Rick Wright – RIP

In 1994, Carol and I had the great fortune to see Pink Floyd in concert [twice]. To this day, those two shows are the best concerts we’ve ever seen, and we’ve seen a lot of them. I bring this up because one of the founding members, keyboardist Rick Wright, died today . One of the first albums I bought that wasn’t a Beatles album was Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. I fell in love with its sounds immediately. One of my all-time favorite songs is one for which he wrote the music called Us and Them. He wrote the instrumental The Great Gig in the Sky, a powerful piece of music that, with incredible wordless vocals from Clare Torry, effortlessly captures the lamentations on the subject of death. Awhile ago DSOTM was part of the UK “Classic Album” series. It’s shown on VH1 Classic from time to time. All the members of Pink Floyd told of how the album was made. By far [in my mind at least] the most interesting bits were the parts of how Rick Wright came up with the music for the two songs I just mentioned. Roger Waters, who is notorious for being stingy with giving credit where it is due, gave Rick Wright high praise for the work he did on DSOTM.

His keyboard sounds had as much to do with the Pink Floyd sound as David Gilmour’s guitar and Roger Waters’ lyrics. Wright and Gilmour both gave Pink Floyd’s music its atmospheric quality. Many would call it spacey or otherworldly. I just call it great headphone music. One can only look to two albums to tell how much Rick Wright meant to the Pink Floyd sound. The one Floyd album without Rick, The Final Cut, sounds nothing like a Pink Floyd album, whereas The Division Bell, one of the two albums done without Roger Waters, sounds just fine and very Floydian without Roger. One cannot imagine how Meddle, Wish You Were Here, DSOTM, or even Animals would sound without the sounds of Rick Wright. His contributions to Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Time and Echoes are essential. While David Gilmour, Roger Waters and Syd Barrett get the credit for making Pink Floyd the legends that they are, one can subtract the sounds of Rick Wright and find the answer to Roger Waters’ question – “Oh by the way/Which one’s Pink?” The soundscapes that put Pink Floyd on the map in the first place belong to Rick Wright, and for that, Carol and I are eternally grateful.

Thank you for everything, Rick. Your journey to “the Great Gig in the Sky” came way too soon. Rest in Peace.