The band Paul McCartney thought created “an extraterrestrial world”
Music has never been about just notes on a page. Rather than the study of theory, many musicians, both past and present, see their craft as being about making a completely different world for the listener. Although Paul McCartney may have created detailed works of fiction throughout every single song he has written, he considers one band to be the best at transporting the listener somewhere else.
Before any rock band had started to transcend the genre, though, McCartney was already making some of the biggest strides in popular music in The Beatles. Throughout the 1960s, every one of the band’s albums was looked at as a slightly different creative endeavour, taking the building blocks of rock and roll and adding different sonic textures into the mix across albums like Sgt Pepper and Abbey Road.
While the band were putting the finishing touches on Sgt Pepper, another band was getting started just a couple of feet away. On the other side of Abbey Road Studios, Pink Floyd was hard at work making their debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, creating a dizzying sound that encapsulated the experimentation behind the birth of London’s acid rock scene.
Although Floyd were still at the hands of guitarist Syd Barrett, it would be only a few years that they began falling apart, with the frontman slowly losing his battle with his mental health. Once McCartney had gone his separate way from the Fab Four, though, his next band, Wings, would find themselves competing with the prog giants as one of the kings of the stadium rock scene.
When talking about the band’s appeal, McCartney thought that the writing of David Gilmour and Roger Waters was enough to transport someone to another world, remarking in The Lyrics, “Pink Floyd had made some great records in the 1970s. Dark Side of the Moon had come out in 1973, and it would have been natural for Wings to do something in their style. Pink Floyd’s world was almost an extraterrestrial world, so it was a nice place to go.”
Looking at the way the band sculpted their songs, that spaced-out feeling makes a lot of sense. Aside from all of the reverb placed on the instruments, the massive sounds of David Gilmour’s guitar and the otherworldly haze of Richard Wright’s keyboard parts made the band sound like they were floating through the cosmos in search of new lands.
Coming after Band on the Run, McCartney would eventually write in that style as well on the next album, Venus and Mars. Framed as a rock and roll show taking place in space, McCartney would make songs that suited that otherworld style, whether it was the strange looping chord progression of ‘Love in Song’ or Jimmy McCullouch creating his answer to the song ‘Money’ on ‘Medicine Jar’.
McCartney would also become friendly with David Gilmour, working with him to create the song ‘No More Lonely Nights’ and become Macca’s regular guitarist for the covers album Run Devil Run. Although McCartney could keep writing music in his formula for the rest of his life, seeing the aura of Floyd is bound to affect anyone who hears it.
