David Gilmour on the “musical telepathy” he had with late keyboardist Richard Wright

There is not enough room on the internet to document all the numerous fallings out and squabbles that pockmarked Pink Floyd throughout their career. Sometimes they made music too. But whilst David Gilmour vs Roger Waters will undoubtedly rumble on into eternity, some of the other band members made peace in later years. One such mended relationship was the one between keyboardist Richard Wright and singer and guitarist Gilmour. Wright would have been 81 today (28 July) and when he died after a battle with cancer in 2008, Gilmour paid his old bandmate an emotional tribute.

“No one can replace Richard Wright. He was my musical partner and my friend,” wrote Gilmour. "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 added that he had never played with anyone quite like the keyboardist. “The blend of his and my voices and our musical telepathy reached their first major flowering in 1971 on Echoes . In my view all the greatest PF moments are the ones where he is in full flow. 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? Without his quiet touch the album Wish You Were Here would not quite have worked.”

Gilmour acknowledged that in their “middle years”, Wright lost his way but got back on track. “In the early Nineties, with The Division Bell , his vitality, spark and humour returned to him and then the audience reaction to his appearances on my tour in 2006 was hugely uplifting and it's a mark of his modesty that those standing ovations came as a huge surprise to him, (though not to the rest of us).

"Like Rick, I don't find it easy to express my feelings in words, but I loved him and will miss him enormously."