Released on 12 September 1975 "Wish You Were Here" was the 9th., studio album by the English rock band Pink Floyd, it was based on material Pink Floyd composed while performing in Europe, Wish You Were Here was recorded over numerous sessions throughout 1975 at EMI Studios in London. The album spawned the single "Have A Cigar".
The lyrics express longing, alienation, and sardonic criticism of music industry. The bulk of the album is taken up by "Shine On You Crazy Diamond", a nine-part tribute to the Pink Floyd co-founder Syd Barrett,
who had left seven years earlier due to his deteriorating mental
health. Barrett coincidentally visited during the recording. As with
their previous release, The Dark Side of the Moon (1973), Pink Floyd employed studio effects and synthesisers. Wish You Were Here was the second Pink Floyd album with a conceptual theme, mostly at Roger Waters'
direction, reflecting his feeling that the previous communal structure
of the band had disappeared in favor of then-recently established
professional musicianship.
The album began with a long instrumental introduction shifting from ambient music
to the main refrain of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond", the lyrics of
which were penned as a tribute to Syd Barrett, whose mental breakdown
had forced him to leave the group seven years earlier. Barrett is fondly recalled with lines such as "Remember when you were
young, you shone like the sun" and "You reached for the secret too soon,
you cried for the moon".
Wish You Were Here also featured lyrical criticism of the
rock music industry and the then-recent mainstream perception of the
band. "Shine On" crosses seamlessly into "Welcome to the Machine",
a song that begins with an opening door (described by Waters as a
symbol of musical discovery and progress betrayed by a music industry
more interested in greed and success) and ends with a party, the latter
epitomising "the lack of contact and real feelings between people".
Similarly, "Have a Cigar"
scorned record industry "fat-cats" with the lyrics repeating a stream of
cliches heard by rising newcomers in the industry, and including the
question "by the way, which one's Pink?"; this was derived from a
legitimate interaction with an agent who asked this of the band.
The sessions for Wish You Were Here at EMI's Studio Three (now Abbey Road Studios) lasted from January until July 1975, recording on four days each week from 2:30 pm until very late in the evening. The group found it difficult at first to devise any new material, especially as the success of The Dark Side of the Moon had left all four physically and emotionally drained. Keyboardist Richard Wright later described these sessions as "falling within a difficult period", and Waters recalled them as "torturous". Mason found the process of multi-track recording to be tedious, while Gilmour was more interested in improving the band's existing
material. Gilmour was also becoming increasingly frustrated with Mason,
whose failing marriage had brought on a general malaise and sense of
apathy, both of which interfered with his drumming.
After several weeks, Waters began to visualise another concept. The three new compositions from the 1974 tours
were at least a starting point for a new album, and "Shine On You Crazy
Diamond" seemed a reasonable choice as a centrepiece for the new work.
Mostly an instrumental 20-minute-plus piece similar to "Echoes", the opening four-note guitar phrase reminded Waters of Barrett. Gilmour had composed the phrase while improvising, but was encouraged
by Waters' positive response to make it the focus of the song. A subtle refrain performed by Wright, lifted from "See Emily Play", is also audible towards the end. Waters wanted to split "Shine On You Crazy Diamond", and sandwich two
new songs between its two halves. Gilmour disagreed, but was outvoted
three to one. Welcome to the Machine" and "Have a Cigar" were attacks on the music
business, their lyrics working with "Shine On" to provide a summary of
the rise and fall of Barrett; "Because I wanted to get as close as possible to what I felt ... that
sort of indefinable, inevitable melancholy about the disappearance of
Syd." "Raving and Drooling" and "You’ve Got To Be Crazy" had no place in the
new concept, and were set aside until the following album, 1977's Animals.
On 5 June 1975, on the eve of the second North American leg of their Wish You Were Here Tour, Gilmour married his first wife, Ginger. That day, the band were completing the mix of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" when an overweight man with shaven head and eyebrows entered, carrying a plastic bag. Waters did not recognise him, and Gilmour presumed he was an EMI staff member. Wright presumed he was a friend of Waters, but realised it was Barrett. Mason also failed to recognise him, and was "horrified" when Gilmour identified him. In Mason's Pink Floyd memoir Inside Out, he recalled Barrett's conversation as "desultory and not entirely sensible". Cover artist Storm Thorgerson reflected on Barrett's presence: "Two or three people cried. He sat round and talked for a bit but he wasn't really there." According to Gilmour, Barrett "came two or three days and then he didn't come any more."
The cover images were photographed by Aubrey "Po" Powell, Thorgerson's partner at the design studio Hipgnosis,
and inspired by the idea that people tend to conceal their true
feelings, for fear of "getting burned", and thus two businessmen were
pictured shaking hands, one man on fire. "Getting burned" was also a
common phrase in the music industry, used often by artists denied
royalty payments. Two stuntmen were used (Ronnie Rondell Jr. and Danny Rogers),
the former dressed in a fireproof suit covered by a business suit. His
head was protected by a hood, underneath a similarly fireproof wig, and
fire-resistant gel was applied to him. The photograph was taken at Warner Bros. Studios in California, known at the time as The Burbank Studios.
The back cover depicts a faceless "Floyd salesman", in Thorgerson's words, "selling his soul" in the desert (shot in the Yuma Desert
in California again by Powell). The absence of wrists and ankles
signifies his presence as an "empty suit". The inner sleeve shows a veil
concealing a nude woman in a windswept Norfolk grove, and a splash-less
diver at Mono Lake – titled Monosee (the German translation of Mono Lake) in the liner notes – in California.
Wish You Were Here initially received mixed reviews, even thought it still sounded unconvincing in its ponderous sincerity and displays a critical lack of imagination in all departments, caused the music was not only simple and attractive with the
synthesizer used mostly for texture and the guitar breaks for comment, it also achieved some of the symphonic dignity (and
cross-referencing) that The Dark Side of the Moon simulated so ponderously.
Wish You Were Here Track List:
1. Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts I-V)
2. Welcome To The Machine
3. Have A Cigar
4. Wish You Were Here
5. Shine On You Crazu Diamond (Parts VI-XI)
