The Beatles song that Pink Floyd’s Richard Wright called “utterly puerile”
Much like The Beatles, Pink Floyd were a band adorned with ingenuity and musical talent. Following the mental decline of the band’s original creative lead, Syd Barrett, Roger Waters took the reins as the band’s conceptual coordinator. Meanwhile, David Gilmour bathed in the limelight as the band’s lead guitar extraordinaire, offering his unique melodic seasoning to their progressive material.
All the while, it seemed their pianist, synth player, and occasional singer-songwriter, Richard Wright, quietly went about his business as the group’s understated anchor. While Waters and Gilmour dominated the spotlight, Wright offered a steady ship from which to begin their world domination.
Despite only appearing in the songwriting credits of ten of Pink Floyd’s 217 released songs, Wright was a pivotal force behind many of the band’s most memorable moments during his long-lived tenure. Parallels can quite easily be drawn between Wright’s position in Pink Floyd and George Harrison’s in The Beatles.
As a psychedelic outfit emerging from the 1960s, Pink Floyd were eminently inspired by The Beatles’ latter work. After all, 1967’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is often considered the first prog-rock album and is regularly cited as the pivotal force behind major prog groups like Genesis and Yes.
While Wright was doubtlessly intrigued by the latter Beatles material that spoke of yellow submarines, marmalade skies, egg men and ten thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire, he wasn’t so fussed about the band’s earlier, lovelorn ditties.
In a 1994 interview at his Earl’s Court residence, Wright discussed some of his favourite records as he shuffled through his beastly collection. One of the first he picked out was Music from Big Pink by The Band.
“The centrepiece of this album, ‘The Weight’, is an incredible tune,” Wright opined. “I remember seeing The Band at the Albert Hall in the late ’60s, and in my head, I can virtually hear them singing ‘The Weight’ at that gig even now. The way the song is sung is so emotional I really can hardly describe it. How do you describe an emotional response to music? I could tell you that a piece moves from an E flat major to F sharp or whatever, but that’s not the point at all, is it?”
Continuing, Wright explained how The Band were the first pop group that his ears welcomed with open arms and how, in comparison, acts like The Beatles seemed immature. “The Band were the best thing happening at that time. When I was first in The Floyd, I wasn’t into pop music at all – I was listening to jazz, and when The Beatles released ‘Please Please Me’, I didn’t like it at all. In fact, I thought it was utterly puerile.”
Considering the widespread love for the band, not only in the public sphere but also within his band, with Roger Waters, Nick Mason, and David Gilmour all noted as huge admirers of the group, it is maybe a little surprising that Wright held such disdain for the group. But, in truth, it was what the group represented that seemed to stick in Wright’s throat. ‘Please, Please Me’ may have been flecked with humour and had an undeniably accessible chorus, but it didn’t sit well with Wright’s vision of what a group of musicians should be aiming for.
The keyboardist acted, for a long time, as the group’s artistic ballast. While their heads were turned by the fame of pop music, Wright’s devotion to jazz and ultimate creativity would bleed into their output and allow Pink Floyd to form a new genre of acid rock, and in turn, be a part of the cultural revolution. But that doesn’t mean Wright hated everything on the rock radios of the day.
“There wasn’t much around at the time that excited me, but then I saw The Band,” he continued “, and they were totally different, totally exciting. Like all these recordings, there’s something about this album that touches me emotionally. The music is just lovely, and it makes this a particularly sentimental choice. I must also mention ‘Tears Of Rage’ – a brilliant song.”
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