{"id":3516,"date":"2008-09-17T01:19:35","date_gmt":"2008-09-17T00:19:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2008\/09\/17\/rick-wright-1943-2008\/"},"modified":"2009-01-29T23:54:41","modified_gmt":"2009-01-29T23:54:41","slug":"rick-wright-1943-2008","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2008\/09\/17\/rick-wright-1943-2008\/","title":{"rendered":"Rick Wright, 1943\u20132008"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/09\/rw.jpg\" alt=\"rw.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em>Rick Wright in 1971. <\/em><\/p>\n<p>As has been noted nearly everywhere by now, Pink Floyd keyboardist <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/music\/2008\/sep\/16\/pinkfloyd.popandrock1\" target=\"_blank\">Rick Wright<\/a> went to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ZAydj4OJnwQ\" target=\"_blank\">the Great Gig in the Sky<\/a> earlier this week, and I&#8217;m sure the inevitability of using the title of his most famous composition in this way wouldn&#8217;t have surprised him. I may as well note here that he was always credited as Rick on the albums following <em>Piper at the Gates of Dawn<\/em>, not Richard. I saw Pink Floyd perform <em>The Wall<\/em> in the cavernous bounds of Earl&#8217;s Court, London in August 1980 so I suppose I can claim to have seen him play, if watching a speck on a distant stage counts as seeing anyone. Wright&#8217;s falling out with the increasingly fractious Roger Waters saw him treated as a session musician by that point and while the show was impressively bombastic I can&#8217;t bear to hear that dreary and hysterical album any more. (Unless it&#8217;s Scissor Sisters covering <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=vyhLA0gZcos\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Comfortably Numb<\/em><\/a>.) Far better to remember Wright for his psychedelic songs such as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=RbxSbc0AwHg\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Remember A Day<\/em><\/a> from <em>A Saucerful of Secrets<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Update:<\/strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.planetfabulon.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Thom<\/a> reminds me that French musician <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hector_Zazou\" target=\"_blank\">Hector Zazou<\/a> also died earlier this month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rick Wright in 1971. As has been noted nearly everywhere by now, Pink Floyd keyboardist Rick Wright went to the Great Gig in the Sky earlier this week, and I&#8217;m sure the inevitability of using the title of his most famous composition in this way wouldn&#8217;t have surprised him. I may as well note here &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2008\/09\/17\/rick-wright-1943-2008\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Rick Wright, 1943\u20132008&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,17],"tags":[887,167,177,3587,1269],"class_list":["post-3516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","category-psychedelia","tag-hector-zazou","tag-obituaries","tag-pink-floyd","tag-roger-waters","tag-scissor-sisters"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-UI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3516\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}