Creating a classic usually means giving 110% every time you walk into the studio. No one is settling on making an album that is merely good, and when someone has the right idea, they can turn even the strangest scenario into absolute gold if they know what they’re doing.
While Pink Floyd eventually got to the point where they could make rock and roll marvels every time they made a record, David Gilmour did have a few moments where he felt that he didn’t do as well as he could have.
Granted, Gilmour has reached the kind of heights that deserve a spot in the guitar god heavens. He already has some of the greatest solos of all time to his name, and anyone who claims they could have done a better job writing the guitar break on ‘Comfortably Numb’ is either delusional or has never heard the song.
When Gilmour first began working with Floyd, though, he wasn’t exactly the first person someone would come to for writing songs. He had blown away much of his competition when the band started experimenting, but since his initial role was to stand in for Syd Barrett, he didn’t exactly have any instructions about what he was supposed to do when left to his own devices in the studio.
After years of fumbling in the dark, Meddle at least showed them moving in the right direction. They had spent years making moody bits of avant-garde music, but hearing ‘Echoes’ was like a revelation taking place over 23 minutes. Everyone knew that the band had potential, but this was the moment they realised they could make something transcendent, and we didn’t have to wait long for them to capitalise on it.
“I went through a bad patch.”
Roger Waters had already been grappling with the idea of an album about madness and what drives people to the brink of sanity, and by the time Dark Side of the Moon was released, they had hit perfection. Even if the record was a heavier listen compared to the other pop-rock acts out at the time, they had hit upon the central themes of life everyone would have to go through. It’s just a shame that Gilmour was kept at a distance.
By his own admission, Gilmour felt that he didn’t do nearly as much as he should have when putting the album together, saying, “I didn’t pull my weight when we were writing The Dark Side Of The Moon. That wasn’t true when we were playing it live and recording – but I went through a bad patch. Roger worked all sorts of hours on the concept and the lyrics while the rest of us went home to enjoy our suppers. I still feel appreciative of that. He did a very good job.”
Sure, his writing credits might not have been as frequent, but his strength was always in developing a mood over the course of a song. Despite not having the proper writing credits on songs like ‘Time’ and ‘Money’, his solos are the entire reason they have any momentum, especially the latter, which has two different sides when he switches his tone controls to fit the mood.
While Gilmour felt he could have done more compared to Waters’s vision, it would only get that much worse when the bassist started dictating the entire studio environment when working on The Wall. Waters always had a vision for what every one of their albums was supposed to be about, but if he was responsible for the concepts of Pink Floyd, Gilmour was responsible for the sound of the band.
