Eternal Idol

Our ancestors who built Stonehenge clearly had an enormous amount of awe and reverence for the Moon, as shown by certain arrangements and alignments of stones and pits, and also by some of the objects they placed at the bottom of the ditch over 5,000 years ago. The Moon’s hardly disappeared from our considerations since then, but our attention was concentrated upon it in 1969 with the Apollo landings, then again a few years later when Pink Floyd released Dark Side of the Moon.

The Dark Side of the Moon was co-written with Rick Wright (above) whose sad death was announced yesterday. I’m of an age where I’m lucky enough to be able to look back on Pink Floyd, among others, as being a soundtrack to my formative years, but far more recently, I’ve often listened to Pink Floyd while I’ve been writing some of the longer posts on this site. I’ve learned from what Dave Gilmour has to say that Rick Wright contributed greatly towards “Echoes”, the side-long track from Meddle, and this is one song in particular that I’ve often listened to by the dead of night while sat here in my study pondering about Atkinson and the murky gloom inside Silbury Hill, as well as the astronomer priests of Stonehenge and their belief that the far-off Moon was a land of the dead.

I can’t really add anything original to the tributes to Rick Wright other than to say that his atmospheric, evocative music probably deluded me into thinking my posts were a lot better than I supposed them to be; like Stonehenge itself, Rick Wright’s music will live on in people’s imaginations, inspiring them and bringing joy and wonderment into their lives long after I’m gone.

What a wonderful man. What a shame he’s no longer with us.

POSTSCRIPT: RICK WRIGHT, PINK FLOYD AND THE 1969 MOON LANDING

Until Pete Glastonbury just emailed me, I didn’t have the faintest idea that Rick Wright or Pink Floyd had any connection whatsoever with the Apollo moon landings. However, it appears that the BBC commissioned Pink Floyd to produce music for the BBC’s coverage of the 1969 Apollo launch, most of which appears to have been lost, but thanks to the miracle of the internet, you can watch footage of astronauts cavorting on the moon’s surface and listen to an unreleased Pink Floyd track entitled “Moonhead” on this link, if you wish. I’ve just watched it and listened to it, and it was out of this world, for want of a better expression, while my mind’s reeling with the associations between the “star-filled” Stonehenge bluestones, Sir Arthur C. Clarke’s monolith on the moon and now an evocative Pink Floyd track I’d never heard before.

If any Pink Floyd and Rick Wright fans “out there” can contribute further to this, you don’t have to have an interest in Stonehenge or archaeology to post something up here. If you want to send in a comment with other information on Rick Wright, the moon landings or anything else, we’ll happily leave it here as a repository of information for anyone who might come looking, and as something of a memorial to the Great Man himself.

RIP Rick, from us all.