I am distressed to learn of Richard Wright’s death today. One problem with listening to Pink Floyd’s music, and the massive contribution made to it by Wright’s fine keyboard playing, is that it is so familiar (at least to people of a certain age); we just don’t hear it any more— we only recall hearing it, remembering where we were and who we were with the first time someone played, for example, The Great Gig in the Sky.

Wright was central to the genius of Floyd. It was his fluid, lyrical and melodic keyboard parts that added the wistfulness to the hard-edged anomie of Roger Waters’s music and lyrics.

Richard Wright, the poet of alienation and wonder, requiescat in pace.