Pink Floyd founder Roger Waters has paid tribute to Floyd keyboard player Richard Wright, who passed away last week at the age of 65.
Waters said it was hard to “overstate the importance of his musical voice in the Pink Floyd of the 60’s and 70’s”Waters acknowledged Wright’s contribution to the classic ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’ and says he was glad that they all played together for one last time at Live 8.
Here is Waters statement:
"I was very sad to hear of Rick's premature death, I knew he had been ill, but the end came suddenly and shockingly. My thoughts are with his family, particularly [his children] Jamie and Gala and their mum Juliet, who I knew very well in the old days, and always liked very much and greatly admired.
"As for the man and his work, it is hard to overstate the importance of his musical voice in the Pink Floyd of the '60s and '70s. The intriguing, jazz influenced, modulations and voicings so familiar in 'Us and Them' and 'Great Gig in the Sky,' which lent those compositions both their extraordinary humanity and their majesty, are omnipresent in all the collaborative work the four of us did in those times. Rick's ear for harmonic progression was our bedrock.
"I am very grateful for the opportunity that Live 8 afforded me to engage with him and David [Gilmour] and Nick [Mason] that one last time. I wish there had been more."
At his official website, Waters has just one page, an image of a sea of candles in memory of Richard.
