Wish You Were Here

Description

Wish You Were Here is the ninth studio album by the English rock band Pink Floyd, released on 12 September 1975 by Harvest Records in the United Kingdom and a day later by Columbia Records in the United States. 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. Some of the songs on the album critique the music business, others express alienation and the track "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" is a tribute to Syd Barrett, whose mental breakdown had forced him to leave the group seven years earlier after the release of the group's debut studio album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. It was also lead writer Roger Waters's idea to split "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" into two parts and use it to bookend the album around three new compositions, introducing a new concept as the group had done with their previous album, The Dark Side of the Moon. As with The Dark Side of the Moon, 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". 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". •The stereo remastered album on heavyweight 180g vinyl •Original UK release date: September 1975 •Certified six times platinum •Reached 1 in the UK and the US. Review: Pink Floyd's masterpiece and still best album 40 years on - Pink Floyd's ninth studio album entitled Wish You Were Here was released in September of 1975. I first received this album on cassette tape (Columbia/CBS JCT 33453) for my ninth birthday on January 24, 1985 from my parents accidentally instead of the compilation A Collection of Great Dance Songs but I thank both of them (especially my mom, may she rest in peace) that they did as today (over 26 years after I first acquired the album on cassette and many copies later, including the remastered CD), it is my all time favorite Pink Floyd album (I apologize to those who like Dark Side, Animals and The Wall more than this), it's also the favorite of Pink Floyd's singer and guitarist David Gilmour and the late co-founder/keyboard player/occasional singer Rick Wright (who passed away in September of 2008). The Wish You Were Here album was the band's first for their new deal with Columbia/CBS for most of the world save Europe where they remained with Harvest/EMI. The sessions for Wish You Were Here took place between January and July of 1975 at Abbey Road Studios in London with the band once again producing and engineer Brian Humphries engineering. The lyrics were once again penned by bass player/singer Roger Waters whom came up with the theme of absence in response to the overwhelming success of their predecessor, 1973's 40 million copies worldwide plus selling The Dark Side of the Moon. It also dealt with the greed of the entertainment business. Wish You Were Here only technically contained four tracks as one of the tracks was split in half, but it is nothing but 44 and a half minutes of sonic bliss. Wish You Were Here kicks off with "Shine On You Crazy Diamond (parts 1-5)". The music is just amazing and was written by Rick, David and Roger. Rick's synthesizer work on part 1 was very atmospheric before David plays a beautiful sad bluesy guitar solo. Then the four note motif from David's guitar signals Part 2 and Rick's stellar Hammond organ work, Roger's great bass playing and drummer Nick Mason's drumming to come in and play. David is at his bluesiest as far as guitar solos go on part 2. Part 3 has a beautiful Wright synthesizer solo and classic Gilmour solo before segueing into Part 4 at the 8:45 mark. Part 4 is where Roger's lead vocal comes in and he sings the band's epic tribute to fallen Floyd comrade Syd Barrett. Dick Parry's baritone and tenor sax solos on Part 5 end this half of the track which segues into superb machine noises created by the VCS3 to go into the next song. The song "Welcome to the Machine" was the first of two attacks on the record industry with Wright and Waters' synthesizers, David's multi-tracked vocals and acoustic guitars and drummer Nick Mason's tympani flourishes playing flawlessly before ending with superb sound effects thanks to the VCS3 and people laughing. The second half of the Wish You Were Here album starts with the rocker "Have a Cigar", another biting commentary on the record business. The track featured the band's Harvest/EMI labelmate Roy Harper on lead vocals (and he did a stellar job). The song was released as a single in the US but didn't chart but a classic nevertheless. Gilmour's ending distorted guitar solo disappears into radio sounds which were recorded in David's car and segues into the album's title track. The title cut was spawned from a riff David had played at Abbey Road and Roger liked it so much that the two sat down and wrote the second best loved Floyd track in the band's repertoire. The lyrics reflect on Syd and wishing he was still together mentally. The coughing fit in the beginning was David's then-smoking habits. He thankfully quit smoking immediately for good after the initial playback during mixing at Abbey Road in 1975 because he was embarrased about the cough but was left in there as a sort of reminder. The wind swirls at the end leads into "Shine On You Crazy Diamond (parts 6-9)". Part 6 of the epic nine-part track is dominated by David's superb guitar work on both the Stratocaster and lap steel and Rick's Solina String and Mini-Moog synthesizer flourishes. We then segue into Part 7 from the guitar solo of Part 4. Roger sings part 7 very passionately. Parts 8 and 9 to Shine On You Crazy Diamond is one of the most powerful pieces of music I ever heard with the former a funky exercise and the latter is one of Wright's best pieces of music. When mixing Shine On You Crazy Diamond (which was also the day David married his first wife Ginger), Syd mysteriously showed up at Abbey Road with a shaved bald head and very plump. The band hadn't seen him since 1970 and wouldn't see him again (Syd sadly passed away in 2006). When Wish You Were here was released, the album rightfully hit #1 in the band's native UK in its first week and topped the charts here in the US with a bullet in its second week and has sold over 7 million copies to date here in the US (13 million worldwide). Sales notwithstanding, this is Pink Floyd at its best musically, lyrically and cohesive as a unit despite the fact the feud in the band was starting to brew and the album still sounds great over 35 years later. Now in 2016, this classic album is re-released with the 2011 remaster this time on Pink Floyd's own record label Pink Floyd Records (distributed by Sony Music). The remastering on this is incredible. What James Guthrie and Joel Plante did with this album is excellent. I've owned the 1992 remaster (which was used for the 1994 UK remaster and the 1990s Sony Gold disc), the 1997 and 2000 remaster (which are identical) and the sound is like night and day. This easily is the best sounding Wish You Were Here since the first vinyl issue (which I'm proud to own). The booklet is rather nice as well. The packaging on this trumps the Discovery Edition from 2011 with the CD looking like the original vinyl LP and also the booklet having updated credits and the sticker recreates the original sticker on the LP! Highly recommended! Review: 'Wish You Were Here' - a great album! - The opening synthesizer lines of the magnum opus that dominates Pink Floyd's 'Wish You Were Here' album, "Shine On You Crazy Diamond," are light and pulsating, transporting the listener into a false sense of serenity before changing direction and allowing guitar notes and heavy drums to call out cries of desperation. The piece continues to morph as it goes along, with one suite of music dissolving into another, finally making way for bassist Roger Waters' lyrics - sung by Waters himself - offering a romantic vision of Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd's co-founder and original guitarist, before fading out with a saxophone solo that suggests a mother weeping for a lost son. As the guiding force of Pink Floyd in the band's early years (it was Barrett who named the band, after two Georgia bluesmen, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council), Barrett was known for his enigmatic, psychedelic lyrics and his innovative, distorted guitar technique; he was celebrated as an charismatic artist with great promise. He was driven to madness, though, by his increased drug use and erratic behavior, and he proved to be too gentle a soul to survive the increasingly commercial demands of a record business that valued hit records over artistic innovation. (Barrett died in 2006.) Though the band went on without Barrett - and with ace guitarist David Gilmour, a childhood friend of Barrett, in his place - his subsequent absence stood as a testament to how the record business and the rock culture could and did destroy a unique artist of such original vision. 'Wish You Were Here' is an album of loss, a loss of a gifted musician and the loss of artistic integrity in the cutthroat culture that was the record business of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as an acknowledgment of possibilities in rock and roll that were never realized. Gilmour, Waters, keyboardist Rick Wright, and drummer Nick Mason try to connect with Barrett and their audience less with words than with sounds; when "Shine On You Crazy Diamond," divided into five distinct parts on side one, resumes with a second suite of four parts on side two after a three-song interlude, the music is more violent, with a wash of white noise and guitar lines that scream like ghosts, brittle synthesizer riffs and strong bass undercurrents. It all finally dissolves into a mournful piano and electronic keyboard requiem that ends on the same note that the record began on. Gilmour has noted that the pressure from their record company to follow up 'The Dark Side Of the Moon' with an equally worthy album fueled Pink Floyd's playing, which dovetailed with the band's increasingly negative attitude toward record company executives; the result is fascinatingly compelling. Lyrically, 'Wish You Were Here' concerns the artist as the second person; the words in the songs address speak to "you," and the second party presented is the tormented artist who is cynically manipulated and by record companies while celebrated by his peers. It's Barrett, but it's also any artist whoever dared to dream. "Welcome To the Machine," carried along by tape loops, Gilmour's acoustic guitar and Wright's explosive keyboard fills, finds the young rock musician sold dreams of stardom that are meant to turn him into a company man doing the bidding of the music "industry." The blistering rocker "Have a Cigar" - with a comically devastating performance by guest vocalist Roy Harper - skewers haughty music moguls who profess to love music they don't even understand from bands they know nothing about ("Which one's Pink?" Harper's clueless A&R man asks of the band). The most astonishing track on 'Wish You Were Here', however, is the conventionally arranged title song. Carried by a mostly acoustic guitar line rich in treble that vaguely recalls the Beatles circa 'Rubber Soul', "Wish You Were Here" is a loving, highly emotional open letter from Waters (with Gilmour's vocals as the medium) to Barrett that expresses solidarity between kindred spirits ("We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year") and even as it mourns the turn of events that allowed Barrett's spirit to be broken ("Did you they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?"). It's hard for me to listen to it without tearing up, and the opening guitar riff, transmitted through a tinny speaker, is chilling. It's the most personal expression that Pink Floyd, famous for having hidden behind its music and surreal album covers, ever offered from their side of a wall Waters would spend the next several decades trying to tear down. --Steven Maginnis