David Gilmour and Ginger Gilmour: A Marriage Unraveled, and the Songs That Followed

David Gilmour married his first wife, Ginger (born Virginia Hasenbein), in 1975, after a long courtship that began when she was a teenage model and art student. They had four children together and largely kept family life private. But by the late 1980s, the marriage was strained by Gilmour’s constant touring and an emotional distance that had crept in—the same kind of communication breakdown that The Division Bell would later try to sort out.

Their divorce was finalized in 1990, and Gilmour has acknowledged that much of the lyrical content on Pink Floyd’s 1994 album came from that fallout. He began a relationship with writer Polly Samson during the same period, and Samson ended up co-writing most of the album’s lyrics, often drawing directly on Gilmour’s regrets and reflections. Songs like “A Great Day for Freedom” and the unplugged bitterness of “Lost for Words” read as quiet postmortems of a marriage that couldn’t be saved.

Interestingly, the split