The Music World Holds Its Breath: David Gilmour, 79, Fights for Life with Romany at His Side

London, 1 December 2025. The sky over the Thames is the colour of wet slate, and the city feels strangely quiet tonight, as though every amplifier in the world has been turned down to zero. Word broke just after dawn: David Jon Gilmour, CBE, the man whose guitar once bent time itself, is in critical condition in a private London hospital, clinging to life after a sudden and catastrophic medical event that struck without warning.

It happened last Thursday evening, in the warm, low-lit kitchen of the Gilmour family home in West Sussex. David, still boyishly handsome at 79, had been laughing with his youngest daughter Romany over a late supper. Friends say he stood to fetch another bottle of red, took two steps, and then, without a sound, folded to the floor. Romany, 23, the poised, dark-eyed singer who has inherited her father’s quiet intensity and her mother Polly Samson’s lyrical gift, was the first to reach him. She dialled 999 while cradling his head, her voice steady only because it had to be. Paramedics arrived within eight minutes; by then David was unresponsive. Scans at the hospital revealed a massive intracranial haemorrhage, doctors stunned by both its severity and its suddenness. Surgeons fought through the night to relieve pressure on his brain. As of this evening, he remains in the neuro-intensive care unit, sedated, ventilated, and, in the words of the family, “fighting with everything he has”.

Romany has not left the hospital once. She sleeps in snatches on a narrow chair beside his bed, her guitar resting against the wall like a silent sentinel. Nurses report that she sings to him, softly, fragments of “Comfortably Numb”, “Wish You Were Here”, and the lullabies he once wrote for her when she was small. At 4:17 a.m. today she posted a single photograph on Instagram: her hand wrapped around his, the familiar silver rings still on his fingers, captioned only with a broken-heart emoji and the words “My father is fighting. Please pray with us.” Within minutes #PrayForGilmour was trending worldwide.

The outpouring has been oceanic. From the steps of the Sydney Opera House to the alleyways of Marrakesh, fans have gathered with candles and portable speakers, letting “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” drift into the night. In Pompeii, where David performed those legendary 2016 concerts among the ruins, local teenagers laid nine white roses, one for each decade of his life, at the entrance to the amphitheatre. Abbey Road Studios dimmed its famous zebra crossing lights for ten minutes in solidarity. Nick Mason and Guy Pratt issued a joint statement: “David is the kindest, funniest, most profoundly musical soul any of us have ever known. We are holding him in our hearts and willing him back to us.” Even Roger Waters, long estranged, released a brief note: “Differences fade at a bedside. Thinking of David and his beautiful family.”

Romany Gilmour is no stranger to her father’s spotlight, yet she has always moved through it with quiet grace. Born in 2002, the youngest of David and Polly’s four children together (she has four older half-siblings from David’s first marriage to Ginger), she grew up surrounded by music but never crushed by it. David, ever the gentle patriarch, encouraged rather than pushed. She made her recording debut at 17, singing and playing piano on “Yes, I Have Ghosts”, the haunting 2020 single that marked her father’s first new music in five years. On stage with him at Brighton Dome and the Savoy Theatre, her crystalline voice weaving through his solos, audiences saw not legacy but continuity, a new branch growing from an ancient tree.

Tonight, that tree is trembling.

Those close to the family describe a man who, even at 79, seemed immortal: surfing in Cornwall last summer, rehearsing new material with guitarist Chester Kamen only weeks ago, planning a short residency at the Royal Albert Hall for spring 2026. His lockdown album Luck and Strange (2024) had been hailed as one of his finest, its title track featuring Romany’s ethereal backing vocals. Friends say he had never felt better, that he joked about finally learning to relax. The haemorrhage, they say, came “like lightning from a clear sky”.

Inside the ICU, the only sounds are the rhythmic hiss of the ventilator and the occasional murmur of Romany’s voice. She has been heard whispering lines from his own lyrics back to him: “Remember when you were young… you shone like the sun.” Polly, exhausted but resolute, keeps vigil in the corridor with Charlie, Joe, and Gabriel, David’s other children. Rick Wills, David’s bassist of 40 years, sits quietly in the relatives’ room, strumming unplugged chords on a travel guitar, as if music itself might act as medicine.

The world waits. Record shops in Tokyo report The Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here selling out by noon. Radio stations from Los Angeles to Lisbon have suspended regular programming for Gilmour marathons. On Reddit’s r/pinkfloyd, users are posting childhood photos of themselves falling asleep to Meddle, thanking the man who soundtracked their lives. A viral video shows a lone busker in Prague playing the four-note motif of “Shine On” on a battered Stratocaster while commuters stop, heads bowed, some openly weeping.

David Gilmour has spent six decades teaching us how to feel without words, how a single bent note can hold more sorrow, hope, and transcendence than any lyric. Tonight, millions are trying to send that feeling back to him, a reverse solo travelling across continents, through hospital corridors, into a quiet room where a daughter refuses to let go of her father’s hand.

Romany posted again an hour ago, just eight words:

“Dad, the song isn’t finished. Keep playing.”

The music world isn’t sleeping.
Every candle lit, every prayer whispered, every silent tear is another note in the longest, most heartfelt solo the world has ever played for him.

Hold on, David.
We’re all listening.
We’re all praying with you, Romany.