The Spontaneous David Gilmour Solo We Never Heard, Thanks to Pink Floyd Bandmates

For as enduring as music may be, there are plenty of existential threats that can wipe a song or composition from the face of the Earth: a forgotten oral tradition, destroyed physical copies, and, as David Gilmour learned after he lost a spontaneous guitar solo on Pink Floyd’s tenth studio album, Animals, careless mistakes from your bandmates.

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Few people would listen to the track “Dogs” and feel like something was missing from the psychedelic rock band’s arrangement. Nevertheless, there was a second solo by Gilmour that the world never got to hear after his bandmates erased it. Unlike in today’s world of DAWs and “undo” buttons, once you recorded over tape, the data was gone.

Considering how much musical magic comes from its spontaneity, this was quite the frustrating blow for Gilmour. Even decades later, the guitarist’s disappointment is palpable as he described how the studio gaffe happened in a 2025 interview.

A David Gilmour Solo That Only Pink Floyd Heard, Gone Forever

David Gilmour has certainly repeated solos in his career. But he typically tracks them with a sense of spontaneity and improvisation in the studio. Whatever he comes up with off the cuff may or may not be album-worthy. But the beauty (and danger) of tape is that if you don’t like what you recorded, you can easily clear the tape by recording over it. Unfortunately for Gilmour, that’s precisely what Roger Waters and Nick Mason did while editing a different part of “Dogs”.

“We had the whole first half of the song. Then we had a middle breakdown, which became all that weird stuff,” Gilmour recalled. “That was filled with white, two-inch leader tape. Eventually, the rest of the song was tagged on there while we were thinking about and working out what to do with it. There was something on the first half we wanted to erase. Roger and Nick put it into ‘erase,’ and then forgot that it was in ‘erase’ and went right through the leader tape by two minutes and then took away my guitar solo. Completely erased, gone forever. Done.” 

Gilmour was able to recreate a similar section. But as he explained to Beato, “You never quite feel 100 percent satisfied. Although every note has been learned and rehearsed and played, you think, ‘Oh, there’s something about the feel that had before that is gone forever.”

The missing solo clearly didn’t affect public reception too much. Although Pink Floyd released no singles from Animals (meaning “Dogs” was only ever an album cut), the record topped the charts throughout Europe and peaked at No. 2 and No. 3 in the U.K. and U.S., respectively.

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