halt to things for at least a decade (1994–2004). Plans for another leg of The Division Bell Tour were scrapped in 1995 because of the new family situation. However, I also think that there was a change in attitude. Suddenly, we had someone with no interest whatsoever in Pink Floyd after biting about it from circa 1985 to 1995. In fact, there was even an interview during those years in which David publicly stated that he would have continued as Pink Floyd on his own if Nick had decided to quit initially. Going from that to not caring about it at all, I believe, is due to her influence.

[flashback]

You all do realize Dave was and is a grown ass man able to make up his own mind. Polly didn't lead him anywhere. He wanted a life with his family and music on his time. We are blessed to have got the music we got from him.

[Hadrian]

I think she has him wrapped around her finger, just like Yoko had John from 1968 onwards.