Dick Parry, who played saxophone on some of Pink Floyd’s most famous songs and tours, died Friday morning of unspecified causes at the age of 83.
Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour shared the sad news in a social media post. “My dear friend Dick Parry died this morning,” he wrote. “Since I was seventeen, I have played in bands with Dick on saxophone, including Pink Floyd.
“His feel and tone make his saxophone playing unmistakable,” Gilmour continued, “a signature of enormous beauty that is known to millions and is such a big part of songs such as ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond,’ ‘Wish You Were Here,’ ‘Us’ and ‘Them and Money.'”
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As Gilmour noted, Parry performed on some of the most famous songs from 1973’s The Dark Side of the Moon and 1975’s Wish You Were Here. He also appears on 1994’s The Division Bell and toured with Pink Floyd between 1973 to 1977, again in 1994, and at the Live 8 charity show in 2005.
Parry also toured with the Who, and with Gilmour’s early 2000’s solo bands, and racked up an impressive list of studio session credits that included work with Rory Gallagher, Bloodstone, John Entwistle, J.J. Jackson and the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band.
In a 1994 interview, Gilmour revealed how he reconnected with Parry after a period of inactivity, which led to his appearance on The Division Bell track ‘Wearing the Inside Out.”
“Funnily enough, at Christmas I got a Christmas card from Dick [Parry] who I hadn’t seen for years, and who’d given up the saxophone entirely and I think was unemployed, living in a village near Cambridge, doing nothing. …I asked him if he felt like auditioning for coming on the tour, to see if he still had his chops together, and he told me that he thought he was playing better than he’d ever played. And I got him down to the boat to have a little audition. And he played about three phrases and myself and Bob [Ezrin] said, ‘Fine, he’s still got it. Screw this auditioning business.’ …Boom, he’s got that tone. It’s fantastic. You can recognize it straight away.'”
Watch Dick Parry Perform ‘Money’ With Pink Floyd at Live 8
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