If you grew up mostly in the 80s Pink Floyd may have come and gone without getting much of a chance to rest in your brain like it should have. You might have seen older brothers or uncles with Dark Side of the Moon T-shirts, gotten tired of hearing “Money” played ad nauseum on classic rock radio or from a car with smoke pillowing out of the windows your school’s parking lot — and it may have passed you by, as it passed me.
Luckily, in the time between finishing university and working at a newspaper I got a job at a record store in Berkeley, California where my boss, who’d grown up in Birmingham, England, set me straight on what is one of the more misunderstood and, in my current view, wrongly under-appreciated bands of the late 1960s.
Wrongly, because the smooth sounding stadium rock band with pigs flying around the band became during the 70s and 80s wasn’t what the band at all in the first place. Early Pink Floyd is tuneful, but scary, unyielding, experimental, freakout music. It had no soft pre-Sgt. Pepper pop era. Pink Floyd hit the ground running and Richard Wright, who died Monday of cancer, was a big part of that.
This is the first song on Pink Floyd’s classic album Piper at the Gates of Dawn, called Astronomy Domine. Wright sings the lead vocal as he did on many of Pink Floyd’s early work.
At that same time in my life I moved in with a co-worker from said record store. He was a musician. He was a bit of a goofy guy, a Filipino in fact, who played in a popular East Bay local band. He also fell under the spell of early Pink Floyd. I can’t tell you how many times I returned from work to a foggy, marijuana-cave –my roommate in his bedroom blasting Saucer Full of Secrets, Pink Floyd’s second album.
Funny enough, and I’m no Pink Floyd scholar by any means (yes, they exist), I think Wright’s contributions, which were initially all about pushing the envelope, slowly became a steadying influence in the wake of Roger Waters joining the band. I think the more control Waters got, the less interesting Pink Floyd became. There are those who will agree with this and a number who won’t.
This is one of Wright’s contributions from Saucer Full of Secrets, called Remember a Day:
R.I.P.
Coverage–
BBC: Floyd founder Wright dies at 65
BBC: Photos
The Independent: Pink Floyd founder member Richard Wright dies at 65
2 responses so far ↓
1 Jackson // Sep 16, 2008 at 5:07 pm
Early Pink Floyd is extremely interesting, dense, experimental music. I’ve never felt any shame in saying I like them, even some of the cheesier stuff. I can’t really listen to The Wall or Dark Side of the Moon now but that early stuff still resonates.
Good post.
2 John Brooks // Sep 17, 2008 at 1:37 am
It’s a pity to hear that Wright has passed, just heard it yesterday. Along with and founder Syd Barrett.
Early Pink Floyd is tuneful, but scary, unyielding, experimental, freakout music.
Yeah, the album “Pipers At The Gates Of Dawn” is somewhat scary but good once you give it the chance. A lot of this comes from that Pink Floyd’s founder Syd Barrett was more of a psychedelic sound and not the Pink Floyd sound most of us are used to. Once Barrett has a mental breakdown in the late 60’s, the sound of Pink Floyd changed.
I as a big Pink Floyd fan wish I could get my hands on Pipers At The Gates Of Dawn. Though I dont exactly see it around all that much.
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