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Monday, September 15, 2008: Richard Wright died today. The sky’s a grimy amber, an unwashed windshield over the whole human race. I’m wearing my other writer’s hat, the newsier one. Just the basic facts, as the song once said. So I mechanically fasten one to another, and a sober chronology is born. But I wanna editorialize like crazy. Articulate my sadness and loss. Show you where it hurts.


Once it seemed that death could never come to Pink Floyd. Most of their contemporaries didn’t emerge unscathed from long careers: the Stones lost Brian Jones, Led Zeppelin lost John Bonham, the Who, Keith Moon. Floyd suffered only one casualty — Syd Barrett — and he lived another 38 years. In 2005 all five were still around. Now they’re down to three.


Growing up, Floyd meant everything to me. I guess they’re a natural rite of passage for every teenaged boy who ever felt different, or who just wanted some mind-bending rock ’n’ roll. I won’t bore you with My Discovery (been there, done that, still got the gush-stains), except to say that I was wrong about The Wall. Turns out it wasn’t about Melanie turning me down for Homecoming, after all.


Instead, I’ll write about my favorite Richard Wright song. And no, it isn’t “The Great Gig In The Sky” (Dark Side Of The Moon), although Clare Torry’s vocal acrobatics still give me goosebumps, especially in a darkened room with only a flickering candle as illumination and regrets as company. Nor is it “Us And Them,” with Wright’s understated lines dancing across his piano like soft-falling rain.

 




My favorite is “Summer ’68,” from 1970’s Atom Heart Mother, a period when the band was still something of a democracy and Wright was in integral contributor, before Waters turned the Floyd into hired color for his operatic psychotherapy.


Atom’s an odd albeit ambitious duck, even for a group already well-oiled in weirdness. The title track, an orchestral-acid-trip collaboration with Ron Geesin, comprises the whole first side, with the flip reserved for individual efforts: Waters’ “If,” Wright’s “Summer ’68,” David Gilmour’s “Fat Old Sun,” and the barking-mad “Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast,” a group-credited sound collage of roadie Alan Stiles preparing his morning meal (“Marmalade, I like marmalade…”).

 
I came across the record in the summer of 1988. By then my Floyd obsession was into its second year, and I was picking up new old sounds wherever I could. I bought Atom Heart Mother at Puente Hills Mall while on vacation in Whittier, California. I was staying with my aunt and uncle, splayed out most days in their living room with my Walkman ’phones pinned to my skull and fresh emergency AAs in my right pocket. For some reason Atom seemed perfect for summer; loosed from its tapeheads it evoked lush valleys and green fields. But maybe that was because of the cow on the cover.
 

Richard still sang the occasional lead in those days, the early ’70s. His was a pleasant, dignified voice, almost an immaculate hush. It stood in contrast to bandmates Roger Waters and Syd Barrett; the former had a mostly sneering twang (though on softer numbers he was brittle and vulnerable), the latter often performed like he was addressing schoolchildren. Once David Gilmour joined, following Syd’s involuntary exeunt, he gradually assumed Wright’s breathy-lilt mantle, and Wright stepped back to bolster harmonies.


I dunno what attracted me to “Summer ’68.” Strangely, I remember being impressed with its present-tense structure, despite its specific setting that was nearly two years past when the Floyd recorded it and 20 years past when I first heard it. The song glides atop a piano chop. A sleepy organ simmers beneath gentle vocals, building into a deceptively sunny chorus and blindsiding heralds of brass. Wright’s so high-tea polite it wasn’t until I’d listened a few times that I realized he was callously chucking a road apple from his bed (“I hardly even like you/I shouldn’t care at all”; “Goodbye to you/Charlotte Pringle’s due/I’ve had enough for one day”) and pining for a simpler life (“My friends are lying in the sun/I wish that I was there”). Excellent sonic fodder for a boy a thousand miles from home.

 


 

Earlier tonight I exhumed my copy of 1994’s The Division Bell, which I probably haven’t listened to since the Clinton Administration, and drained Wright’s last Floyd tune, “Wearing The Inside Out,” into my iPod. It was his first lead since Dark Side’s “Time” 21 years earlier. The grimy amber began fading to a dull blue, threatening to close the day for good. “I’m with you now,” Wright cooed in my ears, “can speak your name. Now we can hear ourselves again.” Inspired, I hit the back button, and together we walked till the light was gone.

 

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