Gary Wright Interview

TCC: This wasn’t the first time you took a big hiatus. From 1981 to 1988 you didn’t a release an album either.

GW: That’s right. From 1981 to 1987 it was, 1987 I released ‘Who I Am’, 1987 or 1988. I had been involved in several film projects at that time. I scored a movie called ‘Endangered Species’. I worked on another movie called ‘Staying Alive’. A German film called ‘Fire and Ice’. So I was still active, but just not in the kind of releasing of pop records. I had taken a hiatus too to raise my kids. I had toured so much in the 1960s and 1970s that I wanted a break. I didn’t go back touring until 1995.

TCC: What do you think made ‘Dream Weaver’ so successful? It made number two on the charts and the album itself was very successful as well.

GW: I think because it was released at a time when people were just starting to get into -- basically with synthesizers – but it was the first really all keyboard pop album that was ever done. I was the first all keyboard band that went out and tour. I think the media got all over that and really publicized that. It was a unique kind of experience. The timing was just perfect for that album to have come out. It did very, very well. That and ‘Love Is Alive’.

TCC: Yeah, but what do you think made the album so successful? You just said ‘Love Is Alive’ and ‘Dream Weaver’ both made number two on the charts. How come that album was so much more successful than, let’s say, the next two after it?

GW: The other ones after that didn’t really have any big smash singles on it. It’s hard to say. When I released the first single, ‘The Light of Smiles’, I think it was the wrong single. That pulled the momentum out of the whole project. That was a mistake. It’s kind of weird. You can have hits, but it’s hard to sustain a career. I went through that period where I didn’t have a lot of hits, although people were still buying the records. I had another hit in 1981 or 1982 with ‘Really Wanna Know You’. That was Top 50, it got to number 16 in the charts.

TCC: As an artist, when you first release an album and your going about thinking about what single your going to release, is it your choice of what single your going to release or do you have people in your ear pushing you one way or another?

GW: Back then, they asked me. I had to get the final approval. And I did. When your all toughed up and you had all that success, you think, ‘Oh anything I release is going to be a hit’. That was a mistake. I didn’t really choose correctly the right song. As a matter fact, the first song I wanted to release for a single on the ‘Light of Smiles’ album was ‘Water Sign’. Somebody from Warner Bros. called me up and said that, ‘The song [is 4 minutes, 20 seconds] long. That’s too long for a single’. Even though ‘Dream Weaver’ was 4:40 or something. I said, ‘Oh okay, just release Phantom Rider’. And that isn’t a single. They put that out and it got to number 40 in the top 40, but it wasn’t a big hit. That took the rhythm out of the project.

TCC: Do you think to release a successful album, would you say that the singles you release on the album is integral to the album’s success?

GW: Well back then it was. I think now even more. You need to have something that’s played regularly. Then you have mass appeal and everybody hears it. When you have a hit single, you have to realize that it’s played maybe 10 times a day in every city in the country. All these minutes and minutes that people get to hear it. So you’re really mass putting this music out for the masses to hear. If you just have an album, it’s a different kind of experience. People don’t have as much listening ability to listen to the album consistently. Back then especially there was FM radio, so you really needed a single for the vehicle to draw something home.

TCC: What about the song ‘Dream Weaver’ in itself? That kind of became a cultural phenomenon. It was actually recently in ‘Toy Story 3’, in the Ken and Barbie scene. Who approached you about putting that song in ‘Toy Story 3’?

GW: Disney did. They called me and said they wanted to use ‘Dream Weaver’ for ‘Toy Story 3’. They were the ones who really contacted me. Before that it had been in ‘Wayne’s World’ and ‘The People vs. Larry Flynt’. It’s been around in a lot of movies.