The Musical Box

pink floyd, circa 1971: roger waters (top); nick mason, richard wright and david gilmour (bottom, from left).

Richard Wright, keyboardist for Pink Floyd since its inception over 40 years ago, died yesterday after battling cancer. He was 65.

Pink Floyd has long been one of those iconic rock bands heralded for relatively small portions of its musical history. But even on those terms, Wright was a quiet giant. If fans choose to remember Pink Floyd for nothing other than 1973’s The Dark Side of the Moon, then they will still have some of Wright’s most compelling music instilled in their psyche.

He composed the glorious The Great Gig in the Sky, a meditative dialogue for piano and gospel vocals that was the spiritual core of an otherwise deeply psychedelic album. Wright also co-composed the more popular Us and Them with Roger Waters - a stunning collaboration given that Waters supposedly booted Wright out of Pink Floyd before the making of The Final Cut in 1983.  No wonder the latter record remains the weakest album in the Floydian domain.

But set sail from the moon and you will hear what an anchor Wright provided Pink Floyd’s music, from the poppish psychedelia created with Syd Barrett in swinging London to the darker Pink Floyd albums made as the ‘60s gave way to the early ‘70s.

On albums like Atom Heart Mother (1970) and Meddle (1971), especially, Wright could be the band’s most tripped out musical voice one minute and the weaver of comforting melodic warmth the next.

He also cut two solo albums that were as underappreciated as much of his Pink Floyd work.

In its heyday, Pink Floyd was a quartet, a band of four seeming equals. Pop historians have chosen to re-write its later chapters as one giant, cosmic hissy fit between Waters and guitarist David Gilmour. But Wright quietly prevailed. He provided the distant hum of madness to Shine You Crazy Diamond in 1975 and helped keenly orchestrated the unjustly slammed The Division Bell, Pink Floyd’s swan song studio album, in 1994.

Throughout, he was a quiet presence with a mammoth sound.

You miss him too? Then grab a copy of Meddle, Wish You Were Here (1975) or, of course, The Dark Side of the Moon. Now, turn out the lights, crank up the volume and kick back. You journey has begun.