“Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleeve of care” is how Shakespeare described slumber poetically in Macbeth.
“Fly me high through the starry skies / Or maybe to an astral plane / Cross the highways of fantasy / Help me to forget today’s pain” is how Gary Wright described the same effect in his 1975 hit song “Dream Weaver.”
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It’s fair to say almost all of us are more familiar with the latter.
Wright was a New Jersey boy who found himself hanging out in London’s hippie scene of the ‘60s and ‘70s. He played keyboards with the band Spooky Tooth, hobnobbed with a post-Beatles George Harrison, and then went solo and scored hits with his synth-driven “Dream Weaver” and “Love is Alive.” (In the ‘80s, his “Really Wanna Know You” charted, too.)
Wright is still singing and synthing, and tomorrow he joins other nostalgic acts in a summer jam-style concert at the Family Arena. The line-up also includes Christopher Cross (“Ride Like the Wind”), Orleans (“Dance with Me”), Player (“Baby Come Back”), John Ford Coley (“I’d Really Love to See You Tonight”), Firefall (“You are the Woman”) and Robbie Dupree (“Steal Away”). The acts perform as the cheekily named collective “Sail Rock,” a reference to Christopher Cross’ Grammy-winning album of ‘79, as well as a wink at the recent mockery of vintage soft rock as “Yacht Rock.”
SLM: Are you excited about the Sail Rock tour?
Gary Wright: I’ve done these kinds of things before and these bands have good chemistry together. The music is all really good, everybody immediately identifies all the songs, and it’s perfect for the summer. These are the songs you grew up with.
You were friends with George Harrison, and you visited India with him in the ’70s.
That was 1974 when I did that, and we were invited by Ravi Shankar to tour India. It was wonderful. It was very eye-opening for me. At that time I was 31 years old, discovering all this great stuff, hearing all this music from Ravi’s pupils. George was very much interested in Eastern philosophy, as was I. We had a great friendship. I’m writing a book about it. It’s coming out next summer from Penguin. My first book ever got a great publisher. It’s going to be called Dream Weaver.
What was it like working with George Harrison on All Things Must Pass?
It was awe-inspiring. A lot of the songs that were on that album were written during the Beatles’ day but never made it onto Beatles records. That was a dream come true. I was working with musicians I grew up listening to, like Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr, Billy Preston, Leon Russell, and Phil Collins. As an upcoming musician it was a dream come true to be in the same room with them recording and it pushed me to think of great parts.
When you released The Dream Weaver album you proudly told the world it was made almost entirely with synthesizers and drums, with guitar on one song only. Why did you craft it like that?
It was really not a conscious decision. As I was writing the songs for the album I only had keyboards in the studio. After I recorded everything it sounded really good and the only guitar was in the Ronnie Montrose song “Power of Love.” It worked in my favor because when the album was marketed they marketed it as having no guitar. DJs would say “’Love is Alive,’ check this out, there’s no guitars.” It was a new thing.
Do your consider yourself a prog rocker?
I wouldn’t say prog rock so much. Spooky Tooth was more progressive rock. My music has a certain element of funk in it. I hate to be pigeonholed.
“Dream Weaver” has become a song used in films to connote falling in love at first sight.
Everybody interprets songs and lyrics in a certain way. The real essence of that song to me is the presence of god pervading the universe and being uplifting: “Dream Weaver, I believe you can get me through the night / Dream Weaver, I believe we can reach the morning light.” You can certainly broaden the lyrics to include meeting a person. It all started with Wayne’s World and Madonna. Carvey and Meyers used that a lot. And then it was used in Toy Story 3 [when Barbie meets Ken]. I don’t think that’s negative usage of it. Falling in love can incorporate the consciousness of god.
I hadn’t realized that the Judas Priest song that was accused of having a backmasked message encouraging suicide, “Better By You, Better Than Me,” was originally a Spooky Tooth song.
That was just a scam by these parents of this kid who killed himself to try to get money. They blanket-sued everybody. “Do it” [the alleged, subliminal suicide-related lyric] wasn’t in the original lyric I wrote with Spooky Tooth. I did a deposition on it and that was a joke.
There is a Spooky Tooth album called You Broke My Heart So I Busted Your Jaw. Who thought of that title?
I didn’t think of it, it was an old R&B song by Ike and Tina Turner. I just said it as a joke one night in the studio and everybody said, “Yeah! Yeah!” and I said, “No, that was just a joke!” and I was outvoted.
What is that strap-on keyboard called?
That’s called a keytar and I do enjoy playing it. I kind of pioneered the usage of that in ‘76. I got together with my road tech and we contacted Moog and we figured out a way to do it and it evolved. They’re not made any more, actually.
On the Sail Rock tour, do all the artists perform onstage together at some point?
At the end of the show there’s a finale and an encore where that happens, and during the whole show Orleans is playing as the band for the other artists.
Do you have a recurring dream?
No. I don’t remember my dreams. They way I see dreams is that they’re little bits of movies you’ve recorded throughout your life, and based on your present emotional state they manifest in your subconscious mind. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. Some dreams are really deep, from the “superconscious,” where they actually could be projecting something that’s happening in the future.
