"The fact that people still know us is, in my opinion, a result of our music and of the big money that runs the music industry today. The people who control the industry are accountants who recycle everything in new, nostalgic packages, and everything else, to make more money"
About this Quote
Rick Wright is doing something rare for a legacy act: refusing the flattering myth that fame is purely earned and endlessly renewed. He grants Pink Floyd their due ("a result of our music") and then immediately undercuts the romance with a cold second engine: capital. The move is telling. It frames cultural longevity not as a mystical bond between artist and audience, but as an outcome of an industry that treats memory as inventory.
The jab at "accountants" is less about individual bean-counters than about a regime of risk management. By naming them as the people who "control the industry", Wright points to a power shift from tastemakers and musicians to corporate stewards who monetize predictability. "Recycle everything" is the key verb: it implies not just reissues and box sets, but a whole system of repackaging the past into endlessly marketable forms - anniversaries, remasters, deluxe editions, algorithm-friendly playlists. Nostalgia becomes a product category, not a feeling.
The subtext has an edge of bitterness, but it's also a clear-eyed diagnosis of how classic rock became a permanent asset class. Pink Floyd's catalog is both art and annuity; Wright seems aware that the band benefits from the same machinery he's criticizing. That tension is what gives the quote its bite: he's implicating his own afterlife in the marketplace he distrusts, suggesting that what survives isn't only what matters - it's what can be sold again.
The jab at "accountants" is less about individual bean-counters than about a regime of risk management. By naming them as the people who "control the industry", Wright points to a power shift from tastemakers and musicians to corporate stewards who monetize predictability. "Recycle everything" is the key verb: it implies not just reissues and box sets, but a whole system of repackaging the past into endlessly marketable forms - anniversaries, remasters, deluxe editions, algorithm-friendly playlists. Nostalgia becomes a product category, not a feeling.
The subtext has an edge of bitterness, but it's also a clear-eyed diagnosis of how classic rock became a permanent asset class. Pink Floyd's catalog is both art and annuity; Wright seems aware that the band benefits from the same machinery he's criticizing. That tension is what gives the quote its bite: he's implicating his own afterlife in the marketplace he distrusts, suggesting that what survives isn't only what matters - it's what can be sold again.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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