LP Lookback: Pink Floyd, 50 Years Ago, Release The Masterpiece, ‘Wish You Were Here’

I’ll be the first to admit, the holidays came upon me fast and furious this year. Thanksgiving was unusually late and before I knew it the dreaded Xmas crept up on me. In order to recover, the Rock Chick and I decamped to Florida this week. With all of that going on, since Xmas hit, I’ve only been able to post our recap, our annual list of the Best Albums of 2024 and our annual 50 year lookback playlist, Songs From 1975. I will admit to you, I really do love those playlists tied to a specific year and for 1975 I started doing my research back in early November. And as part of that research I realized Pink Floyd’s landmark album Wish You Were Here was turning 50 this year. This may be considered blasphemy in certain corners, but Wish You Were Here just may be my favorite Floyd album.

When I do these album lookbacks I usually start off saying something like, “I can’t believe this album is turning 50 this year…” I can’t really say that about Wish You Here. In 1975 I wasn’t listening to music yet…well, unless I was in the car with my parents or my brother was blaring something next door in his room. In my room however, the only time the radio was on was when I was listening to the heroic exploits of Amos Otis or John Mayberry, my favorite Royals players. I didn’t start listening to music until 3 years later. It seems like a short time period, but the difference between 10 or 11 and 13 or 14 is enormous so that time period seems a lot longer than it actually was in my mind, but I digress.

When I started listening to music there was a vast universe of the rock n roll that had come out before my music “awakening.” And in those days, you found music – maybe through some cool friends or in my case my brother was a huge music fan – but mostly your discoveries were made on the radio. And in those days, terrestrial radio didn’t have a digital interface where you could see the song titles. You just had to hope the DJ came on and said, “That was “One Of These Days” from the Pink Floyd here on KY/102 for all of you stoners out there…” When I was in late junior high I went down to the mall and plunked down my hard earned grass-mowing money for this album because I had heard – and loved – “One Of These Days” but I had no idea what it was titled or what album it was on. I just knew it was mostly instrumental and a friend had told me it was probably from Wish You Were Here, which had a few long, instrument heavy tracks. I saw by reading the back of the record, that “Welcome To The Machine” and “Have A Cigar” were both on the album… although I’m embarrassed to admit, I didn’t realize the latter of the two was Floyd. When I got the album home and on my turntable I was disappointed I had not discovered the unhinged “One Of These Days,” but don’t get me wrong, I always considered it a happy accident that I bought this album while trying to find a song that was on a record that had come out long before it.

Pink Floyd, after years of toiling in Prog Rock semi-obscurity had finally hit it big with The Dark Side Of The Moon. I can’t guess what working for all that time and then becoming an overnight success does to a musician’s psyche, but I know a lot of musicians who have changed their music to avoid the stress and pressure of recording a follow-up. And after Pink Floyd hit it big, they were susceptible to the same pressure. This album is really centered on two themes. The first being a scathing indictment of the music business. And the other I’ll call, for lack of better phrase, a sense of loss or abandonment which sprang out of the band’s loss of original lead singer/lead guitarist Syd Barrett who went insane and was perhaps one of the earliest acid casualties in the 60s. Suddenly they’d made it big and the band’s founder wasn’t along for the ride. I think we can all relate to that sense of loss or abandonment of a family member or friend we’ve lost to death or madness or distance. It’s a universal feeling.

Coming off 1973’s successful The Dark Side of the Moon made the follow up record, at the time, one of the most highly anticipated albums of all time. What would Pink Floyd do? That coupled with a malaise that had come over several of the members made this a very difficult record to record. Guitarist/singer David Gilmour had been dissatisfied with Dark Side, drummer Nick Mason was going through a divorce, and there was a lot of drinking going on…they are musicians for heaven’s sake. The wheels were starting to come off the camaraderie the band had maintained over the years.

I once read a reviewer who said that Pink Floyd is at their best when they write songs about members who are no longer in the band. I don’t know if that’s true but the songs on this album that center on Syd Barrett are probably my favorite. The album is bookended by two long, mostly instrumental tracks about Syd, “Shine On You Crazy Diamond.” It was all actually supposed to be one song but bassist/singer/lyricist Roger Waters wanted to split the song in 2. Apparently they put it to a vote and it was 3-to-1 in Waters favor vs Gilmour, the one dissenter. While the vocals are few, the lyrics are pretty incredible. “Come on you target for faraway laughter, Come on you stranger, you legend, you martyr, and shine!” Apparently during the recording of the album, on the day David Gilmour was getting married, Syd dropped by the studio. He was very heavy (from “eating a lot of pork chops”) and had shaved off his hair and eyebrows. It took the band a bit of time before they realized it was Barrett. Several members of the band broke into tears. He stayed for the wedding and left without saying farewell. I don’t know if that visit shaped “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” but I have to imagine it did. And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention long time Floyd collaborator Dick Parry’s fabulous sax solo’ing on this song. I love that this song has long instrumental passages which is a bit of a throw back to the pre-Dark Side Floyd music.

The other track that focuses on that feeling of loss or abandonment, the title track, is one of my all time favorite songs, not just of Floyd, but all time. Gilmour sings lead on “Wish You Were Here” and its a stunning vocal. Waters has said it wasn’t about Syd, it was about the other members of the band who had seemingly checked out and he alone was wanting to push on. It does seem to pit a certain idealism against the easy path, “Did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts? Hot ashes for trees? Hot air for a cool breeze? Cold comfort for change?” Comfort is the enemy of change.

The two tracks that make up the “indictment of the music industry” are also big favorites of mine. “Welcome To The Machine” describes what it’s like to suddenly hit the big time. “What did you dream? It’s alright we told you what to dream…” The music biz is just a massive machine. I love that they use their usual well chosen sound effects on that song. It opens with the sound of a door opening and ends with the sound of a cocktail party. Indeed, the cover art, done so wonderfully by Hipgnosis, depicts two business guys shaking hands on a movie lot, and one is in flames… getting burned.

I didn’t realize “Have A Cigar” was a Floyd song (before I bought the record) because it was sung by Roy Harper who wasn’t in Pink Floyd. Waters says he regrets not singing it himself but he didn’t feel he could get the vocal right. The lyrics in that song sound so much like a schmoozing record exec. “You gotta get an album out, you owe it to the people.” It also has one of my favorite lines, “Oh and by the way, which one’s Pink?” which was apparently a question they’d been asked several times by record company clowns. But then again, we always thought Lynyrd Skynyrd was the name of the lead singer in that band… ah, life before the internet.

Taken as a whole it’s a pretty amazing statement as an album. And I actually mean “taken as a whole.” I like to listen to this entire album vs picking a song here and there. Although, admittedly, “Wish You Were Here,” “Have A Cigar” and “Welcome To The Machine” make nice singles. But then I’ve always thought Pink Floyd albums were better listened to in their entirety. Most of them are concept albums of the highest order and only listening to a song is like only reading a chapter of a book and not the entire story.

Simply put this is one of the greatest albums, not only in the Floyd catalog, but ever recorded. It’s one that everyone should hear and own. Turn this one up… it goes well with a glass of dark and murky fluid. Happy 50th anniversary Wish You Were Here… Cheers!