The musician David Gilmour called the “soul” of Pink Floyd
Any classic rock band is more than the sum of their parts. Even when the group is named after one person or has a chief songwriter at the helm, it’s hard to think of groups like Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers or Neil Young and Crazy Horse without thinking of everyone working together as a whole. It’s always a democratic process that makes for the best music, and even in a band that has gone through as many leaders as Pink Floyd, David Gilmour always held onto that democratic spirit.
Listening to the projects the band made after Syd Barrett’s departure, it was clear that their survival was going to be based on working together. Roger Waters may have taken the reins in terms of songwriting, but there were only going to be so many places he could if he had only a handful of ideas to work with.
And when they finally started working on some of their epics, it always came from every band member playing off each other. As much as Waters can claim writing credit on a song like ‘Echoes’ for writing all of the lyrics, it’s all about the band creating that ethereal sound together, like Gilmour making those strange whale sounds with his guitar or hearing Nick Mason’s drums sound like a heartbeat throughout the piece.
However, while Gilmour’s guitar might have been crying out in pain throughout the piece, Richard Wright was always the constant throughout Pink Floyd’s discography. He wasn’t the most prolific songwriter, but his keyboard textures in their early career were half the reason why their albums worked, eventually turning in tracks like ‘Any Colour You Like’ that are practically lush soundscapes more than proper songs.
Even when he wasn’t immediately inspired, Wright still managed to give his best work to the project. It’s still a crime that Waters cut him out of the room in some respects on The Wall, but despite being somewhat muted on Animals, the drone-like synths behind songs like ‘Dogs’ and ‘Sheep’ do a great job of painting the picture of the song rather than having to sing or write any lyrics.
Gilmour may have been the one to take over the band once Waters left, but even he had to admit that Floyd would have been faceless without Wright in the mix, saying, “‘Echoes’ marked a real moment of clarity, the moment when we all realised we were getting somewhere, finding a direction. And Rick, who in many ways is the soul of Pink Floyd, was as much a part of that as anybody. If you’re looking at who wrote what, I’d say that 80 per cent of the music on ‘Echoes’ is either mine or Rick’s.”
And no matter how many times the band tried to work without him, albums like The Final Cut feel much more neutered without his presence. Wright was the one instrumental to the band’s live sound throughout their glory period, and when they officially reunited at Live 8, that was the last time it truly felt like the heart and soul of Pink Floyd back onstage for one last go-around.
Regardless of how softspoken he was behind the scenes, though, Wright deserves more than a casual mention when talking about the core ethos of Pink Floyd. Waters is responsible for writing their classics, and Gilmour may have given those words a proper voice, but anyone remotely interested in the sound of the band needs to take notes from what Wright played.
