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David Gilmour is the first solo album from Pink Floyd guitarist and vocalist David Gilmour, released in May 1978 (see 1978 in music) in the UK and on June 17, 1978 in the US. The album reached #17 in the UK and #29 on the Billboard US album charts and was certified Gold in the US by the RIAA. The album was produced by Gilmour himself, and consists mostly of bluesy, guitar oriented rock songs except for the ballad So Far Away.

In an interview with Circus Magazine in 1978, Gilmour said this: "This album [David Gilmour] was important to me in terms of self respect. At first I didn't think my name was big enough to carry it. Being in a group for so long can be a bit claustrophobic, and I needed to step out from behind Pink Floyd's shadow."

The album was recorded at Super Bear Studios in France between December 1977 and early January 1978 with engineer John Etchells. Then the album was mixed at the same studio in March 1978 by Nick Griffiths. The cover was done by Hipgnosis and Gilmour.

There was no credit for playing guitar (which Gilmour obviously did) on the original EMI pressings of the original album LP-cover. Gilmour is credited for contributing "Keyboards, Vocals". Luckily the CBS/Columbia pressings (outside Europe) listed Gilmour for contributing "Guitars, Keyboards, Vocals".

The album's only single was "There's No Way Out of Here" which flopped in Europe but did extremely well on American FM rock radio. The song was originally recorded by the band Unicorn (which Gilmour produced) in 1976 as "No Way Out of Here" for their album Too Many Crooks and was later covered by New Jersey stoner metal band Monster Magnet on their Monolithic Baby! album.

The album is a Joker's Wild reunion of sorts, with Rick Wills and Willie Wilson joining Gilmour for the recording of the album.

One of the tunes he wrote at the time, but did not use, evolved into the Pink Floyd classic "Comfortably Numb" from The Wall. However, one song included on this album, "So Far Away", used a chorus progression not unlike the chorus to "Comfortably Numb", albeit in a different key.

The instrumental song "Raise My Rent" includes bits that would later be resurrected in the Pink Floyd songs "What Do You Want from Me?", "Hey You" and "Keep Talking".

A slightly different version of the song "Short and Sweet" can also be found on collaborator Roy Harper's 1980 album, The Unknown Soldier. Musically, "Short and Sweet" can be seen as a precursor to "Run Like Hell" (also from The Wall), with its shifting chords over a D pedal point, and a flanged guitar in Drop D tuning.

David Gilmour was re-released by EMI Records in Europe as a digitally remastered CD on August 14, 2006. Legacy Recordings/Columbia Records released the remastered CD in the US and Canada on September 12, 2006.

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