E-learning Curve Blog at Edublogs

Sad to see two of the great anchors of my youth gone today. Firstly – and this will mean nothing to you if you live outside Ireland or the UK and if you can’t remember the culinary marvels of Bird’s Angel Delight, fishfingers, beans, and chips on a Friday, and Tom Baker as Doctor Who – Grange Hill (”flippin’ heck Tucker!” “Just say no, Zammo!” And so on) is no more.

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Secondly – and more profoundly – musician Richard Wright from Pink Floyd died age 65 from cancer.

Wright appeared on the group’s first album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, in 1967 alongside original songwriter Syd Barrett, Roger Waters on bass, and with Nick ‘Top Gear’ Mason, the drummer. Dave Gilmour joined the band at the start of 1968 while Barrett left the group shortly afterwards. In the early ‘acid’ days of Floyd, Wright was seen as a dominant musical figure in the band (though not as much of one as Syd Barrett, the band’s chief songwriter and front man at the time) – his keyboard style suiting the psychedelic zeitgeist of the late Sixties. While not credited as a singer on The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, he sang lead on Barrett-penned songs like Astronomy Domine and Matilda Mother, as well as notable harmonies on Scarecrow and Chapter 24. Examples of his early compositions include Remember a Day, and It Would Be So Nice. As the band’s sound evolved, Wright became less interested in songwriting and focused primarily on contributing his distinctive style to extended instrumental compositions such as Interstellar Overdrive, A Saucerful of Secrets, Careful with that Axe, Eugene, One Of These Days and to film scores (More, Zabriskie Point and Obscured by Clouds). He also made essential contributions to Pink Floyd’s long, epic compositions such as Atom Heart Mother, Echoes and Shine On You Crazy Diamond. His most commercially popular compositions are The Great Gig in the Sky and Us and Them from 1973’s The Dark Side of the Moon. He also contributed significantly to other mid-period Floyd classics like “Breathe” and “Time”.

Wright recorded his first solo project, Wet Dream, and released it in September 1978 with little fanfare. However, the album is regarded with some acclaim among Pink Floyd fans. Battling both personal problems and an increasingly rocky relationship with Roger Waters, he was forced to resign from Pink Floyd during The Wall sessions by Roger Waters, who threatened to pull the plug on the album’s tapes if Wright did not leave the band. However, he was retained as a salaried session musician during the subsequent live concerts to promote that album in 1980 and 1981. In 1983, Pink Floyd released the only album on which Wright does not appear with The Final Cut.

There was this big personality clash between me and Roger, and at the end of the day I realised that I couldn’t work with this person anyway – so I left.

The other band members also fell out with Waters, with Gilmour and Mason starting work on a new Pink Floyd album without him in 1986. Wright rejoined the group – minus Waters as they continued to record and tour as Pink Floyd. They made two more Pink Floyd albums – I was lucky enough to see them play in a rained-out RDS in Dublin on the ‘Momentary Lapse of Reason’ tour, and again on the ‘Division Bell’ tour in 1994.

He joined his former bandmates (with the exception of Barrett), one last time at Live 8 in Hyde Park in 2005.

With Wright’s passing, a hugely important chapter in my personal narrative has ended.

RIP

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