How Pink Floyd’s Saxophone Solos Opened the Door for Jazz-Rock in King Crimson and Steely Dan

The tenor sax solos on “Us and Them” and “The Gunner’s Dream” didn’t just add color—they proved that a rock band could use a jazz instrument to carry the emotional weight of a song without sounding like a gimmick. Dick Parry’s long, breathy lines on “Us and Them” (1973) feel more like a vocal melody than a solo, while his keening, almost desperate phrasing on “The Gunner’s Dream” (1983) shows how sax can anchor a profound anti-war message. Pink Floyd’s success gave other progressive bands permission to treat jazz instruments as core voices rather than novelty guests.

King Crimson, who had already experimented with sax on Lizard and Islands, doubled down on its use in the 1970s and 1980s—Mel Collins and later Ian McDonald made sax a rhythmic and textural equal to guitar. Steely Dan, meanwhile, turned sax solos into a signature move (think Pete Christlieb on “Deacon Blues” or Wayne Shorter on “Aja”), but their starting point was often the same realization: a saxophone could deliver the kind of lyrical, unpredictable solos that a guitar or organ couldn’t. What Pink Floyd did was normalize that idea for a stadium-sized rock audience.