Echoes (Pink Floyd song)

The track evolved from a variety of different musical themes and ideas, including instrumental passages and studio effects, resulting in the side-long piece.

The music, credited to all the band, was mainly written by Richard Wright and David Gilmour, while Roger Waters' lyrics addressed themes of human communication and empathy, to which he returned in later work.

"Echoes" has been regarded by critics as an important song that transitions between Pink Floyd's early experimental material as a cult band and later mainstream success.

"Echoes" begins with a "ping" that was created as a result of an experiment very early in the Meddle sessions, produced by amplifying a grand piano played by Richard Wright and sending the signal through a Leslie speaker and a Binson Echorec unit.

[4] This is followed by a repeat of the opening piano "pings" and a Farfisa organ solo from Wright, said to have been influenced by the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations" (1967).

[17] For the final lyrics, Waters took inspiration from his time in London in the mid to late 1960s, feeling a sense of disconnection and looking for the potential for humans to connect with each other.

[20] Pink Floyd were featured on an episode of the BBC1 programme 24 Hours discussing bootleg recordings, which showed them rehearsing "Echoes" at Abbey Road.

[21] Waters accused Andrew Lloyd Webber of plagiarising a prominent instrumental from "Echoes" for the main theme in the 1986 musical The Phantom of the Opera.

[23] Pink Floyd first performed "Echoes" at Norwich Lads Club on 22 April 1971,[14][24] and it was a regular part of the band's set, up to the concert at Knebworth Park on 5 July 1975.

[25] It was originally announced by its working title, "Return of the Son of Nothing" and not formally identified as "Echoes" until the group's tour of Japan, starting on 6 August 1971.

[14] Occasionally, Waters would introduce the song with silly titles, such as "Looking Through the Knotholes in Granny's Wooden Leg", "We Won The Double" (a reference to Arsenal F.C.

[20] "Echoes" was performed for the first eleven shows on the band's 1987 A Momentary Lapse of Reason tour, in a slightly rearranged version trimmed down to 17 minutes.

[32] However, Gilmour was uncomfortable about singing the "hippy" lyrics, and the touring musicians found it difficult to replicate the sound of the studio original, so it was replaced with "Shine On You Crazy Diamond".

[42] Costa described "Echoes" as "a 23-minute Pink Floyd aural extravaganza that takes up all of side two, recaptures, within a new musical framework, some of the old themes and melody lines from earlier albums", adding: "All of this plus a funky organ-bass-drums segment and a stunning Gilmour solo adds up to a fine extended electronic outing.

"[42] NME covered Pink Floyd's opening date on their 1972 Dark Side of the Moon Tour at the Brighton Dome and called "Echoes" a highlight of the set, saying that it was "masterful".

"[45] Author Ed Macan has called "Echoes" Pink Floyd's "masterpiece" and an important bridge between the group as a cult band and later mainstream success.

[34] Similar to the Dark Side of the Rainbow effect, fans have suggested that "Echoes" coincidentally synchronises with Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, when played concurrently with the final 23-minute segment titled "Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite".

[52][53] Kubrick would later feature copies of both the soundtrack to 2001 and Pink Floyd's Atom Heart Mother (1970) as props in the record store scene in A Clockwork Orange (1971).