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Today, on the morning of May 22nd, 2026, Long-time Pink Floyd saxophonist and keyboardist Richard "Dick" Parry has passed away at the age of 83. His passing was announced by David Gilmour.

Dick was present during the 1972 Dark Side of The Moon studio sessions, and joined the band on stage for the first time on October 21st, 1972 during the Dark Side Of The Moon development tour, but he wouldn't become a constant presence on stage until the May 18th, 1973 show at Earls Court. He toured with the band from that point up until July 6th, 1977, providing not only saxophone, but also helping out Rick Wright on the keyboards. He then returned on the 1994 Division Bell tour, being present on the final regularly scheduled Pink Floyd show on October 29th, 1994, also at Earls Court. He then went on to play in Gilmour's solo backing band during the 2002 Tale Of Two Cities tour and 2006 On An Island tour. He also appeared on stage with the 68-81 lineup of Pink Floyd during the brief 2005 Live 8 reunion.

His playing made the Dark Side of The Moon and Wish You Were Here albums what they are, and they definitively wouldn't have been the same without his input.

May he rest in peace.

#pink floyd #dick parry

A collection of shots from Pink Floyd's concert at the Soldier Field in Chicago, Illinois, June 19th, 1977.

This is a very special show, as it is the most attended of the tour, and broke the attendance record for the venue at that time, but there is a funny story behind this. The band supposedly sold 85 thousand tickets, but the venue wasn't so sure so they flew a helicopter over the stadium when the crowd set in to do an approximate head count. They approximated 120 thousand attendees. The band was fined 7 thousand dollars for this.

The performance that night was absolutely stellar, but not the best of the tour. Their peak came just a few days later at the Municipal Stadium in Cleveland in front of 80 thousand attendees. This concert is still the second best of the entire tour and is an incredible performance. David's guitar tone is savage, almost comparable to Cleveland, Roger is in his element on vocals, Snowy plays amazing solos on HAC and SOYCD Part 8, Rick plays virtous piano solos on WYWH and SOYCD Part 9 in addition to his other keyboards and Nick's drumming is incredibly tight.

Unfortunately, the tapes for this show aren't ideal. The first recording, taped by Jeff J. is incredibly hissy and distant, mostly capturing crowd noise, but it's decently balanced and well listenable. Recorder 2 is the polar opposite. It's extremely close to the stage, and is incredibly clear, but the problem is the taper's inability to operate his equipment. He fiddles around with the record level knob all the time, so the recording varies between moments of clarity where the tape is a contender for Top 5 best recordings of the tour, to painfully loud distorted earrape.

A matrix of both recorders would be ideal. I've already made it a few months ago for personal use, but will be publishing it soon, probably whenever I'm done with a matrix of Dortmund 23rd (despite of how terrible the show itself is) and potentially with a matrix for MSG 1st. The other matrixes I've made this year for my full show-by-show re-listen of the tour are already done and tested. Those are Vienna, Paris 24th (patchwork) and Wembley 15th.

#pink floyd #david gilmour #rick wright #roger waters #dick parry #snowy white #animals #1977

Favorite performance of "Once Upon A Time In The West?"

I prefer the On Location/Love Over Gold tours arrangement over the 1978/79 one, but the 1980-83 performances are quite similar to eachother. If I were to chose the ones I listen to the most, then Torino and Werchter 1981, Sheffield, Leicester and Brighton 1982 and Vienna 1983.

Extra shoutout to London July 23rd, 1983 (the one used for Alchemy) for being a damn good final performance of the track. It was never performed again after that show.

Thanks for the question!

#dire straits

A collection of random shots from the band's show at the Usher Hall in Edinburgh, Scotland, on November 4th, 1974. This show is a real historical moment, as this is the exact show where You've Got To Be Crazy was first publically shown off, as well as the opening night of the British Winter tour. YGBC would eventually evolve into the track Dogs on the Animals album nearly three years later.

Unfortunately, no complete recording of this night had surfaced in the trading circles. Only the lone performance of YGBC in absolutely deplorable sound quality is available. The recording that's most often mislabeled as the 4th, is actually the 5th, with the only change being YGBC is swapped for the correct one. It seems that the PFM managment fell into the trap themselves, as they posted the mislabeled recording on streaming services in 2024 as a part of the annual copyright grab post season.

#pink floyd #david gilmour #roger waters #rick wright #nick mason #dick parry #dark side of the moon #animals

A collection of photos from the band's concert at the Armory Fieldhouse in Cincinnati, Ohio, March 8th, 1973.

This is one of my personal favourite shows of the year, and also the best ever performance of Childhood's End (also 2nd last). This show is also one of David's best, with him doing stellar improv on When You're In and amazing solos on Time and Money. Unfortunately, the only audience tape from this show has multiple cuts, one that swallows up most of Echoes' funky section and a bit of the whale section, and another one that swallows up everything from the halfway point of ACYL forward. Still, a very nice show that's definitively worth a listen. Photos taken by Jerry Burch

#pink floyd #david gilmour #roger waters #dark side of the moon

Full band photos

Closeups

An assorted collection of photos from the band's third show at Stafford's New Bingley Hall, March 30th, 1977

#pink floyd #david gilmour #rick wright #roger waters #nick mason #snowy white

Stage setup before the show at Rose Bowl Stadium in Pasadena, CA, April 16, 1994.

Poles Apart, Same night

High Hopes

One Of These Days

Run Like Hell

#pink floyd #david gilmour #rick wright #nick mason #guy pratt #dick parry #jon carin #tim renwick #gary wallis #sam brown #claudia fontaine #durga mcbroom

Pink Floyd performing the second out of a three show run at the Brendan Byrne Arena / Meadowlands Arena, East Rutherford, NJ, USA, October 11th, 1987.

This show features one of the best ever Comfortably Numb, in my opinion much better than PULSE and all the other '94 clone shows (The name I use for the October '94 shows with DSOTM due to how similar they sound to eachother and lack of improvisation) In addition, a perfect quality soundboard recording of the show is widely circulating as a bootleg.