AND THEN THERE WERE TWO (OR IS IT THREE?)

RICK WRIGHT, TAKEN IN 1996

How terribly, terribly sad. Rick Wright, Pink Floyd’s keyboard player, died today.

With all the posturing and ego-massaging that has gone on in (and just outside) the band, he was the quiet one, the one who got on with the music. And what music he wrote.

I’ve waxed lyrical about Dark Side of the Moon before on this site. It’s on one level very simple, and on another a really multi-facetted, rather complex view of our way of life in the latter years of the last century. In some ways, it’s the best summing up there is of many of our fears, worries, hopes and concerns. It gets mine spot on, for one. And the really great bits in it, the highlights which get you thinking that Pop Music can’t get much better than this – he wrote them.

“The Great Gig in the Sky” and “Us and Them”, slow, thoughtful, emotional, simple, beautiful and profound songs are in my all time Top Ten tracks.

God Bless him.