Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour’s ex-wife on being married to a rock star: ‘It really was love at first sight’

Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour's ex-wife on being married to a rock star: 'It really was love at first sight'

This is a picture of me and my then husband David Gilmour, the Pink Floyd guitarist, and our newly born daughter Alice, at Woodley, our home in Roydon, Essex, in 1976. It was taken by Storm Thorgerson, who designed all the classic Pink Floyd album covers.

He took some other pictures that day of me holding Alice, and because he was a friend who had known David since they were at university, I think he captured something very beautiful and touching. For both of us, having our first child was the epitome of happiness. We were so blissed out with Alice.

I was so nervous because I was very shy and it really was love at first sight
I’d met David five years before, at a concert at the University of Michigan. I wasn’t really a fan of the band at that point, although I had their album Ummagumma, but a friend had just come back from London where he’d got to know one of the band’s roadies and he invited me backstage.

David came up to me and said, “Hi, I’m David.” He had big blue eyes and that English look, with the long hair, tight black Sterling Cooper jeans and a black t-shirt that read “That’s all folks.” I was so nervous because I was very shy and it really was love at first sight.

I’d always dreamed of that happening and when it did, it was like, 'Is this really happening? What do I do?’  When he invited me to join him on tour and then go back to England with him, I didn’t hesitate. But living in England was a real culture shock. Woodley was a mock Tudor house and it was so cold.

The wind howled through the windows and it was like living in the elements indoors. But I lived through it, because I was so in love and so enchanted by being in England with my knight in shining armour. David was a wonderful father. He held the babies, changed the nappies. He would do the 11pm feed so I could get some sleep.

He was always multi-tasking. In the living room he’d sit in his rocking chair in front of the telly. He’d be strumming along on his acoustic guitar and listening to records at the same time. The Floyd were never wild like the Who. Even their road crew was quite civilised.

But when they got really big David came under enormous pressure from creative differences with the other band members. He held it all in, in his very English way.

He was very quiet, but because we had such an intuitive relationship, I knew how huge it was in his mind and the effect that the dissolving of the band would have on his personal life, his financial life and his career.  I started to see that I actually had two marriages, one with David and one with the band.

David was a wonderful father. He held the babies, changed the nappies. He would do the 11pm feed so I could get some sleep
They had to deal with being married to their wives and to each other, and when they divorced as a band it got so intense that it eventually destroyed all the individual marriages, including ours.