The Great Gig In The Sky

During my late high school days I fully discovered a band that would help shape my musical tastes for years to come. Sure I knew many Pink Floyd songs but just those ones that every radio station plays all of the time. I am talking about the early tracks. The tracks that were highly experimental and psychelic and keyboard heavy.

The man vital in creating a lot of that music has died today. In a time when keyboards were first being discovered as an integral sound in rock, Richard Wright pushed the envelope of sound and help develop methods and processes that would create a genre of music that has been called progressive or art rock. I call it lovely.

Wright was a founding member of one of the most underrated and most influencial bands the world has ever known. I discovered today that after a short battle with cancer, Mr. Wright is gone and was a young man of only 65. There will be no more ethereal, atmospheric music which was the backbone of the Pink Floyd sound. No more exquisite melodies that solidified the Pink Floyd blueprint. No more beautiful harmonies that spin their way through the Pink Floyd tracks. No more Pink Floyd. No more Richard Wright. No more.

Rick Wright will be missed. Rock and roll can never be the same without a man of his enormous talent.

Here is an amazingly beautiful solo song by Wright accompanied by his long time friend and bandmate David Gilmour called “Breakthrough“:

This song called “The Great Gig In The Sky” is one of the songs most attributed to Rick Wright during all his years with the Floyd. It seems quite appropriate to be played today.

To paraphrase a lyric, I guess I am at that age where it is time to trade my heroes for ghosts…