Formed in London, England back in 1965, Pink Floyd is one of the most successful bands of all time with an estimated amount of more than 250 million records sold worldwide. Their entire discography is praised by most part of the fans, but there are listerners who have their favorite eras.
Some prefer the more Progressive Rock era from the first 7 years of the band and others think the best years are the ones where the band achieved a huge commercial success with records like “Dark Side Of The Moon” (1973) and “The Wall” (1979).
As any music fan the members of the band also have their favorite albums and David Gilmour already revealed which is one of his favorite Pink Floyd records.
The Pink Floyd album that David Gilmour said is one of his favorites
The praised guitarist and singer David Gilmour first joined the band in 1967 and his first record with the band was “A Saucerful of Secrets” released in the same year. He gained more space in the group when the founding member, guitarist and singer Syd Barrett was fired due to his deteriorating mental state and Gilmour’s contributions were crucial for the evolution of the band’s sound.
Over the decades he talked about the band’s discography and in an interview with B. Pinnell back in 1988 he said that the album “Meddle” (1971) is one of his favorite ones.
“Meddle is amongst my favorites. ‘Meddle’, I mean, that, to me, is the start of the path forward for PF really, and ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ is the next, sort of, stage on from that where we actually really got it right, and we, we got the record right and we got the cover right and the whole package, you know, the whole thing was very good, you know, recording the songs, the lyrics, the idea.”
“The whole thing was a very powerful package, you know, we knew before we finished it that that it was definitely going to do a lot better than anything we’d done before. I mean we didn’t think that it would do that well, but, um, we definitely knew that it would do considerably better than anything we’d done before,” David Gilmour said.
“Meddle” was the fifth Pink Floyd album with Gilmour and has famous tracks like “Echoes” and “One of These Days”. It was praised by the critics at the time and a commercial succces in the United Kingdom.
David Gilmour’s favorite song from “Meddle” (1971)
Talking with Guitar World magazine in 1993, Gilmour said that “Echoes” is the “masterwork” of the album “Meddle”. The musician said that it was a moment when the band members were discovering what Pink Flyod was about.
“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’. 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’,” David Gilmour said.
He said that it’s his favorite Pink Floyd song to perform live
During the quarantine due to the Pandemic in 2020, Gilmour and his family made many livestreams on his social networks and they answered many questions from fans. One of them was which Pink Floyd song Gilmour liked to play live the most. He said (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage):
“‘Echoes’, I would say. Was terrific fun to play, particularly on my last solo tour. The solo tour in 2006 with Rick Wright. I always look on that song as being very much a duet thing between him and me.”
“So that was terrific. It couldn’t and shouldn’t be played again now that he is dead.” Richard Wright died back in 2008 at the age of 65 victim of cancer.
Written by bassist and singer Roger Waters the song was performed regularly live from 1971 to 1975 during the group’s tours. Also was on the setlist in their classic concert film “Live At Pompeii” (1972).