How Richard Wright brought jazz to five Pink Floyd songs
Every iconic rock and roll band tends to have that one secret weapon among their ranks that no one ever talks about. The Beatles would have probably not reached the heights that they knew without Ringo Starr, and as much as people like to preach the good word of Jimmy Page, Led Zeppelin had an ace in the hole when they got John Paul Jones in the band to work on arrangements. Although every member of Pink Floyd made them what they were, Richard Wright brought an element of jazz to the mix no one had ever considered.
Whereas Roger Waters was about setting up a scene and David Gilmour painted vivid pictures of how he played guitar and sang, Wright was a lot more interested in the strange pieces of harmony in their arsenal. Although he was still more than capable of writing a prog epic, it was never that hard to find traces of everyone from Miles Davis to John Coltrane in how he played.
Because when you think about it, prog-rock is not far from jazz. The whole premise behind both genres is about expanding the vocabulary of everyone on their instruments, and whenever Wright stepped up to take a solo or write his own composition, most people knew they were getting something a bit more refined than the comparatively simplistic songwriting that happened in other groups.
So, when looking through Pink Floyd’s catalogue, remember that it’s not about the individual songwriting credits all the time. It’s about the vibe that comes off of every song, and Wright was the master at finding the right jazzy texture to put alongside any David Gilmour guitar solo.
Richard Wright’s jazz-infused Pink Floyd:
5. Half of The Division Bell
Given his contribution to the band, Wright deserved a much better send-off than the one he was dealt. After being unceremoniously fired by Waters during the making of The Wall, the Gilmour-led version of the group was willing to welcome him back with open arms once the dust settled before The Division Bell. When looking at the different keyboard lines that he performed on the record, though, the prog-rock giants had transformed their songs into massive exercises rather than typical pop.
Since most of the tracks were built out of jam sessions, this is the most uninhibited that Wright has ever been in the studio, including songs that stretch out his ability to solo, like on the title track or him stepping up to the microphone one last time on ‘Wearing the Inside Out’. Even though Pink Floyd wouldn’t release another record for a few more years, Wright’s personality was left somewhere in the grooves of this record.
4. ‘Shine on You Crazy Diamond’ – Wish You Were Here
Compared to the many epics that Floyd wrote throughout their career, ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’ still feels like a one-off in their career. No one else in the band has been able to make something as sprawling as they could over their solo careers, and part of the reason is because of how cathartic it was doing justice to their founder, Syd Barrett. When listening to Wright, though, a lot of the tones that he chose go back to hearing different inventive chord progressions from old jazz records.
Whereas the first half of the piece on side A features him playing a more muted role, hearing him turn the most disconnected chords into something that makes perfect sense is the work of a mad genius, especially when he finds the right notes to weave together the main motif of ‘See Emily Play’ towards the end. Other artists can try to make tribute songs, but thanks to Wright’s different musical vocabulary, ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’ feels like capturing every piece of the band’s time with Barrett in one magical piece.
3. ‘Breathe’ – Dark Side of the Moon
None of the members of Floyd were necessarily snobs when it came to the best music they had at their disposal. If it sounded good, it was good, so why not find a place for it on the album if it happened to fit? But while the germ of an idea that the group had with ‘Breathe’ sounded great, people got invited into the world of Dark Side of the Moon thanks to those off-kilter chords that Wright plays at the top of the tune.
Whereas most of the intro feels fairly standard, two chords that Wright nicked from Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue really put the listener in a different heavy space where everything doesn’t seem quite right. And since the whole point of the record is about a man descending into madness and trying to hold onto his humanity, those two chords practically illustrate both sides of his mind fitting amongst each other.
2. ‘Echoes’ – Meddle
For most fans, ‘Echoes’ marks the moment that Pink Floyd became the juggernaut we know today. They had spent years in the dark after Barrett’s departure, but this was the one time where they started to hit on a sound that felt right for them beyond strictly psychedelia. And if any song clocks in at over 20 minutes, it has to take you on a journey, and the jams in the middle of the tune feel like something that Wright picked up on from his time listening to John Coltrane.
Even in the moments where everything sounds down to the sonar sounds, and Gilmour creates white noise, the sounds they work with are indebted to what jazz connoisseurs were familiar with, only taken to its most experimental conclusion when the music finally comes back in after spending what feels like ages at the bottom of the sonic sea. Pink Floyd was still the definition of progressive, but in one fell swoop, they made a song that defined their later years and had enough muscle to rope in the fusion players as well.
1. ‘The Great Gig in the Sky’ – Dark Side of the Moon
Chances are that anyone who pitched the idea for ‘The Great Gig in the Sky’ would probably be laughed at. A song that’s nothing but one long stretched-out vocal solo underneath a bunch of chords isn’t really something that screams radio hit, but the label never thought of it that way. This was an album that was intended to be listened to as a whole, and while Clare Torry’s fantastic performance overpowers everything in the tune, Wright’s chords peddling away are enough to leave even musical theorists scratching their heads.
While the group had started working on different soundscapes while making movie soundtracks, Wright’s cascading chords are a thing of beauty throughout the song, never staying in one central key for too long and keeping everything pushing forward even without any rigid structure. Most great Pink Floyd songs still adhere to the same verse-chorus mentality, but this was the first time they actually seemed content to have recurring themes, just like records like A Love Supreme did years before.
