Inspired by material the group composed while performing around Europe, Wish You Were Here was recorded during numerous recording sessions at Abbey Road Studios in London, England. Two of the album's four songs criticise the music business, another expresses alienation and the multi-part track "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" is a tribute to Syd Barrett. Barrett's mental breakdown had forced him to leave the group seven years earlier, prior to the release of the group's second studio album A Saucerful of Secrets (on which he only appeared on three tracks). It was lead writer Roger Waters' idea to split "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" into two parts that would bookend the album around three new compositions and to introduce a concept linking them all. As with their previous album The Dark Side of the Moon (1973), the band used studio effects and synthesizers, and brought in guest singers to supply vocals on some tracks of the album. These singers were Roy Harper, who provided the lead vocals on "Have a Cigar", and the Blackberries, who added backing vocals to "Shine On You Crazy Diamond".
Wish You Were Here was an instant commercial success (despite the fact that Harvest Records' parent company EMI was unable to print enough copies of the album to satisfy commercial demand), and although it initially received mixed reviews, the album has since gone on to receive critical acclaim. It appears on Rolling Stone's lists of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time" and the "50 Greatest Prog Rock Albums of All Time". Band members Richard Wright and David Gilmour have cited Wish You Were Here as their favourite Pink Floyd album.
During 1974, Pink Floyd sketched out three new compositions, "Raving and Drooling", "You Gotta Be Crazy" and "Shine On You Crazy Diamond". These songs were performed during a series of concerts in France and England, the band's first tour since 1973's The Dark Side of the Moon. As Pink Floyd had never employed a publicist and kept themselves distant from the press, their relationship with the media began to sour. Following the publication by NME of a negative critique of the band's new material, written by Nick Kent (a devotee of Syd Barrett) and Pete Erskine, the band returned to the studio in the first week of 1975.
Wish You Were Here is Floyd's second album with a conceptual theme written entirely by Roger Waters. It reflects his feeling that the camaraderie that had served the band was, by then, largely absent. The album begins with a long instrumental preamble and segues into the lyrics for "Shine On You Crazy Diamond", 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 is also a critique of the music business. "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" scorns record industry "fat-cats" with the lyrics repeating a stream of cliches heard by rising new-comers in the industry, and including the question "by the way, which one's Pink?" asked of the band on at least one occasion. The lyrics of the next song, "Wish You Were Here", relate both to Barrett's condition, and to the dichotomy of Waters' character, with greed and ambition battling with compassion and idealism. The album closes with a reprise of "Shine On" and further instrumental excursions.
"I had some criticisms of Dark Side of the Moon…" noted David Gilmour. "One or two of the vehicles carrying the ideas were not as strong as the ideas that they carried. I thought we should try and work harder on marrying the idea and the vehicle that carried it, so that they both had an equal magic… It's something I was personally pushing when we made Wish You Were Here."
Alan Parsons, EMI staff engineer for Pink Floyd's previous studio album, The Dark Side of the Moon, had declined the band's offer to continue working with them (Parsons became successful in his own right with The Alan Parsons Project). The group had worked with engineer Brian Humphries on More, recorded at Pye Studios, and again in 1974 when he replaced an inexperienced concert engineer. Humphries was therefore the natural choice to work on the band's new material, although as a stranger to EMI's Abbey Road set-up he encountered some early difficulties. On one occasion, Humphries inadvertently spoiled the backing tracks for "Shine On", a piece that Waters and drummer Nick Mason had spent many hours perfecting, with echo. The entire piece had to be re-recorded.
The sessions for Wish You Were Here at Abbey Road's Studio Three lasted from January until July 1975, recording on four days each week from 2:30 P.M. 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 drawn out and tedious, while David 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. Mason has since stated that Nick Kent's criticism in the NME may have had some influence in keeping the band together.
“ It was a very difficult period I have to say. All your childhood dreams had been sort of realised and we had the biggest selling records in the world and all the things you got into it for. The girls and the money and the fame and all that stuff it was all ... everything had sort of come our way and you had to reassess what you were in it for thereafter, and it was a pretty confusing and sort of empty time for a while.
—David Gilmour ”
Humphries said his point of view of these struggled sessions in a 2014 interview: “There were days when we didn’t do anything. I don’t think they knew what they wanted to do. We had a dartboard and an air rifle and we’d play these word games, sit around, get drunk, go home and return the next day. That’s all we were doing until suddenly everything started falling into place.”
After several weeks, Waters began to visualise another concept. The three new compositions from 1974's tour 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 twenty-minute-plus piece similar to "Echoes", the opening four-note guitar phrase reminded Waters of the lingering ghost of former band-member Syd Barrett. Gilmour had composed the phrase entirely by accident, but was encouraged by Waters' positive response. 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 barely veiled attacks on the music business, their lyrics working neatly with "Shine On" to provide an apt 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 Gotta Be Crazy" had no place in the new concept, and were set aside until the following album, 1977's Animals.
One of the more notable events during the recording of Wish You Were Here occurred on 5 June 1975, the day Gilmour married his first wife, Ginger, on the eve of Pink Floyd's second US tour that year. The band were in the process of completing the final mix of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" when an overweight man with shaven head and eyebrows, and holding a plastic bag, entered the room. Waters, who was working in the studio, initially did not recognise him. Wright was also mystified by the identity of the visitor, presumed he was a friend of Waters' and asked him, but soon realised that it was Syd Barrett. Gilmour initially presumed he was an EMI staff member. Mason also failed to recognise him and was "horrified" when Gilmour identified him. In Mason's personal memoir of Pink Floyd, Inside Out, he recalled Barrett's conversation as "desultory and not entirely sensible". Storm Thorgerson later reflected on Barrett's presence: "Two or three people cried. He sat round and talked for a bit but he wasn't really there."
Waters was reportedly reduced to tears by the sight of his former bandmate, who was asked by fellow visitor Andrew King how he had managed to gain so much weight. Barrett said he had a large refrigerator in his kitchen, and that he had been eating lots of pork chops. He also mentioned that he was ready to avail the band of his services, but while listening to the mix of "Shine On", showed no signs of understanding its relevance to his plight. He joined the guests at Gilmour's wedding reception in the EMI canteen, but left without saying goodbye. None of the band members saw him from that day on until his death in 2006. Although the lyrics had already been created, Barrett's presence on that day may have influenced the final part of the song – a subtle refrain performed by Wright from "See Emily Play" is audible towards the end of the album.
“ I'm very sad about Syd. Of course he was important and the band would never have fucking started without him because he was writing all the material. It couldn't have happened without him but on the other hand it couldn't have gone on with him. "Shine On" is not really about Syd—he's just a symbol for all the extremes of absence some people have to indulge in because it's the only way they can cope with how fucking sad it is, modern life, to withdraw completely. I found that terribly sad.
—Roger Waters
Wish You Were Here was sold in one of the more elaborate packages to accompany a Pink Floyd album. Storm Thorgerson had accompanied the band on their 1974 tour, and had given serious thought to the meaning of the lyrics, eventually deciding that the songs were, in general, concerned with "unfulfilled presence", rather than Barrett's illness. This theme of absence was reflected in the ideas produced by his long hours spent brainstorming with the band. Thorgerson had noted that Roxy Music's Country Life was sold in an opaque green cellophane sleeve – censoring the cover image – and he copied the idea, concealing the artwork for Wish You Were Here in a black-coloured shrink-wrap (therefore making the album art "absent"). The concept behind "Welcome to the Machine" and "Have a Cigar" suggested the use of a handshake (an often empty gesture), and George Hardie designed a sticker containing the album's logo of two mechanical hands engaged in a handshake, to be placed on the opaque sleeve (the mechanical handshake logo would also appear on the labels of the vinyl album this time in a black and blue background). The album's cover images were photographed by Aubrey 'Po' Powell, Storm's partner at the Pink Floyd design studio Hipgnosis and was 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 and Danny Rogers), one dressed in a fire-retardant suit covered by a business suit. His head was protected by a hood, underneath a wig. The photograph was taken at the Warner Bros. studios in Los Angeles. Initially the wind was blowing in the wrong direction, and the flames were forced into Rondell's face, burning his moustache. The two stuntmen changed positions, and the image was later reversed.
The album's 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 Aubrey ' Po ' 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) on the liner notes – in California (again emphasising the theme of absence). The decision to shroud the cover in black plastic was not popular with the band's US record company, Columbia Records, who insisted that it be changed (they were overruled). EMI were less concerned; the band were reportedly extremely happy with the end product, and when presented with a pre-production mockup, they accepted it with a spontaneous round of applause.
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