The song David Gilmour called Richard Wright’s “finest moment” in Pink Floyd
The world of Pink Floyd is really the story of three frontmen. While Syd Barrett could very well have steered the group into the next generation in a perfect world, his retreat into his own mind after The Piper at the Gates of Dawn left the door wide open for Roger Waters and David Gilmour to start adding their own unique takes on progressive rock. Whereas Gilmour and Waters were the co-captains, Richard Wright was their beating heart, and for Gilmour, it didn’t get better than hearing him on ‘The Great Gig in the Sky’.
However, Wright would need a little while before he began his journey as an accomplished songwriter. Looking at a handful of the B-sides the band released with Wright on vocals after Barrett’s departure, a lot of them feel forced and are often a bad-taste version of their debut single, ‘See Emily Play’.
Even during their “wilderness period” roughly from A Saucerful of Secrets to Meddle, Wright was still exploring different textures. Most of Pink Floyd weren’t proud of an album like Atom Heart Mother, for instance, but when listening to the standalone piece from front to back, Wright is responsible for some of its most interesting movements, including fragments of jazz harmony he would occasionally throw into the mix.
Then again, ‘The Great Gig in the Sky’ is virtually a showcase for his talent. Since the only melodic line that we have to hold onto is the disembodied voice of Clare Torry turning in a god-level vocal performance, Wright is the one laying out a bed for the rest of them to play around, going through multiple key changes and making it sound like it took no effort at all.
Compared to Gilmour’s ability to craft a melody, the guitarist considered the midpoint of Dark Side of the Moon to be Wright’s masterpiece, saying, “He is an integral part of the flavour of pretty much everything we’ve ever put out. He tends to get slightly overlooked. His part has always been there in everything you hear. It’s him, it’s idiosyncratic, it’s different to any other player. I would say ‘The Great Gig In The Sky’ is one of his finest moments.”
Beyond just Dark Side of the Moon, Wright had another classic under his belt with ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’, starting off with his suspended synth chords before building to a glorious crescendo and ultimately ending Wish You Were Here with a heartbreakingly beautiful tribute to Barrett by reprising the melody of ‘See Emily Play’. And, let’s face it, he would have done wonders on The Wall had Waters actually given him something to do rather than block him out of the picture entirely.
In fact, Wright’s presence just serves to prove Waters wrong when he says that he was the sole writer behind all of Pink Floyd’s greatest tunes. He sculpted out a lot of the lyrical themes, sure, but every piece of Waters’s reworking of Dark Side of the Moon is rendered obsolete since it doesn’t feature Wright’s take on ‘The Great Gig in the Sky’ or ‘Us and Them’. He may have been the more reserved member of the group, but just behind that keyboard was the mind of a genius waiting to bust open.
