Richard Wright’s favourite Pink Floyd song
Unbeknownst even to some of the most ardent Pink Floyd fanatics, keyboardist Richard Wright took a central position in the band during Syd Barrett’s tenure as frontman. As the London-based group migrated from their R&B roots towards Cream-inspired psychedelic rock, Barrett wrote most of the lyrics, but Wright frequently offered his vocals and songwriting wisdom.
When Barrett finally left Pink Floyd in 1968 amid drug abuse and psychological issues, David Gilmour stepped in as a full-time replacement guitarist. Through the remainder of the decade, bassist Roger Waters stepped up to the plate as creative lead. Under this new regime, Wright was equally vital, but the egos of Waters and Gilmour began to eclipse his involvement somewhat.
Despite only appearing in the songwriting credits of ten of Pink Floyd’s 217 released songs, Wright was an irreplaceable force behind many of the band’s memorable moments throughout its four-decade recording history. Parallels between Wright’s position in Pink Floyd and George Harrison’s in The Beatles can quite easily be drawn.
In the early 1970s, Pink Floyd entered its most acclaimed period, highlighted by the 1973 album The Dark Side of the Moon. Wright contributed to some of the record’s most prominent moments, including ‘The Great Gig in the Sky’, ‘Us and Them’ and ‘Time’. These contributions undoubtedly stood out for the artist, but his proudest moment actually arrived on the 1971 album Meddle.
Meddle was a smorgasbord of intriguing directions often considered Pink Floyd’s transition from esoteric psychedelia to expansive prog-rock conquest. Central to this transition, of course, was the side two epic ‘Echoes’. The song’s ethereal, protracted composition foreshadows successes to come, and although Waters, Gilmour and Nick Mason voiced minor reservations about the track over the years, it remained a favourite of Wright’s.
Waters composed the lyrics for ‘Echoes’, but musically, it was a group effort. Wright and Gilmour were especially proactive in fine-tuning the composition. Speaking to Mojo, Wright once bemoaned how the song is often considered to have very little to do with him. “The whole piano thing at the beginning and the chord structure is mine, so I had a large part in writing that,” he pointed out. “But it’s credited to other people, of course. Roger obviously wrote the lyrics.”
When Wright passed away in 2008, Gilmour retired ‘Echoes’ from future setlists in tribute to Wright’s irreplaceable role in creating the track. “There’s something that’s specifically so individual about the way that Rick and I play in that, that you can’t get someone to learn it and do it just like that,“ Gilmour told Rolling Stone in 2016.
Watch Pink Floyd perform ‘Echoes’ in Pompeii below.
