1911 – Robert Johnson is born this day in rock history. You remember the movie Crossroads… that was his song!
Robert Johnson, born Robert Leroy Johnson (May 8, 1911 – August 16, 1938) is among the most famous of Delta blues musicians. His landmark recordings from 1936–1937 display a remarkable combination of singing, guitar skills, and songwriting talent that have influenced generations of musicians. Johnson’s shadowy, poorly documented life and death at age 27 have given rise to much legend. Considered by some to be the “Grandfather of Rock ‘n’ Roll”, his vocal phrasing, original songs, and guitar style have influenced a broad range of musicians, including John Fogerty, Bob Dylan, Johnny Winter, Jimi Hendrix, The Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin, The Allman Brothers Band, The Rolling Stones, Paul Butterfield, The Band, Neil Young, Warren Zevon, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, and Eric Clapton, who called Johnson “the most important blues musician who ever lived”. He was also ranked fifth in Rolling Stone’s list of 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time. He is an inductee of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Life and career
Johnson’s life is not well documented, and the variety of legends that have surrounded him for decades have made scholarship difficult. Serious research was not undertaken until the late 1960s and early 1970s, most notably by researchers Mack McCormick and Stephen LaVere. Most of the information on his life has come from the decades-old recollections of surviving family and associates. The two known images of Johnson were located in 1973, in the possession of the musician’s half-sister Carrie Thompson, and were not widely published until the late 1980s.
Five significant dates from his career are documented: Monday, Thursday and Friday, November 23, 26, and 27, 1936 at a recording session in San Antonio, Texas. Seven months later, on Saturday and Sunday, June 19–20, 1937, he was in Dallas, Texas at another session. His death certificate was discovered in 1968, and lists the date and location of his death. Two marriage licenses for Johnson have also been located in county records offices. Other facts about him are less well established. Director Martin Scorsese says in his foreword to Alan Greenberg’s filmscript Love In Vain: A Vision of Robert Johnson, “The thing about Robert Johnson was that he only existed on his records. He was pure legend.”
Scarcely anything was known of Johnson’s origins until Mack McCormick traced and interviewed members of his family. The research has still not been published, so the biography is based entirely on trust. Such is McCormick’s reputation among his peers that no blues scholar seriously doubts his findings. Eventually, McCormick pemitted Peter Guralnick to publish a summary in Living Blues (1982), later reprinted in book form as Searching for Robert Johnson.
Robert Johnson was born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi sometime around May 8, 1911, the 11th child of Julia Major Dodds, who had previously borne ten children to husband Charles Dodds. Born out of wedlock, Johnson did not take the Dodds name.
Twenty two-year-old Charles Dodds had married Julia Major in Hazlehurst, Mississippi—about 35 miles (56 km) south of Jackson—in 1889. Charles Dodds owned land and made wicker furniture; his family was well off until he was forced out of Hazlehurst around 1909 by a lynch mob following an argument with some of the more prosperous townsfolk. (There was a family legend that Dodds escaped from Hazlehurst dressed in women’s clothing.) Over the next two years, Julia Dodds sent their children one at a time to live with their father in Memphis, where Charles Dodds had adopted the name of Charles Spencer. Julia stayed behind in Hazlehurst with two daughters, until she was evicted for nonpayment of taxes.
By that time she had given birth to a son, Robert, who was fathered by a field worker named Noah Johnson. Unwelcome in Charles Dodds’ home, Julia Dodds became an itinerant field worker, picking cotton and living in camps as she moved among plantations. While she worked in the fields, her eight-year-old daughter took care of Johnson. Over the next ten years, Julia Dodds would make repeated attempts to reunite the family, but Charles Dodds never stopped resenting her infidelity. Although Charles Dodds would eventually accept Johnson, he never would forgive his wife for giving birth to him.
Around 1914, Robert Johnson moved in with Charles Dodds’ family, which by that time included all of Dodds’ children by Julia Dodds, as well as Dodds’ mistress from Hazlehurst and their two children. Johnson would then spend the next several years in Memphis, and it was reportedly about this time that he began playing the guitar under his older half-brother’s tutelage.
Johnson did not rejoin his mother until she had remarried several years later. By the end of the decade, he was back in the Mississippi Delta living with his mother and her new husband, Dusty Willis. Johnson and his stepfather, who had little tolerance for music, did not get along, and Johnson had to slip out of the house to join his musician friends.
In the course of these these years, he was known by various names: Robert Dodds and Robert Spencer (his first stepfather’s real name and pseudonym), and Little Robert Dusty (after his second stepfather’s nickname). Finally he chose to use his birth name Robert Johnson after his natural father. He may also have wished to be associated with the great guitarist Lonnie Johnson. These changes of name largely explain the inability of researchers before McCormack to obtain information.
There are conflicting accounts of whether Johnson attended school or not. Later accounts portray him as illiterate or possessing beautiful handwriting. The question was settled with the discovery by Gayle Dean Wardlow of marriage certificates bearing the clear and attractive signature of Robert L Johnson.
In any case, everyone agrees that music was Johnson’s first interest, and that he had his start playing the Jew’s harp and harmonica in addition to guitar.
Son House recalled Johnson as a boy had followed him around and tried very unsuccessfully to copy him. He then left the Robbinsville area, but later reappeared with a miraculous guitar technique. His boast is entirely credible. Johnson later recorded versions of Preaching the Blues and Walking Blues in House’s vocal and guitar style. However, Son’s chronology is questioned by Guralnick. When House moved to Robbinsville in 1930, Johnson was a young adult, already married and widowed. The following year, he was living near Hazelhurst, where he married for the second time. From this base Johnson began travelling up and down the Delta as an itinerant musician.
Legend
According to a legend known to modern Blues fans, Robert Johnson was a young black man living on a plantation in rural Mississippi. Branded with a burning desire to become a great blues musician, he was instructed to take his guitar to a crossroad near Dockery’s plantation at midnight. There he was met by a large black man (the Devil) who took the guitar from Johnson, tuned the guitar so that he could play anything that he wanted, and handed it back to him in return for his soul. Within less than a year’s time, in exchange for his everlasting soul, Robert Johnson became the king of the Delta blues singers, able to play, sing, and create the greatest blues anyone had ever heard.
This legend was developed over time, and has been chronicled by Gayle Dean Wardlow, Edward Komara and Elijah Wald. Folk tales of bargains with the Devil have long existed in African American and White traditions, and were adapted into literature by Washington Irving in “The Devil and Tom Walker” in 1824, and by and Stephen Vincent Benet in “The Devil and Daniel Webster” in 1936. In the 1930s the folklorist Harry Middleton Hart recorded many tales of banjo players, violinists, card sharps and dice sharks selling their souls at the crossroads, along with guitarists and one accordionist. The folklorist Alan Lomax considered that every African American secular musician was “in the opinion of of both himself and his peers, a child of the devil, a consequence of the black view of the European dance embrace as sinful in the extreme”.
Johnson seems to have claimed occasionally that he had sold his soul to the Devil, but it is not clear that he meant it seriously. Son House once told the story to Pete Welding as an explanation of Johnson’s astonishingly rapid mastery of the guitar. Welding reported it as a serious belief in a widely read article in Down Beat in 1966. However, other interviewers failed to elicit any confirmation from House. Moreover, there were fully two years between House’s observation of Robert as first a novice and then a master. In 1982, Guralnick unintentionally added the crossroads details to the legend. He quoted the account given by Ledell Johnson to David Evans of how his brother Tommy Johnson (no relation to Robert) sold his soul to a large black man at a crossroads. Although Guralnick made it clear that the details belonged to the Tommy Johnson story, casual readers failed to notice, and the crossroads association passed into oral tradition, and then into popular written accounts. The myth was established in mass consciousness in 1986 by the film “Crossroads’. There are now tourist attractions claiming to be “The Crossroads” at Clarksdale and in Memphis.
Itinerant career
When Johnson arrived in a new town, he would play for tips on street corners or in front of the local barbershop or a restaurant. He played what his audience asked for — not necessarily his own compositions, and not necessarily blues. With an ability to pick up tunes at first hearing, Johnson had no trouble giving his audiences what they wanted, and certain of his contemporaries, most notably Johnny Shines, later remarked on Johnson’s interest in jazz and country. (Many giants of the blues, including Muddy Waters, were not averse to playing the hit songs of the day.) Johnson also had an uncanny ability to establish a rapport with his audience — in every town in which he stopped, Johnson would establish ties to the local community that would serve him well when he passed through again a month or a year later.
Fellow musician Johnny Shines was 17 when he met Johnson in 1933. He estimated that Johnson was maybe a year older than himself. In Samuel Charters’ Robert Johnson, the author quotes Shines as saying:
“Robert was a very friendly person, even though he was sulky at times, you know. And I hung around Robert for quite a while. One evening he disappeared. He was kind of peculiar fellow. Robert’d be standing up playing some place, playing like nobody’s business. At about that time it was a hustle with him as well as a pleasure. And money’d be coming from all directions. But Robert’d just pick up and walk off and leave you standing there playing. And you wouldn’t see Robert no more maybe in two or three weeks…. So Robert and I, we began journeying off. I was just, matter of fact, tagging along.”
During this time Johnson established what would be a relatively long-term relationship with Estella Coleman, a woman who was about fifteen years his elder and the mother of musician Robert Lockwood, Jr.. Johnson, however, reportedly also cultivated a woman to look after him in each town he played in. Johnson supposedly asked homely young women living in the country with their families whether he could go home with them, and in most cases the answer was yes—until a boyfriend arrived or Johnson was ready to move on.
Recording sessions
Around 1936, Johnson sought out H. C. Speir in Jackson, Mississippi, who ran a general store and doubled as a talent scout. Speir, who helped the careers of many blues players, put Johnson in touch with Ernie Oertle, who offered to record the young musician in San Antonio, Texas. At the recording session, held on November 23, 1936 in rooms at the landmark Gunter Hotel which Brunswick Records had set up as a temporary studio, Johnson reportedly performed facing the wall. This has been cited as evidence he was a shy man and reserved performer, a conclusion played up in the inaccurate liner notes of the 1961 album King of the Delta Blues Singers. Johnson probably was nervous and intimidated at his first time in a makeshift recording studio (a new and alien environment for the musician), but in truth he was probably focusing on the demands of his emotive performances. In addition, playing into the corner of a wall was a sound-enhancing technique that simulated the acoustical booths of better-equipped studios. In the ensuing three-day session, Johnson played 16 selections, and recorded alternate takes for most of these. When the recording session was over, Johnson presumably returned home with cash in his pocket; probably more money than he’d ever had at one time in his life.
Among the songs Johnson recorded in San Antonio were “Come On In My Kitchen”, “Kind Hearted Woman Blues”, “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom”, and “Cross Road Blues”. “Come on in My Kitchen” included the lines: “The woman I love took from my best friend/Some joker got lucky, stole her back again,/You better come on in my kitchen, it’s going to be rainin’ outdoors.” In “Crossroad Blues”, another of his songs, he sang: “I went to the crossroads, fell down on my knees./I went to the crossroads, fell down on my knees./I asked the Lord above, have mercy, save poor Bob if you please./Uumb, standing at the crossroads I tried to flag a ride./Standing at the crossroads I tried to flag a ride./Ain’t nobody seem to know me, everybody pass me by.”
When his records began appearing, Johnson made the rounds to his relatives and the various children he had fathered to bring them the records himself. The first songs to appear were “Terraplane Blues” and “Last Fair Deal Gone Down”, probably the only recordings of his that he would live to hear. “Terraplane Blues” became a moderate regional hit, selling 5,000 copies.
In 1937, Johnson traveled to Dallas, Texas, for another recording session in a makeshift studio at the Brunswick Record Building, 508 Park Avenue. Eleven records from this session would be released within the following year. Among them were the three songs that would largely contribute to Johnson’s posthumous fame: “Stones in My Passway”, “Me and the Devil”, and “Hellhound On My Trail”. “Stones In My Passway” and “Me And The Devil” are both about betrayal, a recurrent theme in country blues. The terrifying “Hell Hound On My Trail”—utilising another common theme of fear of the Devil—is often considered to be the crowning achievement of blues-style music. Other themes in Johnson’s music include impotence (“Dead Shrimp Blues” and “Phonograph Blues”) and infidelity (“Terraplane Blues”, “If I Had Possession Over Judgement Day” and “Love in Vain”).
Six of Johnson’s blues songs mention the devil or some form of the supernatural. In “Me And The Devil” he began, “Early this morning when you knocked upon my door,/Early this morning, umb, when you knocked upon my door,/And I said, ‘ Hello, Satan, I believe it’s time to go,’” before leading into “You may bury my body down by the highway side,/ You may bury my body, uumh, down by the highway side,/So my old evil spirit can get on a Greyhound bus and ride.”
It has been suggested that the Devil in these songs does not solely refer to the Christian model of Satan, but equally to the African trickster god, Legba.
Death
One of Robert Johnson’s three tombstonesIn the last year of his life, Johnson is believed to have traveled to St. Louis and possibly Illinois, and then to some states in the East. He spent some time in Memphis and traveled through the Mississippi Delta and Arkansas. By the time he died, at least six of his records had been released in the South as race records.
His death occurred on August 16, 1938, at the age of twenty-seven at a country crossroads near Greenwood, Mississippi. He had been playing for a few weeks at a country dance in a town about 15 miles (24 km) from Greenwood.
There are a number of accounts and theories regarding the events preceding Johnson’s death. One of these is that one evening Johnson began flirting with a woman at a dance. One version of this rumor says she was the wife of the juke joint owner who unknowingly provided Johnson with a bottle of poisoned whiskey from her husband, while another suggests she was a married woman he had been secretly seeing. Researcher Mack McCormick claims to have interviewed Johnson’s alleged poisoner in the 1970s, and obtained a tacit admission of guilt from the man. When Johnson was offered an open bottle of whiskey, his friend and fellow blues legend Sonny Boy Williamson knocked the bottle out of his hand, informing him that he should never drink from an offered bottle that has already been opened. Johnson allegedly said, “don’t ever knock a bottle out of my hand”. Soon after, he was offered another open bottle of whiskey and accepted it, and it was that bottle that was laced with strychnine. Johnson is reported to have started to feel ill into the evening after drinking from the bottle and had to be helped back to his room in the early morning hours. Over the next three days, his condition steadily worsened and witnesses reported that he died in a convulsive state of severe pain – symptoms which are consistent with strychnine poisoning. Strychnine was readily available at the time as it was a common pesticide, and although it is a very bitter-tasting substance it is extremely toxic, and a small quantity dissolved in a harsh-tasting solution such as whiskey could possibly have gone unnoticed, but (over a period of days due to the reduced dosage) still produced the symptoms and eventual death that Johnson experienced.
The precise location of his grave remains a source of ongoing controversy, and three different markers have been erected at supposed burial sites outside of Greenwood. Research in the 1980s and 1990s strongly suggests Johnson was buried in the graveyard of the Mount Zion Missionary Baptist church near Morgan City, Mississippi, not far from Greenwood, in an unmarked grave. A cenotaph memorial was placed at this location in 1990 paid for by Columbia Records and numerous smaller contributions made through the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund. More recent research by Stephen LaVere (including statements from Rosie Eskridge, the wife of the supposed gravedigger) indicates that the actual grave site is under a big pecan tree in the cemetery of the Little Zion Church north of Greenwood along Money Road. Sony Music has placed a marker at this site.
In 1938, Columbia Records producer John Hammond, who owned some of Johnson’s records, sought him out to book him for the first “From Spirituals to Swing” concert at Carnegie Hall in New York. On learning of Johnson’s death, Hammond replaced him with Big Bill Broonzy, but still played two of Johnson’s records from the stage. Robert Johnson has a son, Claude Johnson, and grandchildren who currently reside in a town near Hazlehurst, Mississippi.
Discography
Eleven Johnson 78s were released on the Vocalion label during his lifetime, with a twelfth issued posthumously. All songs copyrighted to Robert Johnson, and his estate.
1980 – John Lennon is shot to Deaths outside of his New York City home by Mark David Chapman. His biggest hit is “(Just Like) Starting Over,” which was released the month before his Deaths and becomes a million-selling No. 1 song. As part of the Beatles he is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988. He is awarded a Lifetime Achievement Grammy in 1991.
2008 – GUNS N’ ROSES: ‘Chinese Democracy’ Track Listing Slightly Revised – Oct. 17, 2008
A slightly revised track listing for the new GUNS N’ ROSES album, “Chinese Democracy”, has now been posted at BestBuy.com, which will exclusively carry the album in the U.S. starting on November 23. A pre-order page for the long-delayed release was posted at the site on Wednesday (October 15), although the pre-order option was later taken off. The page lists 14 song titles for the record, 11 of which have either been played live or leaked online over the past few years. The Pulse of Radio reports that one of those, “Street of Dreams”, was previously known as “The Blues”, while three titles, “Scraped”, “Sorry” and “Prostitute”, have not been heard anywhere.
According to Billboard.com, sources who have heard the album say that it opens with a “blood-curdling Axl Rose scream.”
Two different covers will apparently be available, along with CD and vinyl versions. What appears to be one of the covers has been posted at the Best Buy site, showing what seems to be a bicycle with a basket perched on it.
There has still not been an official announcement regarding the November 23 arrival date for the record.
“Chinese Democracy” has been in the works since the mid-’90s, with speculation and mystery surrounding the album’s 13-year journey, ever-changing roster of players and spiraling recording costs.
Revised “Chinese Democracy” track listing:
01. Chinese Democracy
02. Shackler’s Revenge
03. Better
04. Street Of Dreams
05. If The World
06. There Was A Time
07. Catcher N’ The Rye
08. Scraped
09. Riad N’ The Bedouins
10. Sorry
11. I.R.S.
12. Madagascar
13. This I Love
14. Prostitute
2008 – With the Chicago Cubs two wins (or Milwaukee Brewers losses) away from clinching a playoff spot, Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder has penned a song in honor of the baseball team.
“All The Way,” which Vedder performed last month at a solo show in Chicago, has already popped up in Chicago sports bars and radio stations, with a download coming “in the next few days,” according to the Pearl Jam site. The song features lyrics like “Our heroes wear pinstripes / pinstripes in blue / give us a chance to feel like heroes too” and “We are one with the Cubs / with the Cubs we’re in love / we are not fair-weather but foul-weather fans.” We’re disappointed Vedder couldn’t find a rhyme for “Kosuke Fukudome.”
Cubs great Ernie Banks reportedly asked Vedder to write the song as the Cubbies attempt to win their first World Series since 1908. Meanwhile, us Mets fans still have songs like this.
2008 – One of the bigger breakout hits of the Toronto Film Festival was It Might Get Loud, a documentary that consists entirely of Jimmy Page, Jack White and The Edge swapping stories, expounding on their experiences and of course jamming with each other. The film, directed by An Inconvenient Truth helmer Davis Guggenheim, will satisfy casual fans as well as hardcore guitar afficianados. “It’s almost like having three carpenters talk about a radial-arm saw,” explains White. “It’s great to use this mechanical device to learn all about these other ideas that surround it.” Click below for more on It Might Get Loud, including what songs the trio played when the cameras rolled.
2008 – Gilmour’s tribute to Floyd star Roger Waters, Nick Mason, Syd Barrett and Richard Wright
Gilmour said Wright (right) was “gentle, unassuming and private”.
Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour has praised late bandmate Richard Wright for his “vitality, spark and humour”.
Writing on his website, Gilmour said he had “never played with anyone quite like” the keyboardist, who has died from cancer at the age of 65.
“In my view, all the greatest Pink Floyd moments are the ones where he is in full flow,” Gilmour added.
He hailed Wright for his songwriting talent, including on two tracks from 1973’s Dark Side of the Moon album.
Gilmour joined the band in 1968 – a year after the group’s first album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.
In the welter of arguments about who or what was Pink Floyd, Rick’s enormous input was frequently forgotten
David Gilmour
“No-one can replace Richard Wright – he was my musical partner and my friend,” Gilmour said.
“In the welter of arguments about who or what was Pink Floyd, Rick’s enormous input was frequently forgotten.
“He was gentle, unassuming and private but his soulful voice and playing were vital, magical components of our most recognised Pink Floyd sound.”
Gilmour said the blend of his and Wright’s voices, together with their “musical telepathy, reached their first major flowering” on 1971 track Echoes, which took up the whole of the second side of album Meddle.
Gilmour, Waters, Mason and Wright in 2005
The band performed together at Live 8 in 2005 for the first time in 24 years
Released in 1973, The Dark Side of the Moon went on to become one of the best-selling and most influential albums in rock history.
Wright helped write much of the album, but was responsible for two songs in particular, Gilmour said.
He added: “After all, without Us and Them, and The Great Gig in the Sky – both of which he wrote – what would The Dark Side Of The Moon have been?”
Gilmour has now pulled out of the premiere of a concert film, David Gilmour Live In Gdansk, in London on Tuesday.
But the guitarist has asked for the event to go ahead without him in memory of Wright, his spokesman said.
Joe Boyd, who produced the band’s early records, said Wright’s keyboards were “an integral part of the Pink Floyd sound”.
“He was a very nice and easy going person,” he said. “It’s very sad to hear of his untimely passing.”
‘Influential musician’
Neil Portnow, president of The Recording Academy, which organises the Grammy Awards in the US, added his tribute.
“Richard Wright was an exceptional instrumentalist, whose distinctive keyboard style was essential to the musicality of this world-renowned band,” he said.
“He also scored films and recorded his own instrumental compositions and solo albums.
“Our deepest sympathies go out to his family and fans at this difficult time, as we remember this influential musician.”
The group played at the Live 8 event in Hyde Park in London in 2005, when Roger Waters rejoined his bandmates for a one-off, more than two decades after they fell out.
The four musicians all also played at a tribute concert for Syd Barrett in 2007, with Waters playing a solo set and Wright, Gilmour and Nick Mason making a separate appearance.
Wright’s death was announced in a statement by his spokesman on Monday.
The spokesman said Wright died after “a short struggle with cancer” but declined to give further details.
2008 – Motown producer and songwriter Norman Whitfield, who helped craft some of the Detroit label’s biggest hits, died Tuesday at Los Angeles’ Cedars-Sinai Hospital. He was 65. While an exact cause of death wasn’t revealed, Whitfield reportedly suffered ailments from diabetes. Whitfield started out at Motown as a tambourine player before writing some early hits for Marvin Gaye with lyricist Barrett Strong. One of those songs, “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” ended up topping multiple charts and became the label’s biggest hit of the ’60s. Whitfield also worked with the Temptations, co-writing their hits “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” as well as “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone,” which won Motown its first Grammy. Whitfield left Motown in 1973, forming his own Whitfield Records. The label released the Rose Royce hit “Car Wash,” and later won Whitfield another Grammy in 1977 for the Car Wash soundtrack.
2008 – Associated Press – LONDON – Richard Wright, a founding member of the rock group Pink Floyd, died today… this day in rock! He was 65.
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Pink Floyd’s spokesman Doug Wright, who is not related to the artist, said Wright died after a battle with cancer at his home in Britain. He says the band member’s family did not want to give more details about his death.
Wright met Pink Floyd members Roger Waters and Nick Mason in college and joined their early band, Sigma 6. Along with the late Syd Barrett, the four formed Pink Floyd in 1965.
The group’s jazz-infused rock and drug-laced multimedia “happenings” made them darlings of the London psychedelic scene, and their 1967 album, “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn,” was a hit.
In the early days of Pink Floyd, Wright, along with Barrett, was seen as the group’s dominant musical force. The London-born musician and son of a biochemist wrote songs and sang.
The band released a series of commercially and critically successful albums including 1973’s “Dark Side of the Moon,” which has sold more than 40 million copies. Wright wrote “The Great Gig In The Sky” and “Us And Them” for that album, and later worked on the group’s epic compositions such as “Atom Heart Mother,” “Echoes” and “Shine On You Crazy Diamond.”
But tensions grew between Waters, Wright and fellow band member David Gilmour. The tensions came to a head during the making of “The Wall” when Waters insisted Wright be fired. As a result, Wright was relegated to the status of session musician on the tour of “The Wall,” and did not perform on Pink Floyd’s 1983 album “The Final Cut.”
Wright formed a new band Zee with Dave Harris, from the band Fashion, and released one album, “Identity,” with Atlantic Records.
Waters left Pink Floyd in 1985 and Wright began recording with Mason and Gilmour again, releasing the albums “The Division Bell” and “A Momentary Lapse of Reason” as Pink Floyd. Wright also released the solo albums “Wet Dream” (1978) and “Broken China” (1996).
In July 2005, Wright, Waters, Mason and Gilmour reunited to perform at the “Live 8″ charity concert in London — the first time in 25 years they had been onstage together.
Wright also worked on Gilmour’s solo projects, most recently playing on the 2006 album “On An Island” and the accompanying world tour.
Richard William Wright (28 July 1943 – 15 September 2008) was a self-taught pianist and keyboardist best known for his long career with Pink Floyd. Though not as prolific a songwriter as his bandmates Syd Barrett, Roger Waters and David Gilmour, he did write significant parts of the music for classic albums such as Meddle, Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here, as well as for Pink Floyd’s final studio album The Division Bell. Wright’s richly textured keyboard layers have been a vital ingredient and a distinctive characteristic of Pink Floyd’s sound. In addition, Wright frequently sang background and occasionally lead vocals onstage and in the studio with Pink Floyd (most notably on the songs “Time,” “Echoes,” and on the Syd Barrett composition “Astronomy Domine”). Wright died on 15 September 2008, following a short battle with cancer.
Biography
Pink Floyd career
Wright was educated at the Haberdashers’ Aske’s School and the Regent Street Polytechnic College of Architecture, where he met fellow band members Roger Waters and Nick Mason. He was a founding member of The Pink Floyd Sound (as they were then called) in 1965, and also participated in its previous incarnations, Sigma 6 and The (Screaming) Abdabs.
In the early days of Pink Floyd, Wright was seen as a dominant musical force in the group (though not as much of one as Syd Barrett, the band’s chief songwriter and front man at the time) and he wrote and sang several songs of his own during 1967–68. While not credited as a singer on The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, he sung lead on Barrett-penned songs like “Astronomy Domine” and “Matilda Mother,” as well as notable harmonies on “Scarecrow” and “Chapter 24.” Examples of his early compositions include “Remember a Day”, “Paintbox” and “It Would Be So Nice”. As the sound and the goals of the band evolved, Wright became less interested in songwriting and focused primarily on contributing his distinctive style to extended instrumental compositions such as “Interstellar Overdrive”, “A Saucerful of Secrets”, “Careful with That Axe, Eugene”, “One Of These Days” and to musical themes for film scores (More, Zabriskie Point and Obscured by Clouds). He also made essential contributions to Pink Floyd’s long, epic compositions such as “Atom Heart Mother”, “Echoes” and “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”. His most commercially popular compositions are “The Great Gig in the Sky” and “Us and Them” from 1973’s The Dark Side of the Moon. He also contributed significantly to other mid-period Floyd classics like “Breathe” and “Time”.
Wright recorded his first solo project, Wet Dream, and released it in September 1978 with little fanfare. However, the album is regarded with some acclaim among Pink Floyd fans. Battling both personal problems and an increasingly rocky relationship with Roger Waters, he was forced to resign from Pink Floyd during The Wall sessions by Roger Waters, who threatened to pull the plug on the album’s tapes if Wright did not leave the band. However, he was retained as a salaried session musician during the subsequent live concerts to promote that album in 1980 and 1981. Ironically, Wright became the only member of Pink Floyd to profit from those hugely spectacular shows, since the net financial loss had to be borne by the three remaining “full-time” members. He was the only member of the band not to attend the 1982 première of the film version of The Wall. In 1983, Pink Floyd released the only album on which Wright does not appear with The Final Cut.
During 1984, Wright formed a new musical duo with Dave Harris (from the band Fashion) called Zee. They signed a record deal with Atlantic Records and released only one album, Identity, which was a commercial and critical flop. Wright rejoined Pink Floyd following Waters’ departure. Because of legal and contractual issues from his “hired gun” status during The Wall world tour, Wright’s photo was not included in the 1987 album A Momentary Lapse of Reason and his name was listed in smaller letters than Mason and Gilmour. By the time of the Momentary Lapse world tour and the 1988 live album The Delicate Sound of Thunder, Wright was contractually a member of Pink Floyd once again. In 1994, he co-wrote five songs and sang lead vocals on one song (“Wearing the Inside Out”) for the next Pink Floyd album, The Division Bell. This recording provided material for the double live album and video release P*U*L*S*E in 1995. Wright, like Nick Mason, has performed on every Pink Floyd tour.
Modern days
In 1996, inspired by his successful input into The Division Bell, Wright released his second solo album, Broken China, including contributions from Sinéad O’Connor on vocals, Pino Palladino on bass, Manu Katché on drums, Dominic Miller (known from his guitar work with Sting) and Tim Renwick, another Pink Floyd associate, on electric guitar. Broken China was considered to be a more focused and artistically successful work than Wet Dream and marked a new phase in Richard Wright’s modus operandi, with extensive use of computer-based recording and production techniques, assisted by Anthony Moore with whom he co-wrote the album’s lyrics.
On 2 July 2005, Wright, Gilmour, Mason were joined by Waters on stage for the first time since the Wall concerts for a short set at the Live 8 concert in London. Wright underwent eye surgery for cataracts in November 2005, preventing him from attending Pink Floyd’s induction into the UK Music Hall of Fame. Roger Waters, who was also unable to attend the band’s induction due to rehearsals for the opening of his opera Ça Ira in Rome, appeared in video link and stated, tongue-in-cheek:
“ Rick actually hasn’t had an eye operation, he and I have eloped to Rome and we’re living happily in a small apartment off the Via Venuti! ”
Wright contributed keyboards and background vocals to David Gilmour’s most recent solo album, On an Island, and performed with Gilmour’s touring band for over two dozen shows in Europe and North America in 2006 . On stage with Gilmour he performed piano, electric piano and synth leads with his Kurzweil K2600 workstation, Hammond organ and even his long-inactive Farfisa organ, which was resurrected especially for performing “Echoes” and a couple of Pink Floyd’s and Syd Barrett’s older numbers that Gilmour chose to revisit in his recent concerts. He also provided backing vocals and lead vocals (notably on “Echoes”, “Time”, “Comfortably Numb”, “Wearing the Inside Out” “Astronomy Domine” and “Arnold Layne” – the latter released as a live single). He declined an offer to join Roger Waters and Nick Mason on Waters’ The Dark Side of the Moon Live tour in order to spend more time working on an upcoming solo project (which may be an instrumental album released in 2008).
On 4 July 2006, Wright joined Gilmour and Mason for the official screening of the P•U•L•S•E DVD. Inevitably, Live 8 surfaced as a subject in an interview. When asked about performing again, Wright replied he would be happy on stage anywhere. He explained that his plan is to “meander” along and said about playing live:
“ …and whenever Dave wants me to play with him, I’m really happy to play with him. And you’ll play with me, right? ”
However, Wright stated that he had no desire to perform as part of an officially-reformed ‘Pink Floyd’ again, saying that the Live 8 concert was nice as a “one off.”
Wright had the lowest profile of any member of a band known for their lack of individual attention seeking. Unlike the three other surviving band members who have emerged as public figures, Wright rarely spoke in public. Wright was very rarely seen in the live footage from the Live 8 reunion performance; with a few exceptions he was only shown in wide shots. Some have suggested that the director of the broadcast did not know which musician was the fourth member of Pink Floyd until the very end when they got together for a group shot.
Personal
He married his first wife, Juliette Gale, in 1964 and they divorced in 1982 after having two children. He married his second wife Franka in 1984 and they divorced in 1994. Wright married his third wife Millie (to whom he dedicated his second solo album Broken China) in 1996; their one child is named Ben.
In 1996 Wright’s daughter Gala married Guy Pratt, a session musician who has played bass for Pink Floyd since Roger Waters’ exit.
Wright died on 15 September 2008 after a battle with cancer.
Influence
Wright’s style fuses jazz and neoclassical influences that complemented the simple harmonic structures of the more blues and folk-based songs written by Roger Waters and David Gilmour. As a keyboardist, he is more interested in complementing each piece with organ or synthesizer layers and tasteful piano or electric piano passages. Unlike his contemporaries Rick Wakeman, Tony Banks or Keith Emerson, only occasionally did he opt for solo playing, notably in “Atom Heart Mother”, “Echoes”, “Any Colour You Like”, “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” Parts 1-5 and 6-9, “Welcome to the Machine”, “Dogs”, “Run Like Hell” and “Keep Talking”. Another notable solo is the first solo in Syd Barrett’s song “Love Song”. Wright is known for his ghostly atmospheric textures such as the Leslie piano arpeggios at the beginning of “Echoes”, the echoed Farfisa Organ in the live versions of “Careful with That Axe, Eugene” and “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun”, the distinctive Minimoog solos in “Any Colour You Like” and, more famously, “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” and the jazzy electric piano passages in “Money”, “Time” and “Sheep”. In “A Saucerful of Secrets” and “Sysyphus” he experimented with ‘treated piano’. “Sysyphus” also made extensive use of Mellotron sounds, something of a rarity in the Pink Floyd canon. Wright also used Indian modal scales in “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun” and “Matilda Mother”. Although he is not often mentioned among the ’synthesizer greats’, it is widely acknowledged that Wright’s inventive use of keyboards and synthesizers with Pink Floyd has been pioneering.
Equipment
In the early days of the band, Wright dabbled with brass before settling on the Farfisa organ as his main instrument onstage (in addition to piano and Hammond Organ in the studio). For a brief period in 1969, Wright played vibraphone on several of the band’s songs and in some live shows, and he even played trombone on “Biding My Time” (also dating from this experimental period). During the formative years of Pink Floyd with Syd Barrett, Wright relied heavily on his Farfisa organ, fed through a Binson Echorec platter echo, to achieve distinctive sounds that helped the band gain their “psychedelic rock” edge. He started using a Hammond organ regularly onstage thereafter, and a grand piano later became part of his usual live concert setup when “Echoes” was added to Pink Floyd’s regular set-list. For tours in the 1970s centering around The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals and The Wall, the Farfisa was dropped (although it was brought back when Wright toured with David Gilmour on his On An Island tour), and an array of other instruments were added to the lineup, such as: Fender Rhodes, Wurlitzer and Hohner electric pianos, VCS 3, Minimoog, ARP String Ensemble and Prophet 5 synthesizers. Since 1987 Wright favoured Kurzweil digital synthesisers for reproducing his analogue synthesiser sounds, even though he still used his favourite Hammond C-3 organ. However, the one that he used with Pink Floyd at Live 8 and with David Gilmour was a “chopped” version (being stripped down of unnecessary weight and put into a more compact casing).
Discography
Further information: Pink Floyd discography
Solo albums
* Wet Dream – 15 September 1978
* Broken China – 26 November 1996
Zee albums
* Identity – 9 April 1984
With David Gilmour
* David Gilmour in Concert (DVD) – October, 2002
o Appears on two tracks: “Breakthrough” (Keyboard / Vocals) & “Comfortably Numb (With Bob Geldof)” (Keyboard)
* On an Island – 6 March 2006
o Appears on two tracks: “On an Island” (Hammond organ) & “The Blue” (Keyboards / Vocals)
* Remember That Night (DVD) – September, 2007
With Syd Barrett
* The Madcap Laughs – 3 January 1970
* Barrett – 14 November 1970
2008 – Metallica have just premiered the video for their single “The Day That Never Comes” on their MySpace page. The epic clip was directed by Danish director Thomas Vinterberg and filmed this past July in southern California.
On working with the acclaimed filmmaker, Hetfield explained to MTV.com, “That’s the beauty, I think, of writing vague but powerful lyrics — that someone like a movie director can interpret it in his own way and obviously, someone creative is able to take the metaphors and apply them to whatever he needs in his own life.” Go Watch The Video
The band have also just unveiled another song from their upcoming album Death Magnetic. The hard-charging track, “Cyanide” is now available for sale on iTunes.
The leak: Seems some diehard fans got their hands on the album early and it’s all good with Lars. Blabbermouth has a little on that: Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich has commented on the premature release of the band’s new album, “Death Magnetic”, via a French record store. A shop in Paris reportedly sold a number of copies of the CD this morning well ahead of its official September 12 worldwide release date with illegal “Death Magnetic” MP3 files making their way online by this afternoon.
During a guest appearance earlier today on “The Woody Show” on the San Francisco, California radio station Live 105 (KITS 105.3 FM), Ulrich stated about the French leak, “Listen, we’re ten days from release. I mean, from here, we’re golden. If this thing leaks all over the world today or tomorrow, happy days. Happy days. Trust me. Ten days out and it hasn’t quote-unquote fallen off the truck yet? Everybody’s happy. It’s 2008 and it’s part of how it is these days, so it’s fine. We’re happy.”
2008 – Coldplay announced plans to release a new EP and album.
Chris Martin said the band are planning two further releases including the full-length follow up to Viva La Vida, by the end of 2009.
He told BBC 6 Music: “We’re going to put an EP out at Christmas called Prospects March and we’re going to release an album next December to end the decade.”
The band played a one-off show at the BBC Radio Theatre at the weekend.
New material
Martin also said that the EP is recorded but they are still to work on their next album.
The singer also joked his band might disappear from the public eye after the release of their fifth LP.
He added: “And then we’re gonna be ‘Whooosh! Where’ve they gone?’, just like [The Usual Suspects' mythical film villain] Keyser Soze.”
The band will embark on a UK tour later this year visiting London, Manchester and Glasgow.
They are currently offering a free new song, Death Will Never Conquer, available to download from their website.
Coldplay have also been nominated for the best special effects award for Violet Hill at this year’s MTV VMA awards.
Russell Brand will host the event which is due to be held at LA’s Paramount Pictures Studios on 7 September.
2008 – Velvet Revolver Pay Up Over Song Theft. According to Rolling Stone, Velvet Revolver has reportedly settled a song theft case brought U.K. musician Tony Newton. Newton claimed that Velvet Revolver lifted the riff and melody for “Dirty Little Thing” from his band Voodoo Six’s track “Cyber Baby.”
“I genuinely couldn’t believe it, because it wasn’t as if it was close… it was basically the same riff,” says Newton in the Rolling Stone report. “Anyway, I called my publishers to check whether they knew anything — which, of course, they didn’t — and then basically left it with them.”
2006 – Producer Dallas Austin is jailed in Dubai for alleged drugs offenses. The hit-maker – who has crafted songs for TLC, Gwen Stefani, Madonna, and Michael Jackson – faces the full Midnight Express treatment if found guilty.
Dallas Austin (born December 29, 1970) is an American songwriter, record producer, and musician, based in Atlanta, Georgia. Some of his most notable clients include TLC, Boyz II Men, P!nk, Monica, Madonna, Gwen Stefani, Janet Jackson, Michael Jackson, Aretha Franklin, Stacie Orrico, Another Bad Creation, Leona Lewis, Texas, and Brand New Heavies.
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