David Gilmour says touring as a solo act rather than with Pink Floyd is ... uh ... hmmm ...

"I can't think of exactly the right word," Gilmour told the Toronto Sun recently.

"It's 'lighter' in a way, but that's not quite it. It's reasonably sort of lightweight, not in terms of what or how we play, but in terms of the load we carry around.

"There must be a fantastic word that would express my feelings exactly. Think of a good word and put it in for me, okay? I'll have to look it up in my thesaurus."

Well, Gilmour won't need a thesaurus for this, but here goes:

Free.

Gilmour, who plays back-to-back shows at Massey Hall on Sunday and Monday in support of his recent chart-topping solo CD On An Island, does not want to be free of the Pink Floyd legacy. He is fiercely proud of that, and rightly so.

But Gilmour, the voice and guitar behind Pink Floyd, doesn't mind being free of the weighty expectations that always accompany even the most modest of Pink Floyd endeavours.

"That Pink Floyd thing is a big piece of luggage to cart around," said Gilmour, 60.

"There are a lot of people (travelling with the band) and the expectation is of a great big show with lots of razzle. It's just not a place I fancy being in right at this moment.

"And I don't want to make that sound like a negative in any way. It has nothing to do with any ill-feeling that people like to invent. We (the members of Pink Floyd) are all talking to each other and all that sort of stuff. It's just I'm at a point in my life where I want to be doing something that's ... uh ... "

Free.

Gilmour himself saying, "ill-feeling that people like to invent," leads to an obvious query: Is Gilmour saying that the two decades of alleged feuding between himself and Pink Floyd bassist Rogers Waters has been "invented?"

"Well, I mean, Roger and I, it's not untrue to say we have had an ongoing animosity," Gilmour admitted. "But I should put it correctly and say the animosity has come from Roger to me, for the last, God, what is it, just over 20 years, when I had the temerity to continue my band when Roger left.

"And of course it's easy to goad people like me into a little bit of retaliation, and that has been jolly entertaining.

"But Roger and I, to some extent, have patched up our ... well, we haven't patched up our differences, we still have our differences, obviously. We have different views on things. We always did have and we always will have. But we are on talking terms again.

"(Waters) has sort of moved back toward the right side, you could say."

Gilmour and Waters managed to co-exist with spectacular results when Pink Floyd reunited for the Live 8 concert in London last summer.

There was a noticeably emotional response from the crowd at Hyde Park as Gilmour and Waters (in particular) seemed to be having the time of their lives playing a handful of famous tunes from their vast back catalogue.

"Maybe (the fans) were so sick of all the s--- that has been going on for all this time, they were going, 'Thank God, we don't have to hear any more of that,' " Gilmour reasoned.

Regardless, there are no plans for any other Pink Floyd reunion projects, either on stage or in the studio, in the foreseeable future.

Gilmour has a full life as a family man and a businessman, so going on tour with a half-dozen accomplished musicians and playing a cosy venue such as Massey Hall is the extent of what he wants to undertake in terms of grandiosity.

"It's great, I'm entirely enjoying it," Gilmour said.

"There aren't any major sort of expectations that I have to try to live up to. I'm free to do whatever the hell I want."

Well, how about that -- given enough time, Gilmour eventually came up with the word "free."

But in truth, David Gilmour always has insisted upon the freedom to do whatever the hell he wants.

The history of rock music is richer for it.

'Jolly good luck' to his ex-Floyd mates

David Gilmour is not offended that fellow Pink Floyd alumni Roger Waters and Nick Mason are planning to play a version of the band's classic Dark Side Of The Moon album in concert this summer.

"Well, jolly good luck to them," said Gilmour, without a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

"Yeah, yeah, it's fine. It's a free world. There is room for everyone. I just want to enjoy doing what I'm doing and let them enjoy what they're doing. Everyone should have freedom to do what they want to do, as much as is reasonably possible and it isn't harmful to other people."

Still, some Pink Floyd fans might be of the opinion that Waters, who has had a stormy relationship with Gilmour over the past 20 years, should not be undertaking Dark Side Of The Moon without Gilmour.

"Hey, we've played Dark Side Of The Moon without Roger," said Gilmour, referring to the years when Gilmour carried on with Pink Floyd after Waters left the group.

"Roger wrote all the words and a fair bit of the music on Dark Side Of The Moon. So there's absolutely no reason at all why he shouldn't go and play it. In fact, he asked recently if we would let him use the original film we used with the show, and we said, 'Fine, go ahead.' "

And if anyone else out there wants to have a go at Dark Side Of The Moon, be Gilmour's guest.

"Any bar band in the world can play Dark Side Of The Moon if they want to," Gilmour said.

An average bar band wouldn't necessarily play it well, though.

"That is a different issue," Gilmour said.

Gilmour scores! ... on T.O. trivia

David Gilmour knows a thing or two about Toronto.

During a recent interview with The Toronto Sun, the person conducting the interview casually mentioned having been a sportswriter at this newspaper.

"There's a well-known Canadian Gilmour in ice hockey or something, isn't there?" said Gilmour, a key member of Pink Floyd and now a best-selling solo artist.

Well, yes there is, now that you mention it.

Doug Gilmour is a former Maple Leafs captain who now writes a column in this very publication.

"Well, my father's name is Doug Gilmour," David said. Maybe that's why he remembers it so well.

But David Gilmour wasn't finished.

"Wasn't Neil Young's father a sportswriter or something?" Gilmour asked.

Well, David, you're 2-for-2 on Toronto trivia.

Scott Young, of course, was a sportswriter for decades in this city, working at both The Globe And Mail and the Telegram, which, coincidentally, is the father of the Sun.

Small world, eh?