Richard Wright (musician)
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Richard Wright
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| Background information
<tr><td>Birth name</td><td colspan="2">Richard William Wright</td></tr><tr><td>Also known as</td><td colspan="2">Rick Wright</td></tr><tr><td>Born</td><td colspan="2">July 28, 1943 |
Richard William "Rick" Wright (born July 28, 1943 in Hatch End Pinner, London, England) is a self-taught pianist and keyboard player best known for his long career with Pink Floyd.
He was a founding member of the band in 1965, and also participated in its previous incarnations, Sigma 6 and The (Screaming) Abdabs. Though not as prolific a songwriter as his band-mates Roger Waters and David Gilmour, Wright’s richly textured keyboard layers have been a vital ingredient and a distinctive characteristic of Pink Floyd’s sound. In the early days of Pink Floyd, Rick Wright (along with Syd Barrett, the band’s chief songwriter at the time) was seen as the group’s dominant musical force and he wrote and sang several songs of his own during 1967-68. As the sound and the goals of the band 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 musical themes for 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.
Wright's style fused jazz and neoclassical influences that complemented the simple harmonic structures of the more blues and folk-based songs written by Roger Waters and David Gilmour. As a keyboardist, he is more interested in complementing each piece with organ or synthesizer layers and tasteful piano or electric piano passages. Unlike his contemporaries Rick Wakeman, Tony Banks or Keith Emerson, only occasionaly did he opt for solo playing, notably in "Atom Heart Mother", "Echoes", "Any Colour You Like", "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" Parts 1-5 and 6-9, "Welcome to the Machine", "Dogs", "Run Like Hell" and "Keep Talking". Wright is known for his ghostly atmospheric textures such as the Leslie piano arpeggios at the beginning of "Echoes", the echoed Farfisa Organ in the live versions of "Careful With That Axe, Eugene" and "Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun", the distinctive Minimoog solos in "Any Colour You Like" and, more famously, "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" and the jazzy electric piano passages in "Money", "Time" and "Sheep". In "A Saucerful of Secrets" and "Sysyphus" he experimented with 'treated piano'. "Sysyphus" also made extensive use of Mellotron sounds, something of a rarity in the Pink Floyd canon. Wright also used indian modal scales in "Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun" and "Matilda Mother". Although he is not often mentioned among the 'synthesizer greats', it is widely acknowledged that Wright’s inventive use of keyboards and synthesizers with Pink Floyd has been pioneering.
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[edit] Pink Floyd Career
In the early days of the band, Wright dabbled with brass before settling on the Farfisa organ as his main instrument onstage (in addition to piano and Hammond Organ in the studio). For a brief period in 1969, Wright played vibraphone on several of the band's songs and in some live shows, and he even played trombone on "Biding My Time" (also dating from this experimental period). During the formative years of Pink Floyd with Syd Barrett, Wright relied heavily on his Farfisa organ, fed through a tape echo device called Binson Echorec to achieve distinctive sounds that helped the band gain their "psychedelic rock" edge. He started using a Hammond organ regularly onstage thereafter, and a grand piano later became part of his usual live concert setup when "Echoes" was added to Pink Floyd's regular set-list. For tours in the 1970s centering around The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals and The Wall, the Farfisa was dropped and an array of other instruments were added to the lineup, such as: Fender Rhodes, Wurlitzer and Hohner electric pianos, VCS 3, Minimoog, ARP Solina, ARP Quadra and Prophet 5 synthesizers. Since 1987 Wright has favoured Kurzweil digital synthesizers for reproducing his analogue synthesizer sounds, even though he still uses a digital incarnation of his favourite Hammond B-3 organ. Wright frequently sang background and occasionally lead vocals onstage and in the studio with Pink Floyd (most notably on the songs "Time" and "Echoes").
Using material that was considered unsuitable for Pink Floyd's Animals album, Wright recorded his first solo project, Wet Dream, and released it in September 1978 with little fanfare. Battling both personal problems and an increasingly rocky relationship with Roger Waters, he was fired from Pink Floyd during recording sessions for The Wall in 1979. However, he was retained as a salaried session musician during the subsequent live concerts to promote that album in 1980 and 1981. Ironically, Wright became the only member of Pink Floyd to profit from those hugely spectacular shows, since the net financial loss had to be paid out-of-pocket by the three remaining "full-time" members. In 1983, Pink Floyd released the only album on which Richard Wright does not appear: Waters' swan song The Final Cut.
During 1984, Wright formed a new musical duo with Dave Harris (from the band Fashion) called Zee. They signed a record deal with Atlantic Records and released only one album, Identity, which was a commercial and critical flop. Wright left Zee in 1986 to rejoin Pink Floyd following Waters' departure. Because of legal and contractual issues from his "hired gun" status during The Wall world tour, Wright's photo was not included in the 1987 album A Momentary Lapse of Reason and his name was listed in smaller letters than Mason and Gilmour. By the time of the Momentary Lapse world tour and the 1988 live album The Delicate Sound of Thunder, Wright was contractually able to claim total Pink Floyd membership once again. In 1994, he co-wrote five songs and sang lead vocals (on "Wearing the Inside Out") for the next Pink Floyd album, The Division Bell. This recording provided material for the double live album and video release PULSE in 1995.
[edit] Modern Days
In 1996, inspired by his successful input into The Division Bell, Wright released his second solo album, Broken China, including contributions from Sinéad O'Connor on vocals, Pino Palladino on bass, Manu Katché on drums, Dominic Miller (known from his guitar work with Sting) and Tim Renwick, another Pink Floyd associate, on electric guitar. Broken China was considered as a more focused and artistically successful work than Wet Dream and marked a new phase in Rick Wright's modus operanti, with extensive use of computer-based recording and production techniques, assisted by Anthony Moore with whom he co-wrote many of the album's pieces.
On July 2, 2005, Wright joined Gilmour, Mason, and Waters on stage for the first time since the Wall concerts for a short set at the Live 8 concert in London. He underwent eye surgery for cataracts in November 2005, preventing him from attending Pink Floyd's induction into the UK Music Hall of Fame. Roger Waters, who was also unable to attend the band's induction due to rehearsals for the opening of his opera Ça Ira in Rome, appeared in video link and stated, tongue-in-cheek:
| Rick actually hasn't had an eye operation, he and I have eloped to Rome and we're living happily in a small appartment off the Via Venuti! |
Wright contributed keyboards and background vocals to David Gilmour's most recent solo album, On An Island, and performed with Gilmour's touring band for over two dozen shows in Europe and North America in 2006. On stage with Gilmour he performed piano, electric piano and synth leads with his Kurzweil K2600 workstation, Hammond organ and even his long-inactive Farfisa organ, which was resurrected especially for performing "Echoes" and a couple of Pink Floyd's and Syd Barrett's older numbers that Gilmour chose to revisit in his recent concerts. He also provided backing vocals and occasionally lead vocals (notably on "Echoes", "Time", "Comfortably Numb", "Wearing The Inside Out" and "Arnold Layne"). He declined an offer to join Roger Waters and Nick Mason on Waters' The Dark Side of the Moon Live tour in order to spend more time working on an upcoming solo project (which may be released in 2007).
On July 4th, 2006, Wright joined Gilmour and Mason for the official screening of the P*U*L*S*E DVD. Inevitably, Live 8 surfaced as a subject in an interview. When asked about performing again, Wright replied he would be happy on stage anywhere. He explained that his plan is to "meander" along and said about playing live:
| ...and whenever Dave wants me to play with him, I’m really happy to play with him. And [to Gilmour] you’ll play with me, right? |
Wright remains the quietest and shyest member of a band whose members are known for their lack of personal profile and individual attention seeking. Unlike the three other surviving band members who recently have emerged as public figures, Wright retains a low profile and rarely speaks in public.
[edit] Pink Floyd albums
- Main article: Pink Floyd discography
[edit] Solo albums
- Wet Dream (1978)
- Broken China (1996)
- Title TBA (2007)
[edit] With Zee
[edit] With David Gilmour
- David Gilmour in Concert (2002)
- On an Island (2006)
- David Gilmour live at the Albert Hall (upcoming) (2007)
[edit] External links
- Unofficial Richard Wright Page
- Rick Wright on All Pink Floyd Fan Network - Discography, interviews, articles, discussion forums, etc.
- Spare Bricks The Pink Floyd Webzine - Rick Wright Issue, "Show me where the 'keys' are kept", The many instruments of Rick Wright
- Neptune Pink Floyd
- Richard Wright Lyrics
- Brain Damage, news about Pink Floyd - news, iteneraries, pictures and concert dates.
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