This is the story of how the album Wish You Were Here was created...
By: Neil McCormick / The Telegraph (title: Wish You Were Here almost ruined Pink Floyd. Yet it remains their masterpiece)
Translation: Telegrafi.com
On September 12, 1975, Pink Floyd released the album Wish You Were HereAfter the great success of the album The Dark Side of the Moon In 1973, the progressive rock quartet was at the peak of its creativity.
Everything about Wish You Were Here It looked like it had arrived in its perfect shape. The mysterious packaging from Hipgnosis opened to reveal an album of just five songs, 44 minutes long. It begins and ends with different parts of the same epic song, shifted in time, creating an extraordinary journey through sounds, ideas and emotions. The arrangements are rich and intricate, supported by the interplay between Rick Wright's deep and soulful keyboards, David Gilmour's brilliant guitar playing, over a foundation of creative drums by Nick Mason and the rhythmic bass of Roger Waters.
The lyrics delve deeply into themes of absence, disconnection, loss, and need; the vocals and harmonies led by Gilmour and Waters are filled with longing and pain. It was a stunning and moving experience when it came out in 1975, and it still has the same effect on me today.
Also read the Albanian translations of the album's songs:
- Shine on, you cracked diamond
- Welcome to the car.
- Light a cigar.
- I wish you were here.
For many Pink Floyd fans, this remains their definitive work - an ambitious masterpiece from a band at the peak of their creative power. The album topped charts worldwide and sold over 23 million copies (up to 33 million units, including digital downloads and streams).
Fifty years later, a new packaging Wish You Were Here is being released, filled with raw demos, alternate versions, rejected songs, live performances, and remixes. The original five songs have been expanded to 30, exposing the messy cover art and intricate inner workings. Here I tell the story of how - against all odds - each song came to be.
"Torture, torture, torture" to record
The truth is that Wish You Were Here was a nightmare to record. "It was torture, torture, torture," according to Waters, who is known for sometimes referring to the album as "torture" when describing the atmosphere in the studio. I wish you weren't here. [Wish You Weren't Here].
Floyd toured with Dark Side from 1972 to 1974. At the same time, they began sessions for a follow-up to their most successful album. “Everything you could ever want when you start a band had happened,” Waters said. “Everything had come true.” However, instead of filling them with confidence, a strange state of apathy had taken hold.
Roger Waters in 1975Photo: Richard E Aaron/Redferns
Early sessions at Abbey Road Studios in December 1973 found them trying to make experimental music with rubber bands, saws, duct tape and buckets of water. Gilmour admitted that he felt "creatively blocked", while Waters said that they were "all completely exhausted - for one reason or another". The group disbanded for six months; when they reunited, in a windowless rehearsal studio in London's King's Cross, only a section called Wine Glasses [Wine glasseses] had survived from previous sessions - the sound created by fingers on glasses became the opening of a grand new nine-part work, Shine On You Crazy Diamond [Shine on, you cracked diamond].
"Every member of the group had considered leaving"
Two more new songs took shape, the dark, pulsating one Raving and Drooling (which would become Sheep / Delmet in the album Animals of 1977) and disappointingly You've Gotta Be Crazy (which would be done Dogs).
The new songs were performed during a grueling winter tour of Britain, which did little to improve their spirits. Mason claimed that by the end of 1974, "each member of the band had individually gone to management and said they were thinking of leaving. At the time, none of us had any idea that the others were feeling the same way."
When the sessions resumed at Abbey Road in January 1975, they should have been well prepared, with enough material for an album – although it would have been a very different album. But the atmosphere of apathy remained. Whole days would pass without recording anything. “I don’t think they knew what they wanted to do,” recalls engineer Brian Humphries. “We had a dart board and an air rifle and we would play word games, hang out, drink, go home and come back the next day.”
In "Abbey Road", in 1975Photo: JD Mahn/Sony Music Entertainment
A full version of shine on proved unusable due to problems with a new, advanced mixing device - the "Neve". "Nobody knew how to use that damn machine", admitted Humphries. Weeks, and then months, passed without anything being achieved. "We were getting incredibly irritated with each other", said Mason. "We would get terribly angry at people who were late. It wasn't like anything was going to happen, but it would become a personal insult".
We know from the subsequent breakup that Pink Floyd were never a harmonious brotherhood, and as they adjusted to their new status, the lines of division became increasingly apparent. “Roger was pushing the envelope,” according to Mason, and “he started to think he could do it all by himself.”
A quarrel between singers about Light a cigar.
At one point, the album would have included Shine On You Crazy Diamond on the first side, with Raving and Drooling and You've Gotta Be Crazy on the second side. Had this happened, I doubt we would be talking about it today as a classic. A belated decision was made (initially against Gilmour's wishes) to split it shine on and to remove the other songs.
Waters created two new songs that expressed similar notions of disillusionment with the world, but were significantly shorter and more poignant. His demo for Welcome to the Machine [MirDid you come by car?] was created with a VSC3 synthesizer in a rhythmic echo [delay] that gave it a dark intensity.
The second song was a scathing critique of the music industry, called Have a Cigar [dhesmoke a cigarThe vocals proved problematic, as Gilmour said they didn't suit the "tonality" of his voice, while "one or two people were rude to [Waters'] version".
Singer and songwriter Roy Harper was recording his album HQ at another studio on Abbey Road and witnessed the torturous sessions that took place. "Roger can write a song, but he'll never be in the top 100 as a rock singer...", Harper later said in an interview. "Anyway, none of them could hit that note. I just stood back, leaning on a piece of equipment and laughing. I said, 'I'll sing it for you.'"
Finally, the band let him try it, and Harper nailed it on his first try. Waters never agreed, suggesting, "If I had sung it, it would have been more sensitive and less cynical."
Inspiration from a divorce
During the six months of recording, Pink Floyd also toured the US and headlined the Knebworth Festival on 5 July (where Harper sang Have a Cigar). The last song to be completed and which would become the title song was Wish You Were Here [Do I wish you were here.]. According to Waters, it is the only song by the band where the lyrics were written separately from the music.
Gilmour had bought a new 12-string guitar and was playing a part. Waters felt inspired to write lyrics and went into another room, where he threw together a "stream of ideas" in less than an hour. He handed the lyrics to Gilmour, who composed the melody.
David GilmourPhoto: Richard E Aaron/Redferns
The line about "lost souls swimming in a fishbowl, year after year" could refer to the increasingly distant relationship between the band members. However, Waters has described it as "a love song" - inspired by his breakup with childhood sweetheart Judith Trim (they divorced in 1975).
Violin virtuoso Stéphane Grappelli was persuaded to improvise for a solo that was ultimately left out of the final version. The album was mixed on July 28, 1975 - but not before a strange visit that has gone down in music history.
The mysterious reappearance of Syd Barrett
Shine On You Crazy Diamond was created by all four members as a note and lament for a friend whose absence lies at the heart of Pink Floyd's history. The band's vocalist, guitarist and original songwriter, Syd Barrett, had suffered devastating mental health problems and left the band in 1968, replaced by Gilmour. Although several members participated in Barrett's two eccentric solo albums in 1970, none of them had seen him for years. But on 7 June 1975, while they were mixing the song shine on, they noticed an overweight man with a shaved head, sitting at the back of the studio, holding a plastic bag. At first, no one recognized him and everyone thought he was part of the technical staff. But then the truth began to emerge.
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“I was in tears,” Waters later said. He told Wright. “Roger said, ‘I don’t know who this guy is, do you? It’s Syd,’” Wright recalled. “It was a huge shock. He kept getting up, brushing his teeth, then putting the toothbrush in the bag and sitting down again.”
Accounts of what happened next vary. According to Wright: “Syd got up and said, ‘Okay, when am I going to play the guitar?’ And we said, ‘Sorry, Syd, the guitars are all recorded.’” Meanwhile, Gilmour said: “We tried to engage him in conversation, and he walked off down Abbey Road, and that was the last we saw of him.”
The $50 album cover
The final elements of Wish You Were Here were concluded when Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell from Hipgnosis who devised an incredibly intricate album packaging, involving stuntmen, divers, and photo shoots in deserts, lakes, and film studios from California to Norfolk. Then they wrapped everything in impenetrable black plastic.
Powell has said it cost about $50 to create - the equivalent of more than a quarter of a million dollars today [roughly 214 euros]; certainly an amount that no modern record company would invest in an album cover.
A harsh reaction from critics
Wish You Were Here It was released with tremendous expectations, but was met with almost dismissive reviews from critics. It's truly shocking to read them now. Rolling Stone called it “energyless” and “empty” of “sincere passion.” For Melody Maker it sounded “unbelievable in its heavy sincerity”, showing “a critical lack of imagination in all respects”.
The public showed more sensitivity to its inherent sadness and aspirational grandeur, and it became Pink Floyd's fastest-selling album, reaching number one on both sides of the Atlantic.
Return to the rankings after half a century
Given the extraordinary attention to detail, it would be no surprise that Wish You Were Here will once again top the charts on this 50th anniversary. Unreleased versions, demos and live performances may give us hints about the strange and confusing circumstances of its creation, but the album itself tells another story: that of four musicians aiming for the sky, putting all their skill and creativity into creating something to the best of their ability.
Mason later admitted he was “amazed” at how good it sounded. Wright called it his favorite album (and the only one he could listen to for his own personal enjoyment). Waters called it the band’s “most complete album,” while Gilmour also described it as one of his favorites. “The end of that – whatever it was – has left me with an album I can live with very, very happily,” he said. Last week, I saw Gilmour at a listening session of a new Atmos [Atmos Surround Sound technology] mix of Wish You Were Here"I don't have an Atmos system at home," he admitted, "so it's probably the only time I'll ever listen to it that way."
I can say that it sounded absolutely fantastic - as it always has, in fact. He seemed to be genuinely enjoying listening to it, receiving applause from a small group of people present, including Noel Gallagher (who later told me that he prefers the album The Wall). After listening, I asked Gilmour about the reported difficulties during the recordings, and he smiled and said: "Well, it wasn't all bad. There were times when we were working too hard."
And then he asked, “Did you notice the little musical joke at the end?” The truth is, I hadn’t noticed it before, but now I can’t believe I missed it. Right at the very end of the album, you can hear a little keyboard motif from the classic single from Syd Barrett’s Pink Floyd era, See Emily Play [Look at Emilia playing.]. So Barrett was eventually included on the album. “There’s a lot going on,” Gilmour smiled, forgiving me. /Telegraph/
