Quiet Wright
To celebrate the reissue of his 1978 solo album, Wet Dream, Prog – with the aid of daughter Gala, ex-son-in-law Guy Pratt and remixer Steven Wilson – takes a glance at the joys to be found in Richard Wright’s compact solo output.
Diurnal Emitter: Daryl Easlea Images: Jorgen Angel/Getty Images
Richard Wright, a man much more than Floyd.
“Dad loved sound. He’d really get into the weeds of how it sounded as well as being a sensitive musician.”
Gala
Wright
A bigger splash: the reissued Wet Dream.
Pink Floyd co-founder Richard Wright redefined the idea of ‘the quiet one’ in rock. Discreet to the point at times of invisibility, Wright made other legendary taciturn group members such as John Entwistle or George Harrison seem positively garrulous in comparison. Yet what he brought to Floyd was an unmistakable brilliance; his work was just there, shimmering and shifting, far less definable than the other parts of the sum. From the ethereal beeps and bleeps of the Syd Barrett days to his most magisterial mid-period material, to that beautiful bluesy improvisation around Old McDonald Had A Farm at the start of Sheep on Animals, Wright added considerable magic. Quietly. Texturally. So quietly, that few in the wider world had actually realised he’d left the group until his name was not on 1983’s The Final Cut. Happier on his boat than in a recording studio, he was sacked from Pink Floyd by Roger Waters in 1979, but then returned famously to The Wall tour on wages, being the only band member to be paid.
Like that first last laugh, Wright rejoined the group as a session musician in 1987 before becoming a full member again for The Division Bell in 1994, and, after his sad passing in 2008, became – like Syd Barrett on Wish You Were Here – the main inspiration behind a Floyd album, The Endless River in 2014. If it was difficult to see Richard Wright in Pink Floyd, one almost needs a microscope to assess his solo output: two solo albums and one collaboration were unobtrusively released in the 18 years between 1978 and 1996.