As one of the main songwriters of The Beatles, Paul McCartney helped change not only music but the world. The band's impact was crucial to the cultural evolution of the 1960s, and the number of groups they inspired, many of which went on to create entirely new musical genres, is immense. One of those bands is the legendary British progressive rock group Pink Floyd, best known for their classic lineup of David Gilmour, Roger Waters, Richard Wright and Nick Mason. Over the decades, Paul McCartney has spoken about many of those artists, including Pink Floyd and David Gilmour. What is Paul McCartney's opinion on Pink Floyd Paul McCartney has been a fan of Pink Floyd since the early days of the band and even had the chance to hear many of their songs before they were released. They were even an influence to the Beatle when he was recording with his band, The Wings, in the 70s as he told in his book "The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present" (2021). "The mid-seventies also marked the rise of glam rock - people like David Bowie and T. Rex. Instead of a band just standing on the stage and simply playing their instruments, we were moving into a period when shows were using theatrical lighting and various stage effects. Bands like Pink Floyd were putting on big, spectacular shows. So when we did this onstage, we had big illustrations of the comic book characters Magneto and Titanium Man on the screens behind us." "Pink Floyd 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. A lot of people did. A few years back, Beck’s record Morning Phase was very like a Floyd record. It won Album of the Year at the Grammys. I listened to it and I thought, ‘That owes a lot to Pink Floyd.’ Pink Floyd’s world was almost an extraterrestrial world, so it was a nice place to go. Of course, I had to make up the Mayor of Baltimore character (In the song 'The Note You Never Wrote'). Why? Because it sounded good. I wasn’t too worried about the meaning. Maybe the song would develop a meaning at some point. Or maybe someone would find a meaning," Paul McCartney said. Paul McCartney heard "Dark Side of The Moon" songs before they were released Coincidentally, when the Progressive Rock band was recording their debut "The Piper At the Gates of Dawn" (1967), The Beatles were also at the Abbey Road studios making "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967). At the time, he had already praised the band when interviewed by Granada Television documentary for the "It's So Far Out, It's Straight Down" documentary. (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage) "What they say and what they're doing, (there is) nothing strange about it. It's just dead straight. They're talking about things that are a bit new. They're talking about things which people don't really know too much about yet. So people tend to put them down a bit and say 'Oh, weirdo, psychedelic' and things. But it's really what's going on around and they're just trying to look into a little bit. So the next time you see the word, any new strange word like psychedelic, drugs, freaked out music and all that. Don't immediately take it as that, you know," Paul McCartney said. He heard songs from The Dark Side of the Moon before it was released Then in 1972, when Floyd started to record "Dark Side of The Moon", Paul was also there working on "Red Rose Speedway". The Beatle recalled that in an interview with Rick Rubin, featured in the documentary “McCartney 1, 2, 3” (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage) in a conversation with the producer Rick Rubin, since the Wings and Pink Floyd were sharing the Abbey Roads studios in in 1972, he had the chance to hear a few parts of “Dark Side of the Moon” before release. “(Pink) Floyd came in after us (at Abbey Road) and did a lot of cool experimental stuff. This was more Wings period, but they were next door making ‘Dark Side of The Moon’. That was pretty cool. (Yeah I listened to it at the time) the engineers were quite interchangeable. So the engineer that would work on their stuff would work on ours. He’d play us some of the ‘Dark Side of The Moon’ stuff," Paul McCartney said. During the making of that record, Pink Floyd asked some people who were in the studio to answer a few questions. Subsequently they used some of those responses in the songs. For example, the phrase 'There is no dark side of the moon really. Matter of fact, it's all dark' was featured on 'Eclipse.' Paul and Linda McCartney also answered some of those questions. However, their responses were not included because they weren’t very direct. McCartney said more humorous things that didn’t fit the tone of the songs. Paul is a big fan of David Gilmour and they played together https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdzVFrvKa6M&list=RDJdzVFrvKa6M&start_radio=1&pp=ygUjcGF1bCBtY2NhcnRuZXkgZGF2aWQgZ2lsbW91ciBjYXZlcm6gBwE%3D McCartney, who is a great guitarist, always praised the Pink Floyd guitarist and singer David Gilmour. He called him a genius in his book “The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present”. The Beatle recalled that the musician played the guitar solo in the song "No More Lonely Nights". “David Gilmour plays the solo on the record. I’ve known him since the early days of Pink Floyd. Dave is a genius of sorts, so I was pulling out all the stops,” he said. Besides working with him on the album "Give My Regards To Broad Street" (1984), Gilmour also played on The Wings single "Rockestra Theme" (1979). Then on the albums “Flowers In The Dirt” (1989) and “Run Devil Run” (1999). Gilmour has always been a huge Beatles fan and in 1999 he had the chance to be a "member" of the band for a while. McCartney formed a supergroup to perform at the Cavern Club in Liverpool, special place for the Beatles' career. Gilmour was the guitarist and the line-up also had the drummer Ian Paice (Deep Purple), guitarist Mick Green, keyboardist Pete Wingfield and Chris HaFII on accordion. The setlist was formed by Beatles songs and classic tracks by various artists from the 50s and 60s.
