Richard Wright: Off to the Great Gig in the Sky

Dear Friend and Reader:

RICHARD WRIGHT was one of those rock stars who was heard but not seen. I don’t know much about the Pink Floyd keyboardist who died from cancer on Monday at the age of 65. Pink Floyd was not a band of personalities like The Beatles or The Rolling Stones. They spoke through their music, and if you grew up listening to Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals and The Wall, you heard Richard Wright loud and clear. Wright wrote one of my favorite Pink Floyd songs, the fittingly tragic Summer ’68, from an obscure album called Atom Heart Mother.

Rick Wright left the planet the day of an unusually powerful Pisces Full Moon that made aspects to some of his most important planets. The world will probably remember Monday, Sept. 15, 2008 as the day that the failure of two major Wall Street banks shook the financial and political spheres. Pink Floyd fans (and that includes just about everyone) will remember it as the day we lost one of the most talented, original and successful musicians of the modern era.

So who was this guy astrologically? [View chart.] He had most of his planets concentrated in Leo and Gemini. It was Leo that gave him the drive to create and unabashedly push his originality into the world. It was Gemini that made him articulate. Both are powerfully aspected and help explain astrology as much as they explain him.

His drive to create came through at full force in his Sun-Jupiter-Pluto conjunction in Leo, which pushedd self-awareness to an evolutionary level; the drive to be aware across the reaches of time and space, across cultures and to get past god-concepts and plunge into the heart of God. Sun-Jupiter-Pluto granted him a lot of what you might call luck. Floyd, despite its originality, did very, very well for itself.

Wright’s ability to speak his mind and his soul came through with his Moon conjunct Saturn in Gemini. He also had Ceres in this sign. My research shows that a strongly placed Ceres is associated with people who have heart-stopping singing voices. (His counts — it is tightly square Venus, another planet associated with the voice.) With Uranus and Vesta also together in Gemini, his innovation and sense of service burned hot; he is revealed by his astrology to be the creative revolutionary we all know he was, particularly in the electronic realm.

From left, Pink Floyd circa 1974, Richard Wright, Roger Waters, Nick Mason and David Gilmour.

Pink Floyd relied heavily on synth, keyboards and piano. Indeed, Floyd was at the forefront of using synthesizers before every kid had one in his room. Wright was to keyboards what George Harrison was to guitar. Not flashy, but innovative and tasteful, using his instrument to develop the song and carry it along to unusual places. It was Wright who played the most discordant but soulful keyboards I have ever heard, from Dark Side of the Moon. Next time you feel like living hell, when you hate the world, when you’ve had enough, cue up “Us and Them.” It will not make you feel any better. It will make you feel like you are not alone. Well, that is usually a lot better.

This was perfect for the early 1970s, when the world was leaving one traumatic era and entering a new, equally traumatic one.

Two aspects in particular speak to his ability to relate to those who are deeply alienated. One is the Moon conjunct Saturn, which would normally be depressive — and like many people he may have struggled with deep mental anguish.

The second is Mercury square Mars, which speaks of a deep resonance with the need to express anger. As an artist, he expressed it in a beautiful way, in accord with the deep values indicated by Taurus. Mars is also square the lunar nodes. Any planet square the lunar nodes has the feeling of life hinging on mastering the energy of that planet.

We can’t comment on the life of a great musician without acknowledging Neptune. His was in an odd position — right at the very end of Virgo, in the last degree. This is edgy and it signifies his devotion to both technology and music. Neptune is square the Moon and Saturn, meaning that he never really felt like he had solid ground to stand on. He died just as Pluto in late Sagittarius was about to square Neptune for the last time.

Rick, you came here to change the world, and that you did. Many millions of people around the globe are thinking about you tonight, missing you and remembering: after all, we’re only ordinary men…

Yours & truly,

with Steve Bergstein and Genevieve Salerno