One of my favorite keyboardists of all time, Rick Wright, died yesterday of cancer.
For anyone who loves the early Pink Floyd sound and despises their later stuff, it’s worth noting that Roger Waters basically kicked Rick out of the band just as they were starting to suck, probably because Wright refused to suck as much as the Seventies crapola-fest fans demanded. And so the wonderfully psychedelic phantom of the opera keyboard sounds that made their first albums sound so good fell at the wayside.
Piper at the Gates of Dawn and A Saucerful of Secrets are such monumental albums, and such influences on my own keyboard experiments. Somewhere in Lucifer’s shining barleycorn mansion in the heart of the sun, Syd Barrett and Rick Wright are working up an album to send beams of celestial rabies right into Roger Waters’ brain.