I would be remiss if I let the year pass without saying a few words about Richard Wright.
I remember clearly the moment Pink Floyd entered my musical landscape. Watching a televised broadcast of their performance at Knebworth in 1990 the band immediately emerged as one of the defining figures in my musical evolution. The songs, the light show, David Gilmour’s solo to Comfortably Numb in the rain - there was little I could do to resist.
I had no idea at the time that this was post-Roger Waters era Pink Floyd or any of the story behind what that meant and I certainly had no idea who Syd Barrett was. Over the next decade I became a Pink Floyd scholar and disciple - devouring anything related to Pink Floyd I could get my hands on, but to this day that performance from Knebworth, that initial connection to the band stays with me.
The fundamental Pink Floyd sound would not exist without Richard Wright. Sure, Barrett, Waters and Gilmour all served as the face and voice of the band but Wright’s contributions on keys, vocals and song writing set the group apart. The ease and flow of his playing and singing are vital elements of the Pink Floyd sound.
I watched the VHS of the Delicate Sound Of Thunder tour countless times and listened to the CD of the show on my uncle’s stereo for hours on end before I had my own CD player (yes, I was a caveman). I was lucky enough to catch Division Bell-era Pink Floyd live in Toronto in 1994 (easily one on my most memorable concerts). I appreciate all the incarnations of the band, but one constant element of the group’s unique sound and style was Richard Wright.
One of my favorite pieces of Wright’s work is The Violent Sequence, an instrumental from the Zabriskie Point Soundtrack Sessions in 1969, which can be heard in the clip below, and is said to be an early version of Us And Them from The Dark Side Of The Moon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XV3hFDGORM
As someone who knew Wright well, David Gilmour says it best:
“No one can replace Richard Wright. He was my musical partner and my friend. In the welter of arguments about who or what was Pink Floyd, Rick's enormous input was frequently forgotten. He was gentle, unassuming and private but his soulful voice and playing were vital, magical components of our most recognized Pink Floyd sound. I have never played with anyone quite like him. The blend of his and my voices and our musical telepathy reached their first major flowering in 1971 on 'Echoes'. In my view all the greatest PF moments are the ones where he is in full flow. After all, without 'Us and Them' and 'The Great Gig In The Sky', both of which he wrote, what would 'The Dark Side Of The Moon' have been? Without his quiet touch the Album 'Wish You Were Here' would not quite have worked. In our middle years, for many reasons he lost his way for a while, but in the early Nineties, with 'The Division Bell', his vitality, spark and humour returned to him and then the audience reaction to his appearances on my tour in 2006 was hugely uplifting and it's a mark of his modesty that those standing ovations came as a huge surprise to him, (though not to the rest of us). Like Rick, I don't find it easy to express my feelings in words, but I loved him and will miss him enormously.”
I remember clearly the moment Pink Floyd entered my musical landscape. Watching a televised broadcast of their performance at Knebworth in 1990 the band immediately emerged as one of the defining figures in my musical evolution. The songs, the light show, David Gilmour’s solo to Comfortably Numb in the rain - there was little I could do to resist.
I had no idea at the time that this was post-Roger Waters era Pink Floyd or any of the story behind what that meant and I certainly had no idea who Syd Barrett was. Over the next decade I became a Pink Floyd scholar and disciple - devouring anything related to Pink Floyd I could get my hands on, but to this day that performance from Knebworth, that initial connection to the band stays with me.
The fundamental Pink Floyd sound would not exist without Richard Wright. Sure, Barrett, Waters and Gilmour all served as the face and voice of the band but Wright’s contributions on keys, vocals and song writing set the group apart. The ease and flow of his playing and singing are vital elements of the Pink Floyd sound.
I watched the VHS of the Delicate Sound Of Thunder tour countless times and listened to the CD of the show on my uncle’s stereo for hours on end before I had my own CD player (yes, I was a caveman). I was lucky enough to catch Division Bell-era Pink Floyd live in Toronto in 1994 (easily one on my most memorable concerts). I appreciate all the incarnations of the band, but one constant element of the group’s unique sound and style was Richard Wright.
One of my favorite pieces of Wright’s work is The Violent Sequence, an instrumental from the Zabriskie Point Soundtrack Sessions in 1969, which can be heard in the clip below, and is said to be an early version of Us And Them from The Dark Side Of The Moon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XV3hFDGORM
As someone who knew Wright well, David Gilmour says it best:
“No one can replace Richard Wright. He was my musical partner and my friend. In the welter of arguments about who or what was Pink Floyd, Rick's enormous input was frequently forgotten. He was gentle, unassuming and private but his soulful voice and playing were vital, magical components of our most recognized Pink Floyd sound. I have never played with anyone quite like him. The blend of his and my voices and our musical telepathy reached their first major flowering in 1971 on 'Echoes'. In my view all the greatest PF moments are the ones where he is in full flow. After all, without 'Us and Them' and 'The Great Gig In The Sky', both of which he wrote, what would 'The Dark Side Of The Moon' have been? Without his quiet touch the Album 'Wish You Were Here' would not quite have worked. In our middle years, for many reasons he lost his way for a while, but in the early Nineties, with 'The Division Bell', his vitality, spark and humour returned to him and then the audience reaction to his appearances on my tour in 2006 was hugely uplifting and it's a mark of his modesty that those standing ovations came as a huge surprise to him, (though not to the rest of us). Like Rick, I don't find it easy to express my feelings in words, but I loved him and will miss him enormously.”
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