David Gilmour somehow popped up on my YouTube feed and the name rung a little bell in my head, but I couldn’t figure out why. So I started poking around to learn more, finding myself tapping my foot to this song in the meantime.
Finally I hit upon why his name was so familiar, as he was the lead guitarist of Pink Floyd. Indeed, Rolling Stone ranked him as 14 on their list of all time greatest guitarists.
Clearly, the creative genius of the man is still in full swing. Because this video is so interesting to me, please bear with me as I explain it for those unfamiliar.
The music video above, ‘Rattle That Lock,’ is a reference to Paradise Lost by John Milton, which is perhaps one of the three true epic series of stories of Western civilization. It’s in company with the Homeric tales of The Iliad and The Odyssey with Virgil’s Aeneid, and the other being Dante’s Divine Comedy, which is comprised of Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.
Paradise Lost is an epic poem about the casting of Satan from heaven and his eventual ascension from Hell to the newly created Earth, where he corrupts Adam and Eve. The vast poem was Milton’s attempt to “justify the ways of God to men.”
The video depicts Satan first falling and losing his angelic wings. Then he flies to the crumbling Colosseum where the other fallen Angels are assembled. Then the bird moves on to the gates of Hell, which are guarded by Sin, the half woman and half serpent daughter of Satan, and Death, his son. The Hell Hounds are attached to Sin at her waist and came about because of the rape of Sin by her brother Death.
Afterward, Satan flies through the Abyss, and then you can see the virgin Earth in the distance as he drops from the waterfall. Then it cuts to images of the Earth still being created, after which Satan enters Earth with a cloud of destruction at the North Pole.
It’s a fascinating, albeit exceptionally difficult to read story, a great video, and a song that I quite like. He’s only playing America’s biggest cities, however, landing in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York.
David Gilmour is heading to South America for a short tour there, then heading to North America in March
David Gilmour released his fourth solo album, which he’s on tour now promoting. (Photo credit: Kevin Westenberg)