Rick Wright's return to Pink Floyd: From The Final Cut outcast to Division Bell co-writer

By the time Pink Floyd started work on The Division Bell in 1993, Rick Wright wasn’t just a hired hand anymore — he was a full band member again. That’s a huge shift from a decade earlier, when he was effectively pushed out during the tense sessions for The Final Cut.

Wright’s departure was messy. During The Wall tour in 1980, Roger Waters began dominating the creative process, and by The Final Cut (1983), Wright was barely involved. He left the band as a member, citing a desire to pursue solo work, but the truth was he’d been let go. For A Momentary Lapse of Reason (1987), David Gilmour brought him back as a salaried session musician — Wright played but wasn’t considered an official member.

The Division Bell changed that. Gilmour and drummer Nick Mason wanted Wright back as an equal. They co-wrote tracks together — Wright’s atmospheric keyboards and even his vocals appear on songs like “Wearing the Inside Out,” his first lead vocal on a Floyd album since 1973’s The Dark Side of the Moon. For the first time since the late ’70s, Wright was treated as a creative partner, not an employee.