Gary Wright, singer of the mid-1970s hit ‘Dream Weaver,’ dies at 80

He was a founding member of the U.K.-based band Spooky Tooth and an in-demand session musician who performed on all of George Harrison’s solo albums.

Gary Wright, the musician first-rate known for his hit singles “Dream Weaver” and “Love Is Alive,” has died. He turned into 80. Wright’s son Dorian showed the news to Variety; no reason of loss of life was announced.

He was a founding member of the U.K.-based band Spooky Tooth and was an in-call for session player from the late ’60s on, gambling on all of George Harrison’s solo albums — which include his epochal 1970 debut, “All Things Must Pass” — and on Ringo Starr’s early singles (and, plenty later, with Starr’s All-Starr Band) in addition to Nilsson, Tim Rose, B.B. King and plenty of others.

Yet he can be great remembered for the mid-Seventies hits mentioned above, which have been part of a vaguely mystical, synthesizer-pushed style of hit unmarried of the generation — Steve Miller’s “Fly Like an Eagle” is some other instance — and which saw him acting on many music suggests, carrying satin equipment and rocking a keytar.

His first album for Warner Bros., “The Dream Weaver” — with a name music stimulated by using a ride to India with Harrison — was launched in 1975, and whilst the single became a slow builder, by using the subsequent spring it was a primary hit and Wright had become a large superstar.

However, it become almost two years before he accompanied with “The Light of Smiles,” and his subsequent efforts did no longer method his previous success. His final charting single become 1981’s “Really Wanna Know You.”

In the following years, Wright specialised in instrumental and soundtrack paintings — despite the fact that he made a wonder appearance in the 1992 film “Wayne’s World,” singing a re-recorded version of “Dream Weaver” — but he returned to more conventional rock song and issued a sequence of albums, with the closing one, “Connected,” being launched in 2010.

He toured often, as a solo act, with Spooky Tooth and with Ringo’s All-Starr Band.

Over the years, his songs have endured to be covered — Chaka Khan recorded a blazing version of “Love Is Alive” for her 1984 wreck album “I Feel for You” — and sampled via artists ranging from Jay-Z to Tone-Loc.