When Dickey Betts wrote ‘In Memory of Elizabeth Reed’ and other great instrumentals, did he mean them to be instrumentals or did he or the band just decide they couldn’t come up with suitable lyrics for the songs?
Good question. Though I love “Jessica” so much I wanna believe it was conceived as an instrumental.
AFAIK, they were all instrumentals. The tune for “Elizabeth Reed” is fairly complex without an easy refrain and you’d need someone like Lambert, Hendrix, and Ross to find lyrics to fit.