This year, Every Sunday Evening, Album Rock WXYG, The GOAT will feature a full album at 8:00 PM from the halcyon musical days of 1975. 1975 was one of the top Years in Album Rock history. Another year of tough choices every week. So many great ones to choose from.
We hope you’ll tune in next Sunday, May 18th, for “The Dream Weaver”, a solo album by American singer/songwriter Gary Wright, released in July 1975.
No one expected the success of Dream Weaver when it was released, but it sailed to the top of the charts, and with good reason. Backed with only drums and a wide assortment of keyboards, Gary Wright crafted instantly recognizably tunes such as the title cut and "Love Is Alive," which caught on and remain staples of Album Rock stations around the U.S. All very revolutionary and new at the time, Dream Weaver hasn't lost any of its magic over time.
Gary Wright was the former Spooky Tooth front man and frequent George Harrison collaborator. Wright was in good company on this release, too, with Jim Keltner and Andy Newmark sharing drum duty and David Foster helping on keys; perhaps that's why is still sounds ahead of its time today.
There’s something about Gary Wright’s “Dream Weaver” — about its eerie atmosphere and its immersive sensuality — that the song both inspired Wes Craven to create “A Nightmare on Elm Street” and soundtracked the stirring of Mike Myers’ loins as he beholds Tia Carrere in a scene from “Wayne’s World.” A ballad with images of “starry skies” and “highways of fantasy,” “Dream Weaver” was the title track from Wright’s 1975 solo album, which followed nearly a decade of work he did as a member of the bluesy proto-metal band Spooky Tooth and as a session player for the likes of George Harrison (on his post-Beatles “All Things Must Pass”) and Harry Nilsson (on his chart-topping cover of Badfinger’s “Without You”). Yet for all Wright’s Album-Rock cred, “Dream Weaver” — the biggest and most enduring hit by the artist who also looked ahead to the rise of synth-pop, its densely layered keyboard textures anticipating a world in which the electric guitar was no longer the only predominant musical instrument.
“I think Gary saw the future,” said David Foster, the veteran producer, songwriter and studio musician who played on “Dream Weaver” alongside Wright and drummer Jim Keltner. “And of course ‘Dream Weaver’ sort of sounds like the future with all those fluttering synthesizers in the background. I swear, that record sounds as good today as it did 50 years ago.”
It was Harrison’s gift of a book of Indian poetry that set Wright toward composing the tune. Performing with Ringo Starr at L.A.’s Greek Theatre in 2008, he recalled “browsing through it one night and I came across this line that said ‘When at night my mind weaves dreams.’ And I opened my songwriting journal, and I wrote down the words ‘dream weaver.’”
Tune In and Turn On next Sunday, May 18th, and every Sunday evening at 8:00 PM for The GOAT'S "The Long Play with Al Neff.
