Richard Wright, the keyboardist for Pink Floyd, died today of cancer.
While I wasn’t part of the generation that grew up with Pink Floyd, I certainly grew up listening to them. (The only album I bought when it first came out was The Division Bell.)
My first honest-to-goodness rock concert was seeing them in the Minneapolis/St. Paul Metrodome in 1994. Amazingly, three friends and I managed to get ticket that were in the twelfth row, center stage! And get this… tickets were $30 each. The $60 “VIP” seats were actually behind outs. Since the stage was ten stories tall, the VIP section was moved back, and my buddies and I managed to get some of the best seats in the house. We had to enter from the back of the audience in the dome, and as we walked closer and closer to the stage, we just couldn’t believe our luck.
Oh, and the concert was incredible… it had to be one of the best staged tours I’ve seen, with inflatable pigs, four-story disco balls, a huge movie screen in the middle of the stage, and more. Interesting that the band is from Cambridge, where in a week I’ll be starting school.
Richard Wright was a heck of a musician; I’m sorry to hear he’s gone.
[One of my favorite Floyd songs… though it’s probably one of everyone’s favorites]:
Jed Christiansen 