Wish You Were Here - Pink Floyd

Author's product rating:   

Originality	Groundbreaking
Lyrics	Sublime
Quality and consistency of tracks	Flawless
How does it compare to the artist's other releases	Not applicable
Value for Money	Excellent

Advantages:	see review
Disadvantages:	see review

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Fortunately for Pink Floyd time was now on their side. "Dark Side" had opened the doors to the financial gold mine and there was to be no unseemly scramble to produce a follow up.
By 1974 Pink Floyd were undoubtedly masters of the recording studio, but they were first and foremost a live band. Long before it was committed to vinyl, the music of "Dark Side Of The Moon" had been honed and refined on the road.

As the compositions for "Wish You Were Here" began to take shape the band had little hesitation in unveiling a key part their new work in progress in the live arena. The astonishing track which concert audiences first heard in1974 was then simply entitled "Shine On".
Under its formal titel "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" it was to become one of the most celebrated pieces in the Pink Floyd catalogue. The overall theme of "Dark Side Of The Moon" dealt with madness as a human condition from the perspective of humanity as a whole. "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" stayed with the same theme but shifted the focus on to the individual ... that individual was Syd Barrett.

As we have seen Syd had contributed only a single album to the story. Nontheless Syd was an enormously influential figure who was the inspiration for the early Pink Floyd. The seeds of Syd's problems were possibly there already in the shape of a fragile artistic ego, but it was a condition which cannot have been helped by a massive intake of drugs such as LSD.
Despite the fact that he had left the band after a very short tenure, the spectre of Syd and his tragic condition continued to haunt the group. It seemed as if Syd had left an indelible imprint on the heart of the band which could never go away.

The spirit of Syd Barrett was to become a kind of lost soul haunting the collective memory of Pink Floyd. In 1970, David Gilmour made an attempt to exorcise the ghost by trying to help Syd to get back onto the rails and producing music again.
Gilmour produced the solo album "Barrett" for Syd but this therapeutic approach to music making was doomed to failure, and Syd drifted off into the background surfacing only very occasionally. By 1975 Syd's physical presence was just a memory but recollections of Syd continued to haunt the consciousness of Pink Floyd.
Remembrances of Syd were to surface as the key subject matter on the album which many consider to the band's greatest work.

The Music

1. Shine On You Crazy Diamond - Part One (Waters / Wright / Gilmour), 13:22 min.

The piece was written as a testimony to the young Syd Barrett. Lyrically it is an exploration of the factors which had conspired to crush the delicate flame of Syd's genius. The piece has been misinterpreted as romanticising the Syd Barrett story.
The wistful tale of a lost mind sounds attractive in the idealistic sense, but as Dave Gilmour is still pains to point out, there is clearly nothing attractive or uplifting about mental illness.

In creating "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" Pink Floyd set about deflating the myth that there was anything positive in the sad decline of Syd Barrett but ironically the huge success of the piece both creatively and artistically has only served to escalate the process of romanticising the Syd Barrett story.
Lyrically the song may have found itself on thorny ground, but musically "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" encounters no such difficulties. "Shine On" is one of the undoubted highlights of Pink Floyd's career.
The piece has been compared to an immense sonic cathedral, and it has certainly stood the test of time.
"Shine On" begins with a haunting keyboard introduction which utilises an understated horn motif over an extended electronic drone. This perfectly sets the mood of melancholy reflection which underpins the opening section of the piece.

The keyboard intro is followed by the soaring guitar solo in which every note seems to have been carefully considered weighed and tested by David Gilmour, the master craftsman responsible fo the musical fabric of the stunning introduction.

We are then introduced to a short four note figure which seems to capture the essence of the lost life of Syd Barrett. Gilmour's four note theme heralds the introduction of the drums which have been absent for the first four minutes of the piece.
The opening section of the piece is in a sedate 4/4 time but it gains extra interest and colour from the unusual and ever changing pattern of emphasis whic is placed on different beats in the bar by rhythm section of Mason and Waters.
There is a subtle change in time signature to 6/4 to herald the introduction of the vocals which enter in an equally restrained manner. The piece now develops on flowing, almost waltz like quality which carries the listener through the first two veses. As the emotion builds, female voices are used to harmonise with the male voices and help to build the ethereal quality of the song.
This device had been used extensively on "Dark Side Of The Moon" and was to become something of a hallmark on Pink Floyd's later material.

With the piece now well into its stride the guitar eventually gives way to the saxophone. The sax had been used to great effect on "Dark Side Of The Moon" where it brought extra colour to the instrumentation on tracks such as "Us and Them" and "Money".
Mid way through the saxophone solo the composition changes gear and the tempo lifts for a 12/8 double section time. "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" had originally been conceived as a single piece but the constraints of vinyl meant the piece couldn't fit on a single side and had to split into two where it acted as the musical book ends, opening and closing the album.
Initially the piece was divided into 16 parts. On subsequent releases the first part of the track was listed on the sleeve as "Shine On You Crazy Diamonds" (Parts 1-5) with the remainder of the track named (Parts 6-9):
More recent CD pressings have relented and simply credit the tracks as part one and part two. Live performance of this majestic piece surfaced on "The Delicate Sound Of Thunder" and a brilliant live version was performed against the elements as the introduction to Pink Floyd's one off appearance at Knebworth House in 1990.

"Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun
Shine on you crazy diamond
Now there's a look in your eyes, like black holes in the sky
Shine on you crazy diamond ..."

2. Welcome To The Machine (Waters), 7:22 min.

The subject matter of the album now shifts away from the tragedy of Barrett's sorry tale to dea with the industrial face of the music business which egulfed the young Syd for "Welcome To The Machine". This is an inspired piece of composition by Roger Waters, the compelling rhythm of "Welcome To The Machine" is driven by sounds of synthesised heavy industrial machines which fuse together and form the rhythmic pulse of the song.
The savagery of the lyrics and the relentlessly bleak sound of the heavy machinery combine to create a real sense of menace.

When asked in an interview for "Street Life" magazine of Canada what the machine song was about, Roger Waters had to pause for a while before replying.
"Let me think. It begins with a saxophone that fades into the distance and the appearance of a machine. It's really a song from the point of view of our hero, of an individual. And the opening of the door, if you like, symbolically you know. It's a phrase that gets used all the time in English, "and the doors open to ..." The symbol of doors, keys, the symbol of discovery, of advancement, of progress, of agreement.
But progress towards what? Towards discovery, or something else? In this song its in the direction of nothing at all, except the aim of becoming part of a dream that's trapped you and to follow this road first and foremost. And the machine is self-perpetuating, and so much so because its fuel consists of dreams. The rock machine isn't oiled and doesn't actually run on people's appreciation of the music or on their wish to interest themselves in music and listen to it, in my opinion. At base of it all, it runs on dreams. And that's faulty reasoning. Many people believe in it, but i don't. That's not why i got into it at all. But i still haven't explained the song of the machine.
It's a question of what causes a feeling of absence. "Wish You Were Here" is a song about the sensations that accompany the state of not being there. To work and to be with people whom you know aren't there anymore. The song of the machine is about the business situation, which i find myself in, which creates this absence.
One's encouraged to be absent because one's not encouraged to pay any attention to reality, eveywhere, not only in the rock machine, but in the whole mechanism of society. This mechanism encourages you to reject things.
From the moment you are born, you're encouraged to reject the realities of the things that surround you and to accept the dreams and the codes of behaviour. Everything is coded. You're asked to communicate through a series of codes, rather than to communicate directly. And that's called civilization, the crowd noise was put in there because of the complete emptiness inherent in that way of behaving, celebrations, gatherings of people who talk and drink together.
The idea's that the machine is underground. Some underground power and therefore evil, that leads us towards our various bitter destinies. The hero's been exposed to this power. One way or another he's gone into the machinery and he's seen it for what it is. And the machine had admitted the fact, telling him that he's being watched because he knows, and informs him that all his actions are Pavlovian responses, that eveything's only conditioned reflexes, and that this responses don't come at his own instigation.
In fact, he doesn't exist anymore, except to the extent that he has the feeling deep down inside himself that something just isn't at all right. That's his only reality. So he goes off, leaves the machinery and enters the room. The doors open and he realizes it's true, the people there are all zombies. That's now very serious, you see. As for the album, critics have said it was vey cynical."

"Welcome my son, welcome to the machine
Where have you been?
It's alright we know where you've been
You've been in the pipeline, filling in time ..."

3. Have A Cigar (Waters), 5:07 min.

With the global success of "Dark Side Of The Moon" were now very much an integral part of the music industry, nonetheless the next piece "Have A Cigar" is infused with such a sense of savagery and loathing that there is a real possibility that Waters could arguably be biting the hand that feeds him.
On the album, Roy Harper was drafted in to handle the vocals. It's a workaday tale of an insincere record executive and the platitudes peddles to the artists signed to his label.
The song includes the infamous line "by the way which one's Pink? David Gilmour had initially tried to lay down the vocal but according to Roger Waters, Gilmour's interpretation lacked the necessary bite.

It's actually quite hard to see what was gained from the introduction of Harper. The vocal style is remarkably similar to Gilmour in any event. In his extended interview with "Street Life", Waters was untroubled with regard to to potential criticism.
"I don't know. Have A Cigar isn't cynicism, it's sarcasm. In fact, it's not even sarcasm, it's realism. I know a guy who works in a clinic for drug addicts, alcoholics, and child molesters. I met him in my local pub and he'd heard the song "Time" where there's the phrase hanging on in quiet desperation. That moved him a lot because it had a bearing on what he himself felt. That made me realize if I were to express my feelings, vague and disturbed as they are, as honestly as I could, then that's the most I can do.
At present, I'm not very interested in art, and I only interest myself in music insofar as it helps me express my feelings. I wrote all the words and organized all the ideas for the pieces we've done in the last few years. And it's hard to say what we'll do now.
I know that Dave and Rick, for example, don't think that the subject matter or theme of the record and the ideas developed are as important as I think they are. They're more interested in music, as abstract form as much as anything else. Three of us, certainly.
As for Nicky, I don't know. Personally, I've got enough material to start making a record straight away. I don't know where Dave will find the necessaries to make a record, but I'm sure he will find them. I think he'll make a fantastic record, but nothing like we've done ourselves. We'll see."

"Come in here, dear boy, have a cigar
You're gonna go far, fly high
You're never gonna die,
You're gonna make it for you try ..."

4. Wish You Were Here (Waters / Gilmour), 5:40 min.

One of the undoubted highlights of the album is Wish You Were Here. The song itself feels spontaneous and unplanned. It doesn't seem to fit thematically with the rest of the album and it comes as no surprise to learn that the song was arrived at by happy accident.
This simple easy going track began from Gilmour's country bluegrass motif and was worked up to something truly spectacular.

Despite the forcefulness of the anti-war lyrics the song always maintains that warm feeling of impulsive artlessness. It feels unforced and natural and it was. Interviewed on January 24, 1976 by "Stree Life Mgazine Canada" Roger Waters was asked to confront the unusual possibility that in Whish You Were Here he had actually written a love song.
"Yes that's true it's a love song, and still one on a very general and theoratical level. If I was undergoing psychoanalysis, my analyst would tell you why I don't write love songs. In fact, I've done one or two others, but always in a very inpersonal way. If I haven't really spoken about love, perhaps it's because I've never really known what love was. I'm just like someone who's had a constant love relationship since the age of 16 and who then changes all that 15 years later.
What can I say about love that'd be meaningful? To write love songs, you have to be sure about your feelings. Maybe I could write about it now, but maybe just for myself, not for Pink Floyd."

"So, so you think you can tell heaven from hell, blue skies from pain
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail? A smile from a veil,
Do you think you can tell? ...."

5. Shine On You Crazy Diamond - Part Two (Waters / Wright / Gilmour), 12:21 min

The album closes with the second half of Shine On You Crazy Diamond. This was originally listed as parts 6 to 9 but in more recent years this was simplified and appears on recent CD releases as Part Two.

"Nobody knows where you are, how near or how far.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Pile on many more layers and I'll be joining you there.
Shine on you crazy diamond.

And we'll bask in the shadow of yesterday''s triumph,
And sail on the steel breeze.
Come on you boy-child, you winner and loser,
Come on you miner for truth and delusion, and shine!"