Richard Wright - Fired During Recording The Wall Album

Discuss all things Richard Wright from his epic keyboarding to the wonderful songs he created for the band!
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Re: Richard Wright - Fired During Recording The Wall Album

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Kerry King wrote: Fri Mar 05, 2021 2:00 amOther musicians who were involved can sue if they don't like it (and can afford it).
And she did, and that's how she won.
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Re: Richard Wright - Fired During Recording The Wall Album

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^ I think pink floyd/emi let her win.
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Re: Richard Wright - Fired During Recording The Wall Album

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DarkSideFreak wrote: Thu Mar 04, 2021 5:19 pm This is the legal definition of writing, NOT a personal interpretation as you kept insinuating, and then even went on to discredit as an error.
Legality is not the definitive arbiter of "right" or "wrong."

Slavery was legal once. Apparently, it still is in other places.
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Re: Richard Wright - Fired During Recording The Wall Album

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ZiggyZipgun wrote: Thu Mar 04, 2021 10:07 pm
mosespa wrote: Thu Mar 04, 2021 8:10 pmAlso, I'm pretty sure he came up with more than just a guitar solo for "Marooned."
Guitar World: How much of "Marooned" is improvised?

David Gilmour: Pretty much all of it. I probably took three or four passes at it and took the best bits out of each.
Also David Gilmour: "I was in The Beatles, The Who AND Pink Floyd; top that,motherfucker."
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Re: Richard Wright - Fired During Recording The Wall Album

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mosespa wrote: Fri Mar 05, 2021 6:44 amAlso David Gilmour: "I was in The Beatles, The Who AND Pink Floyd; top that,motherfucker."
That's always been one of my favorite quotes from him.
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Re: Richard Wright - Fired During Recording The Wall Album

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One of mine, as well; if only because it shows how unreliable of a source of information Sir David (can we call him that, yet?) can be.
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Re: Richard Wright - Fired During Recording The Wall Album

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mosespa wrote: Fri Mar 05, 2021 4:15 pm One of mine, as well; if only because it shows how unreliable of a source of information Sir David (can we call him that, yet?) can be.
If taken completely out of context, sure - but it was just a joke he made while talking about his guest appearances with The Who in 1996 and Paul McCartney in 1999.
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Re: Richard Wright - Fired During Recording The Wall Album

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mosespa wrote: Fri Mar 05, 2021 4:15 pm ... Sir David (can we call him that, yet?)
You can call him "Sir", but he's not "Sir David" as, to be pedantic, David is a CBE ... if David was awarded a knighthood he would become Sir David and Polly would become Lady Polly.
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Re: Richard Wright - Fired During Recording The Wall Album

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stryder wrote: Sun Oct 04, 2009 12:31 pmFor my view, I think it was hard to contribute music for what was an already heavy concept-driven piece; it would have been hard to advocate a several minutes long organ-lead solo for most of the songs. The general consensus of the band was that Rick wasn't pulling adequate weight, which suggests that was proberly true, but again, as Roger veered the ship towards concept pieces, Rick's songwriting weren't particually required, and may have felt he was being sidelined a bit.
DarkSideFreak wrote: Thu Mar 04, 2021 5:19 pmThis is the crux right here. Roger wrote 4 LPs worth of material while David and Rick did their solo material. It was bound to be skewed to one side. We can be happy that David, aside from co-writing "Young Lust", still had two unfinished ideas left over from his solo album, which turned into CN and RLH.
If David and/or Rick wrote 4 LPs worth of material, it would be listenable music that could probably be re-recorded and mixed in less than a month. What Roger wrote in 1978 were two very confusing and very rough drafts that created a lot of tedious work for other people, who basically took all of that and reduced it down to about one-eighth of what he'd worked on all year, and used that as the starting point for The Wall. Large portions of the eventual storyline weren't in there, and he had to rewrite it several times.

Gilmour's demos of "Comfortably Numb" and "Run Like Hell" were already developed to almost exactly how they would sound on the album, and they both required quite a bit of exploration in the way of alternate tunings and sound design to get there; all three parts of "Another Brick in the Wall" and "The Happiest Days of Our Lives" were then completely re-recorded around those guitar sounds. And those weren't the only demos David had - they were just the only two that were ready to go as-is, and that fit one of the "scenes" in the storyline that they were working to. He'd already recorded a version of "Signs of Life", parts of which even ended up on the finished version (which also spawned the riff for "Sorrow"). Then, in the three-month gap between The Wall's release and the start of the tour, he had at least four more demos ready to go when he and Roy Harper started recording The Unknown Soldier (his fifth co-writing credit was for "Short and Sweet" which was written for his first solo album):

"We had a big problem with 'True Story'. The original demo that Dave had made couldn't really be bettered and eventually I found myself having to resort to it. Of course I put myself and others across it and on top of it. For feel, it was the only one to go with. Pete Jenner and I had struggled with a couple of studio versions for the best part of a week, after which he went to the USA with The Clash. He came back to find that I was using the original demo and wasn't very pleased, but that's very often the way that it is with demos." - Roy

It's safe to say that none of Roger's demo recordings made it onto The Wall.

"The tapes were very poor quality - Roger always made dreadful demos even though they were made on very sophisticated equipment - but it was immediately clear that it was an interesting idea that could be developed musically." - Nick

But there was no room for additional music; if they didn't have other ideas that could easily be tweaked to fit the key or the tempo, all they could do was try to make Roger's primitive songs a little more musical. Even Roger couldn't fit all of his finished songs that had made it through the entire process. Ezrin had to fight with him to have Gilmour's music included, and then had to fight some more just to get a co-writing credit for "The Trial".

By the time Rick was fired, they were already working to a strict schedule to re-record everything for the third or fourth time, mostly working separately to the same click tracks; none of them would've been able to change any of their parts at that point. Rick didn't end up playing on a lot of the final tracks, but he'd likely played most of them on the earlier versions where they were developed.
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Re: Richard Wright - Fired During Recording The Wall Album

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It's my understanding that "Comfortably Numb" and "Run Like Hell" were brought in by Gilmour comparatively late in the band demo process. "Comfortably Numb" was nothing more than a high-strung acoustic and voice demo with Gilmour scat-singing the melody. The verse sections were in the key of "E" instead of Bminor and I've never bothered trying to figure out if they even follow the same interval progression.

"Nobody Home" was, according to Ezrin, the last song written for the album, VERY late in the game. They were already mixing and getting ready to master, if I remember correctly.

So, yes...there WAS room for additional music. And as far as Waters' primitive demos go, a band insider (according to the Schaffner book,) says that while the demos may have been very rough, "the songs were there."

I do wish Waters would just release those homemade demos. I, for one, would love to hear them just for "history's" sake.
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Re: Richard Wright - Fired During Recording The Wall Album

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twcc wrote: Fri Mar 05, 2021 10:29 pm
mosespa wrote: Fri Mar 05, 2021 4:15 pm ... Sir David (can we call him that, yet?)
You can call him "Sir", but he's not "Sir David" as, to be pedantic, David is a CBE ... if David was awarded a knighthood he would become Sir David and Polly would become Lady Polly.
Her Majesty needs to rectify this while he's still alive.

He certainly deserves it, in my view.
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Re: Richard Wright - Fired During Recording The Wall Album

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^^^
We are going a bit OFF TOPIC -

I agree, there's nothing to stop you nominating (a bit formal and you'll have to research the process on the internet) or you can simply write a letter with supporting comments that will be added to the file when a nomination is considered. I wrote a 'supporting' letter in January 2021 as I thought one individual was overlooked and one should be upgraded ... I sent it to The Prime Minister at No.10 and got a formal response from The Cabinet Office.

Best of luck ... :-;
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Re: Richard Wright - Fired During Recording The Wall Album

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I see no reason for Her Majesty to take seriously any sort of suggestion from a rebellious Yank. :)

Back on topic; um...yeah...Richard Wright got fired during the recording of The Wall album.

Well...technically he left.

And it was after the tour, not during the recording of the album.

So...is there even a topic to be on or off of, given that the topic is a fiction? :P
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Re: Richard Wright - Fired During Recording The Wall Album

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mosespa wrote: Sun Mar 07, 2021 5:55 amWell...technically
...he was forced to resign, agreed upon four months before the album was finished, and was allowed to return as a salaried musician for the tour.

He still kept his cut of the album sales, then got paid by the others to promote it while they lost money, and then got paid a bigger salary plus immunity from Roger's lawsuits. Sounds like a pretty sweet deal.
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Re: Richard Wright - Fired During Recording The Wall Album

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If Roger was offered an MBE/CBE/OBE or knighthood, would he accept it?
mosespa wrote: Fri Mar 05, 2021 4:15 pmSir David (can we call him that, yet?) can be.
When asked what the Queen had said when he collected his honour Gilmour remarked:
"She said Pink Floyd had been doing it for a very long time and I had to agree."

“I hope that primarily it is for what I have done in music, but if some of my recent more publicised charity work has made a difference then I am happy about that.”
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Fun fact: Jools Holland received his OBE at the same ceremony.

"Originally when they told me I’d got this award they said it’s for music – I thought they were going to say it’s for services to the used car trade."
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