Gary Wright

Gary Wright took the long way round to "Dream Weaver". Born in 1943 and hailing from Cresskill, he was a child actor on Broadway in Fanny, then studied medicine and psychology in New York and Berlin before music won out. A meeting with Island's Chris Blackwell in Europe sent him to London, where he spent seven years as the organ-pumping principal songwriter of the blues rockers Spooky Tooth (Spooky Two, You Broke My Heart So I Busted Your Jaw) and, in between, as a solo act on A&M.

London also brought George Harrison. Wright played keyboards on All Things Must Pass in 1970, Harrison pitched in on Wright's Footprint the next year, and the friendship steered his writing toward Indian spirituality. He was a busy hired hand, too, turning up on records by B.B. King, Jerry Lee Lewis, Ringo Starr, Harry Nilsson and Ronnie Spector.

The Dream Weaver, in 1975, is where it all came together: keyboards swirling like incense smoke, a voice floating over the top, and two hits in 1976, the title track and "Love Is Alive". Nothing he made afterward matched it, though he drifted into world music and new age, re-recorded "Dream Weaver" for Wayne's World in 1992, and toured with Ringo's All-Starr Band. He died in 2023.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.