Being a musician seems like a dream job for many, but the early days of building a career like that are usually full of many challenges. No matter how talented they are, most artists lack connections and opportunities to deliver their music to the masses in the first place. So, the way to success takes time, dedication, and commitment.
Though artists have more control over their careers than ever before in today’s world due to the various routes they can take to promote their music, making money continues to be one of the biggest challenges. Keeping that in mind, think about what the situation was like in the 1960s when the opportunities were much more limited compared to today.
However, no matter how much he struggled in that period coinciding with his career’s beginning, Pink Floyd icon David Gilmour never gave up his big dream of being a worldwide-known musician, even though it compelled him to be also occupied with other jobs to earn a living. So, that’s why the talented guitarist had to get into modeling for three days during the mid-’60s.
Shortly before becoming a Pink Floyd member, Gilmour busked around France and Spain with friends, living daily for food and a place to sleep. Under those poor conditions, he even ended up being treated for malnutrition in a hospital. During that period, David needed to work in various jobs, from being a driver to serving as an assistant to a fashion designer.
Yet unfortunately, his financial difficulties continued also after returning to England after spending some time in Europe, leading him to step into a modeling career, this time simply for survival purposes. During a 2003 interview with Record Collector, the guitarist reflected on that challenging period and how his career in male modeling started.
“I was hanging about in London for moments in the mid-’60s,” David Gilmour recalled. “I was getting a little bored with Cambridge. Being in a band, gigging two to five times a week, there wasn’t much money around. We’d get an average of A320 to A325 a gig to share between six or seven people. Every once in a while, someone I knew would say that they wanted someone to go up to Santa Pod Raceway next week and sit in a stupid motor with stupid clothes on and have your photo taken.”
He continued, “It was A350 for a day. Fifty quid a day! I was in. I was never a model at an agency or anything like that, but if you could get a job like that, the equivalent of three weeks gigging, you jumped at it. That said, I probably only did three days like that in my life. So, it’s not strictly accurate when I’m described as a male model.”
Thus, Gilmour would constantly hear about the modeling job from some of his friends, eventually leading him to give it a try to make his life a little easier. Still, he wasn’t attached to any agency and only did it for three days, so he didn’t consider himself a male model. Luckily, the musician’s path would cross with Pink Floyd a while later and save him from all his financial troubles.
