(Credit: Alamy)
Mon 27 October 2025 16:44, UK
The world of the 1960s music scene was a strange place to be. Almost overnight, Britain emerged as one of the frontrunners of the new musical sound, and though it was heavily inspired by the Delta blues, a whole new range of artists seemed to arrive in the capital, all looking for a piece of the pie, including Pink Floyd.
But the band, originally comprised of Syd Barrett, Roger Waters, Nick Mason and Richard Wright, were a little different. With foundations in jazz and inspirations from the burgeoning world of psychedelia, it soon became clear that the Floyd were a different kind of band altogether. They were the princes of acid rock, and they were not about to follow the rules.
Even after Barrett left the group, things continued in this way. As rock bands continue to search for killer singles to reach the top of the charts, Pink Floyd, alongside their new recruit, David Gilmour, pranced along a different path.
Pink Floyd excelled at creating songs that defied the traditional rules of songwriting. They rarely carried out their business in an ordinary fashion, and experimentation was at the heart of Pink Floyd’s success, leading to the creation of a classic track which the band’s David Gilmour described as a “masterwork”.
The track in question is ‘Echoes’, which appeared on Meddle. The effort is more than a typical definition of a song; it’s a 23-minute piece of theatre which couldn’t have been crafted by any other act on the planet. Meddle was the first album which landed upon their trademark soundscape, setting a blueprint for the group going forward and ‘Echoes’ was crucial in their development.
The original line-up of Pink Floyd. (Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
While Pink Floyd were already one of the biggest bands in Britain, it was their last two albums, Ummagumma and Atom Heart Mother, which saw them move away from the psychedelic sound of their early work, but the band were yet to stride. With Meddle, Pink Floyd finally unlocked their potential and ‘Echoes’ was the album’s most crucial component.
Even after they recorded the song, ‘Echoes’ continued to be a source of reference for Pink Floyd in the studio and provided a basis to make ‘One Of These Days’, the opening track to the same album.
Without ‘Echoes’, Meddle would have fallen to pieces, and in the mind of Gilmour, it was vital in Pink Floyd becoming the band they always could have been. Looking back upon the release of Guitar World in 1993, Gilmour reflected, “Well, I think ‘Echoes’ is the masterwork of the album – the one where we were all discovering what Pink Floyd is about. ‘One Of These Days’ is a little subsidiary piece that came out of the work on ‘Echoes’.”
He continued: “I always loved it. It’s seminal, I suppose, yeah. A lot shorter, in any case – better for radio play. Meddle is really the album where all four of us were finding our feet – the way we wanted Pink Floyd to be. Much more than on Ummagumma or Atom Heart Mother.”
In the same conversation, Gilmour explained how ‘Echoes’ was one of the pivotal songs in the Pink Floyd back catalogue and stated how it led to them later creating their magnum opus, The Dark Side Of The Moon. “‘A Saucerful of Secrets’ was a very important track; it gave us our direction forward. If you take ‘A Saucerful of Secrets’, ‘Atom Heart Mother’ and ‘Echoes’ – all lead logically to Dark Side of the Moon,” he reflected.
Additionally, Gilmour has previously labelled ‘Echoes’ as his favourite song by Pink Floyd to perform live, although he hasn’t performed the track since the death of Rick Wright. Speaking at an event in 2020, the musician revealed: “‘Echoes’, I would say. Was terrific fun to play, particularly on my last solo tour and the solo tour in 2006 with Rick Wright. That was terrific, and it couldn’t and shouldn’t be played again now he’s dead.”
Watch the footage below of Gilmour performing ‘Echoes’ with the assistance of Wright in 2006.
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