Tikimon : The flash is Pink Floyd.. After the departure of the psychedelic genius Syd Barrett (one of the several schizophrenic victims of LSD), it has taken time to this band to find his high progressive way. The legend said that the band has thought to work with Jeff Beck, but renounced to this idea. So, Gilmour has brought the tone, the playing & the arrangements required for the construction of this band.. well, i think you know the point.
The glory of Mr Gilmour is contradictory. He's probably, out of the rock prog circle, the name the most familiar in the no musical world. Everybody knows Pink Floyd & Gilmour. Genesis is also a famous band.. but with his pop music era. Not with his rock prog era (Peter Gabriel). King Crimson, Soft Machine, Jetho Trull, Yes, Magma.. the big audience ignores everything about the rock prog magnitude of these names. Who does care about guitar's masters like Steve Hackett, Steve Howe, Robert Fripp? People who listen to rock prog or really care about history of guitar.
So, Gilmour is well-known, & at the same time, lot of people in guitar world miss the point. He's become a guitar master with a minimalist technical method. A guitar master, born with blues (guitar & voice), & at the highest level that a rock prog band could dream : to write the history of music.
He's magic. Simply magic. A perfect blue feel inside arms of Rock, with fingers & bottleneck.
He was flying in the blue dream long time before Ibanez era, while Roger Waters was creeping in the blue nightmare, finding lyrics & compositions.
That's their crossroad.
So..
I think that his unique masteria of the Leslie effect (His Leslie accomplishment goes far beyond Hendrix & SRV) has a lot of to see with his fingers, obviously, but also with his masteria of the silence (staying into the Strat babling, i can't imagine a Malmsteen style with a Leslie.. nope.. not enough silence, not enough space for the flying rotation.. that's would mean nothing).
Once more, Gilmour is the Leslie King.
Once more, his tone has no specific chronologic time.
That's not a 60's, a 70's, a 80's, a 90's, a 01's, a 10's tone.
That's a tone beyond the story of tone.
Here resides his guitar genius. Simple, & magic.
From the Meddle album, his tone gives to Pink Floyd its miraculous illusion of timelessness. This tone is the Dark Side of the Moon one. It's the Wall one. How could we not conclude that the man is a Master up the guitar sky?
________________________
Edit : hum, i've done a praise.
__________________________
Finally, Waters+Beck < Waters+Gilmour.
Any doubt
I don't know what god wants. I don't know if there's a god.
But the crossroad mystery is : Gilmour is the Pink Floyd guitar player & singer. It's done, with just the good chords, the good arrangements, & a pentatonic.