Words by Riley Fitzgerald
Graphic by Press

Appearing in a second Livestream to promote wife Polly Sampson‘s new book A Theatre For Dreamers, Pink Floyd‘s David Gilmour has covered two Leonard Cohen songs.

Set on the Greek Island of Hydra Sampson’s novel takes place in the 1960s.

A focal point of the story is a love triangle between two of the island’s inhabitants and young Canadian poet Leonard Cohen.

The novel is inspired by historical events, as Cohen did, in fact, visit the island during the ’60s and fall deeply in love with a Norwegian woman by the name of Marianne Ihlen.

While the first Livestream saw Gilmour covering ‘Bird On A Wire‘ and ‘So Long, Marianne’, this time around he performed two new numbers.

First was ‘Fingerprints‘, a song which appeared on 1977’s Death of a Ladies Man after being written by Cohen on Hydra in the 1960s.

The second was ‘Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye‘, a song of Cohen’s 1967 debut album Songs of Leonard Cohen.

Accompanying Gilmour on both was daughter Romany ‘Rose’ Gilmour, who many fans comment bears a striking resemblance to the Pink Floyd guitarist.

David Gilmour is yet to reveal a new song inspired by the novel ‘Yes I Have Ghosts’.

(It is likely Gilmour will perform the song until Sampson’s postponed book launch events this September.)

The Pink Floyd guitarist is an avowed Leonard Cohen fan.

Gilmour has frequently namechecked the singer-songwriter in several interviews and in 2003 he named Leonard Cohen’s ‘Anthem’ as one of his eight all-time favorite tracks during an interview with BBC radio program Desert Island Discs.

Of the book itself, publisher Bloomsbury describes Polly Sampson’s A Theatre for Dreamers as, “a spellbinding novel about utopian dreams and innocence lost – and the wars waged between men and women on the battlegrounds of genius.”

Leonard Cohen passed away in 2016.

You can order a copy here.