Pink Floyd keyboardist and co-founder Richard Wright died Monday at his home. He was 65.
Rock stars die all the time, and I never really knew anything about this quiet guy, but news of Wright’s death set me to reflecting quite a bit yesterday on my youth, the role of pop music in the lives of youth, and the fate of those whose lives turn them into rock stars.
I hope the title of this post isn’t overly corny – and I’m sure I’m not the only one to whom it will occur to use it. It refers, of course, to the title of what is my favorite song from Pink Floyd’s landmark 1973 album, Dark Side of the Moon – a song Wright wrote, or co-wrote with Roger Waters. Like all Floyd music, it is tortured to a point that approaches despair. And I had to wonder today if Wright ever found an answer to the angst-ridden but cynical cries for justice, peace –and just plain sanity- that comprised so much of the music that defined his professional life. Even acknowledging that Roger Waters was the primary architect of the eventual Pink Floyd milieu, both musically and lyrically, it would seem impossible to separate any of the members from the whole.
For that matter, it’s hard to picture Wright (and others like him) apart even from the larger community of commodities we call rock stars. For all the glamour and magnetic appeal these characters have to adolescent minds, it’s not a pretty sight when you peel back the thrill. There is no hope in rock culture: it promises a quick fix in some form of indulgence (for the going price, of course), but it cannot offer hope, because it cannot be open to the future; it cannot be open to life. Hence, the prevalence of drugs, fornication, and contempt for roots (tradition). It struggles to build its own tradition – a kind of “history” that spans perhaps 50 years – but it doesn’t really know how to grow up, have children, bury parents, nurture wisdom. It’s hard to overstate how important deep roots are to true flowering. Yet rock “culture” encourages kids to envision their roots in rebellion, which is the very death of culture.
I was not a real big Pink Floyd fan as a teen (I actually listened to them more later on). Although I was, of course, mesmerized by Dark Side of the Moon – as the whole world seemingly was. I liked the two follow-on albums, Wish You Were Here and Animals, I just wasn’t wild about them, like so many were. I also never liked the early work (although Meddle’s OK), and I could never understand the appeal of The Wall – an album that, even from my youth, I’ve always thought was the epitome of whining self-indulgence and overbearing melodrama. There are a few good songs, but surrounded by much too much drivel. Dark Side, however, was a piece apart. Just the fact that it spent more than 14 years on the Billboard charts is mind-boggling – occupying, as it does, a world of faddish impatience in which yesterday’s style is today’s trendy object of scorn.
◊
My own engagement with Pink Floyd began in a manner quite befitting the spirit of the psychedelic world the band embodied in 1973. Unlike so many events of that period, I remember this clearly, as I must have understood at some level, even then, what a cad I was.
I was 12 or 13 years old when I decided I wanted a copy of this album, which had already quickly become a signature of the age, and I was by then fully entrenched in the lawless and immoral underbelly of the so-called counterculture – despite my tender age. My bicycle at the time was a black Schwinn I’d inherited from my older brother, which had an aluminum basket on the handlebars for cargo. I rode the bike to the Natick Mall after dark, and stole a copy of the album from one of the stores. I’d left the bike just outside the door. I slid the album under my coat, headed out the door, hopped on the bike, and started pedaling down Speen Street toward home – even pulling the album out of my coat to admire it along the way.
But something happened during the ride, and when I got back home, I realized that I no longer had the album. It must have bounced out of the basket somewhere on Speen Street. I was furious. I had stolen it fair and square, and considered it cosmically unjust that I had to go back to the store and steal it again, greatly increasing my risk of getting caught.
So I got on the bike again, and pedaled back up Speen Street – carefully retracing my route in the vain hope of finding “my” album. I never did. Instead, I stole a second copy that night – the same way I had stolen the first – but I held this one in my hand the entire way home. Believe it or not, I still felt gypped by fate.
I share this story because it needs grieving as much as Richard Wright does. The memory – not so much of my actions, as of my unfathomable self-righteousness – stands as a sentinel in my conscience, always ready to mock any attempts to justify myself, while also providing a quiet witness to the danger of being glib about the potential for perverse ethics to blind us to truth.
I bought that album eventually – some years later – and I played it a couple times yesterday, raising a mental toast to Rick Wright as I listened. Now he really gets to play The Great Gig in the Sky – though what that means to him, I surely cannot say. I can say that he drank deeply from a poison cup I know all too well, and that the darkness that streams forth from it is a formidable enemy for any man. The end can come so quickly, and so easily find us hiding from the light, even searching the lonely road for the ill-gotten fruits of our violence and shame.
I hope you embraced the light, Richard, for we all move into the consuming fire in the end. Sorry about the thievery.
◊
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
As I get older, I find it harder and harder to reconcile modernity’s obsessive individualism with the worldview of the Bible. The Ezekiel reading is quite straightforward in assigning the prophet responsibility – not for the fate of his people, but for their knowledge of God’s Word. The watchman will have on his hands the blood of those whom he fails to warn of their danger. This could not have been a particularly comforting message to Ezekiel. Yes, they are responsible for themselves, but so is Ezekiel. It’s hard not to think of Jonah here, and his attempt to flee rather than proclaim God’s Word – which the Lord would have none of. It also recalls, at least obliquely, that marvelous cry of Jeremiah’s pathos from last Sunday’s first reading:
a former U.S. Vice Consul to Brazil (no pun intended) who was asking a Virginia U.S. District Court judge for leniency after having been found guilty of taping himself having sex with various 14-17 year-old girls. Gons G. Nachman argued that it should be considered OK for him to have done this, because he did it in countries (the Congo and Brazil) where, he claimed, girls mature more quickly, and the cultural emphasis is on finding financially stable men for them to marry. A psychologist was being lined up to assert that the cultural differences between America and these other countries somehow made Nachman think what he was doing was acceptable.
The night, of course, belonged to Sarah Palin. And while she lacks the stage charisma of Giuliani, she has a disarming grace about her that exudes a rare combination of confidence, competence, and earthy approachability. She certainly had her audience in the palm of her hand. Even while staying away from the social issues that really would have had the house rocking, there was an excitement evident that I haven’t seen in the GOP since I don’t know when.
