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.
