David Gilmour Paid Tribute to Former Pink Floyd Bandmate in This Touching Solo Track

Some of Pink Floyd’s most recognizable songs and albums were tributes to fallen friends and colleagues, most notably Syd Barrett. The founding member of the band famously inspired iconic albums like Wish You Were Here and The Wall. Though, sadly, he was out of the band before they reached the apex of their fame because of these albums.

Videos by American Songwriter

But Barrett wasn’t the only Pink Floyd member memorialized in song. Decades after the creative brainpower behind The Piper at the Gates of Dawn got unceremoniously kicked out of the band, the psychedelic rock ‘n’ rollers lost another colleague, this time in a much more tragic sense. Richard Wright, the band’s long-time keyboardist, died of lung cancer at his London home in mid-September 2008. He was 65. 

David Gilmour, the guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter who replaced Barrett in the late 1960s, paid tribute to Wright through a solo track that, although not as popular as some of his other work with Pink Floyd, was just as emotional and heartfelt.

David Gilmour Paid Tribute to Richard Wright in 2015

Following founding member and bassist Roger Waters’ departure from Pink Floyd in the 1980s, the psychedelic rock band never looked quite the same. David Gilmour and the remaining band members continued to write and record new material. But legal battles and interpersonal conflict made these endeavors even more arduous than they would be under more copacetic circumstances. Multiple solo albums from Pink Floyd members also followed, including Rattle That Lock, which was Gilmour’s fourth solo studio album. 

Released in 2015, Gilmour followed the tradition he had with his former bandmates to eulogize his late colleague, Rick Wright. The penultimate A-side track, “A Boat Lies Waiting”, was an “elegy of sorts,” Gilmour explained to Tidal.

“The funny thing is, it’s quite an old song. I played the piano on it, and it does quite sound like Rick. It just came to me naturally. I’m not sure from where or how. But it was long before Rick died that that piece of music came out. You can hear my son, who’s now 20, as a newborn baby, three months old or something, squawking on that track.”

The transformation of “A Boat Lies Waiting” from a back-pocket tune without a real home to an emotional tribute for his deceased friend coincided with Gilmour’s revelation that his relationship with Wright meant even more than he realized. Gilmour called Wright “one of my dearest friends, I’ve realized, especially since he’s been gone.”

Photo by ullstein bild/ullstein bild via Getty Images