When considering the pioneers of electronic pop music, names such as Kraftwerk and Giorgio Moroder spring to mind. But Gary Wright’s single Dream Weaver, which reached No 2 on the American chart in 1976, deserves its place in history for placing synthesiser music at the forefront of pop radio, and was one of the first tracks recorded almost entirely with synths (backed up by Jim Keltner’s drums).
Its floating, dream-like atmosphere made the perfect backdrop for the yearning quality of Wright’s vocals, and the lilting rhythm and blues feel of the chorus slipped effortlessly into the listener’s consciousness. The haunting sound of the ARP Solina string synthesiser, also used by Pink Floyd on Welcome to the Machine (from Wish You Were Here, 1975), helped give the track its distinctive edge.
Wright, who has died aged 80, originally wrote the song on a guitar, but thought that its success “had a lot to do with the electronic sounds I put on it. I thought it was a good single, a progressive single rather than just a simple commercial hit … the treatment I gave it made it a different type of single.”
The song’s parent album, The Dream Weaver, reached No 7 on the US album chart, and produced another No 2 single with Love Is Alive. Dream Weaver itself enjoyed a prolonged life thanks to being included on several movie soundtracks. Wright recorded a new version of it for Wayne’s World (1992), “which was good because I got a higher royalty rate”. The Wayne’s World soundtrack album topped the US chart. The song also featured in The People vs Larry Flynt, Toy Story 3 and Ice Age: Collision Course, well as the TV show Glee, and was sampled on hip-hop tracks.
Wright gave some credit for the song to George Harrison, having grown close to the former Beatle when he played keyboards on his triple album All Things Must Pass (1970). Wright recalled how Harrison, with whom he travelled to India, had given him a book of poems to introduce him to Indian philosophy, and one of them included the line: “When at night my mind weaves dreams”. It was Harrison, too, who prompted Wright to read Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi, which Wright attributed with putting him on an enlightening spiritual path. He would continue to meditate daily throughout his life. He also appeared on a further six of Harrison’s albums.
Prior to his success with Dream Weaver, Wright had been a key member of Spooky Tooth, a British blues-rock band with progressive leanings who released their debut album, It’s All About, on Island Records in 1968.
Wright was born in Cresskill, New Jersey, to Ann (nee Belvedere) and Louis Wright. His father was a construction engineer, and his mother was a singer, as were his two sisters. His older sister, Beverly, enjoyed some success as a pop and folk singer in the 60s, while his younger sister, Lorna, released the album Circle of Love (1978) and several singles.
His mother encouraged Gary to take an interest in music and acting. He appeared in the TV sci-fi series Captain Video and His Video Rangers, and when he was 12 he was hired as an understudy for a Broadway musical, Fanny. This resulted in him going on stage in the role of Cesario, son of the titular Fanny, played by Florence Henderson, and in 1955, appearing with Henderson on The Ed Sullivan Show.
His enthusiasms subsequently switched to music, and while at Tenafly high school in New Jersey, he played in several rock’n’roll groups. He would cite the R&B artists Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin and James Brown among his musical idols, along with Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and the Beatles.
Having attended William & Mary College in Virginia and then focused on medicine at New York University, Wright was studying psychology at the Free University of Germany in West Berlin when he abandoned his academic plans and formed a group called the New York Times. They supported Traffic at a gig in Oslo, where he met the Island Records boss Chris Blackwell. Blackwell introduced Wright to four of the five members of the now-defunct band Art, and Spooky Tooth was formed. Traffic’s producer Jimmy Miller worked on their first two albums, It’s All About and Spooky Two (1969).
Distinguished by the standout tracks Evil Woman and Better By You, Better Than Me, the latter was widely regarded as the band’s finest hour. It cracked the American Top 50, but this was the highest Spooky Tooth ever climbed, though they made four subsequent visits to the bottom end of the US Top 100. They pulled enthusiastic audiences, not least on sold-out US tours with Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones, delivered some powerful and inventive music, and garnered generous accolades from the press, but somehow the stars never aligned in their favour.
Wright identified their third album, Ceremony (subtitled An Electronic Mass and also released in 1969), as the moment where it all went wrong. It was a collaboration with the French electronic composer Pierre Henry, and, as Wright described it, was supposed to be a Henry album rather than being billed as the latest Spooky Tooth offering. “We said … ‘it will ruin our career’, and that’s exactly what happened.”
Wright left the band, but in 1972 got together with another original member, Mike Harrison, and rebuilt it with a new lineup. They recorded You Broke My Heart So ... I Busted Your Jaw (1973), Witness (1973) and The Mirror (1974), but lack of commercial success prompted Wright to quit to pursue a solo career.
He released the albums Extraction and Footprint before the turning point of Dream Weaver. The Light of Smiles (1977) took him into the US Top 30, and gave him a modest hit single with Phantom Writer. The Right Place (1981) reached 79 on the US album chart, and delivered his final hit single, Really Wanna Know You, which reached 16 in the US.
In 2004, he reunited with Spooky Tooth for two gigs in Germany, preserved on the album Nomad Poets. In 2008 the band undertook a European tour, and appeared at the Island Records 50th anniversary event at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire in west London. In the same year Wright toured north America with Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band. In 2014 he published Dream Weaver: Music, Meditation and My Friendship With George Harrison.
He is survived by his third wife, Rose (nee Anthony), two sons, Justin and Dorian, from his first marriage, to Christina (nee Uppstrom), which ended in divorce, and by Lorna.
• Gary Malcolm Wright, musician, singer and songwriter, born 26 April 1943; died 4 September 2023
