The Screwiness Of Obsession.

I have made this one notice of myself in the past that I am a someone who finds it hard to steady my mind. It is perpetually working, always processing things and I have experienced many a restless night because of it. One of the things that actually gets my cogs ticking over is an almost obsessive interest in the triviality of people. Like - I wish to often spend the useless bit of trivia that Fletcher Christian - that infamous Bounty mutineer from long, long ago hadsyphilis.

Why I experience that, I don't love but I know it none-the-less. Also, I am the guy that stays behind in his place in the cinema, after the film has finished because I wish to see the credits to recognize who thecinematographeron a special show was or who the daughter in the second ground was in a particular scene because I know - I Only KNOW - that I have seen her in some other cinema in an equally obscure background scene.I predicted a long time ago that Uma Thurman was passing to be big.now that's freaky isn't it. I mean, why the F*** would I bother with that little freaky nugget???And so it happens that I live just about every backing vocalist who has ever paired up with British rock icons Pink Floyd since the early 1970's. This specific part of useless information is especially that.useless but I can't help myself.Such is that, which is my mind.And of all the backing vocalists who have ever graced the point with this most favored bands of mine, one - in particular - has intrigued me to the level of being a little too screwy.I talk of course of Rachel Fury.I first sat up and took note of the singer Rachel Fury as a 14/15 year old back in 1989 when my mother came home from the video store armed with a VHS version of the world beating 'Delicate Sound Of Thunder' concert, complete with the girls wearing those totally HOT figure hugging dresses and the long gloves that were seriously sexy. From the minute I saw her, I was completely besotted by Rachel Fury and I have watched that concert over and over again in the proceeding years - countless times - just to pander in the sight of her performance. I thought her contribution to "Great Gig In The Sky" and her duet with David Gilmour on "Comfortably Numb" were sublimely hypnotic and there was some footage of her during their execution of the song "Momentary Lapse Of Understanding" that hooked me every time. I give to concede an unhealthy kind of passion for this woman.

Rachel Fury performs "Great Gig In The Sky" on the Frail Sound of Thunder Tour, 1988 which featured some of the most impressive visual art by Storm Thorgerson.

Why it was then, that I kind of forgot about her for 18 odd years after-wards is something but the world can explain. I grew up, stepped out of my adolescent brain and became a cynical prick I guess. But my passion for Pink Floyd has never waned over the age even though it has perhaps become somewhat dormant from sentence to time.A few short weeks ago, going through my impressive music collection here at home, I fished out David Gilmour's superb third solo album "On An Island". I was in the climate for the atmospherics of that album and I was - of course - not at all disappointed. Here you go - here's another part of useless triva - David Crosby and Graham Nash performed backing vocals on that very album. Listening to the sounds of Gilmour and Wright, Carin and Pratt - and Crosby and Nash's contributions - something was suddenly touched off in my mind, an almost long forgotten memory of that beautiful woman from so long ago.

Cover art for David Gilmour's third solo album "On An Island" (2006).

For days I had (erroneously) deduced that her figure was in fact Margaret Taylor. It seemed to fit with her - she looked like a Margaret to me. But once I jumped on the interweb a few weeks ago and began searching I around, I quickly realised that I was wrong. The data on her is thin as to be almost non existent. But subsequently a few hours of clicking around on Google and other search engines this is what I came up with.Rachel Fury is (or was) a session singer who first appeared on the radar in the really early 1980's. The sole tell of this comes by way of a MySpace image (below) for the visibility of British guitarist Alan St.Clair who was a famous musician in the cheap and new wave movements at that time. One might guess that Rachel Fury toured regularly with St.Clair and his colleague Howard Devoto (of Buzzcocks and Magazine fame) but this would want to be confirmed.

Rachel Fury poses with Alan St. Clair and Howard Devoto c. 1983

The following significant snippet of info comes from some information on the famous music producer, James Guthrie, who it appears, introduced Rachel Fury to Pink Floyd in or roughly the mid 1980's. She and Guthrie were in a relationship at the time. Fury's talent as a session vocalist must have impressed the band members significantly because she is credited as a singer on the reimagined Pink Floyd's 1987 album "Momentary Lapse Of Rationality" and was contracted to go with the set for the world beating "Delicate Sound Of Thunder" tour between 1987 and 1989.

Rachel Fury (right) performs beside Durga McBroom on "Learning To Fly", Venice/Italy, 1989.

From what I have read on various message boards, there is some hint that there may have been some form of romantic "thing" between David Gilmour and Rachel Fury during the 87-89 tour. Various message board lurkers refer to concert footage suggesting an "innate" chemistry between the two on stage. I say this as drawing a really long bow and I choose to believe that it is more a case of there only being a good vibe between all the members of the mid 80's Pink Floyd line-up.

Video of Comfortably Numb from the "Soft Sound Of Thunder" tour circa 1988.

It is later the successful DSOT tour that Rachel Fury all but drops of the precipice into a swirling black maw of . well . nothing. The only singer from that trio from the DSOT tour to continue with Pink Floyd is the equally fabulous and still prolific Durga McBroom (who is credited on "The Division Bell" album and appears in the "P*U*L*S*E" tour line-up. As a side line and yet another instance of my bed of trivia, Margaret Taylor - the third singer from the DSOT tour - is too still alive in the music industry, though today she goes below the name Machan Taylor.The last snippet of any implication that I can feel is a name that by 1995, Rachel Fury had given up singing altogether and had become mired in the animal rights movement.But this is not the last thing.Drilling a little deeper, I have unearthed an extra snippet that confirms something I wondered about for a long time - that Rachel Fury was not really her actual name. Over this past weekend, I take some grounds that confirms this. Again, from some other message board sources I have found that her figure is (or was) actually Rachel Brannock. There is a Facebook page titled "All Things Brannock" - evidently a page dedicated to the Brannock family. Clearly visible on the Left hand sidebar of the page under pictures, a figure of the very Rachel (Fury) Brannock that has stuck like a hook in my thoughts these past fews weeks.

Rachel Fury, her secret is both right and lovely...

Who knows if this is all true or not. But I would wish to remember that there is even some hope that Rachel might surface one day. Perhaps she is life on . I dunno . Guernsey perhaps? Happily married with a pair of kids, still look pretty damned hot and run a successful vet practice . perhaps. One forenoon she opens her laptop while sipping her chocolate and indulges in that small matter that I'm sure we've all through in the recent past and Googled herself. She might see this and resolve to respond?Either that or she's dead, a hippie who renounces all forms of modern technology or she's just not that into all this worship.*sigh*I take spirit in the cognition that I am not only in wondering exactly what happened to this lovely lady Rachel Fury/Brannock. All over the internet, people but as (crack potted) dedicated as me are posing the same question. Where did she go? Does she still sing? Is she actually ago??One can but live in hope.DFA.