Wish You Were Here

Pink Floyd started out under the direction of a man named Syd Barrett. Unfortunately, soon after the band's first album ("Piper at the Gates of Dawn") came out, Syd started heavily experimenting with drugs. As he became more and more unstable, the rest of the group was forced to let him go so that he could seek the mental help that he desperately needed. Soon afterward the band's bassist, Roger Waters, took over. Roger followed in the similiar vein of long, meaningful songs; but inserted a bit more energy and occasionally a few extremely cynical commentaries. After the commercial success of Dark Side, Pink Floyd as a group became wary of moulding into the shape of the 5 minute singles band that Dark Side seemed to suggest. So, for their next outing Roger decided that he would take Floyd back to their roots, and subsequentely wrote "Wish You Were Here", an ode to the band's original frontman Syd.

While by no means the commercial success that Dark Side was, WYWH was pure Pink Floyd. Featuring a single 25 minute long song (Shine on You Crazy Diamond pts 1&2) and a few 5-8 minute long ones, this album was far closer to what longtime Pink Floyd fans were used to. The first song besides Shine On is "Welcome to the Machine", a song about the music industry and how focused it seems on simply pumping out premade hits, whether they be the all-too familiar boy bands or the other side of the spectrum, the more varied appearing but still preformatted heavy metal and punk bands (from the song: "You bought a guitar to punish your Ma; you didn't like school, and you know you're nobody's fool"). The next one is "Have a Cigar", a song from the point of view of a music company executive trying to buddy up to the band that he thinks will make him millions, while showing that he has no actual deep interest in them beyond their monetary income (from the song: "And by the way, which one's Pink?"). The last of the shorter songs, and by far the best, is the title song "Wish You Were Here". This song features a rare tear-bringing solos by Gilmour on an acoustic guitar. This song is by far one of the most heartfelt songs ever written by Pink Floyd, an honest, heartfelt message to Syd (from the song: "How I wish, how I wish you were here. We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year. Rinning over the same old ground. What have found? The same old fears, wish you were here."). Then, of course, there is "Shine On", a song about perserverence throughout the hardships of life.

Musically, the album is just as incredible as the lyrics. It contains stunning synth compositions in "Shine On", incredible bass riffs (far superior to "Money") in "Have a Cigar", and heartstring pulling acoustics in "Wish You Were Here". Floyd is in better than top form here, and show just why they're one of the greatest bands ever.

Well, to wrap things up, I can say nothing better than to take me on faith and get this album. .... Rock has it's own unsung heroes, and none greater than "Wish You Were Here".

"Come on you raver, you seer of visions, come on you painter, you piper, you prisoner and shine!"


One of the Floyd's most honest, most personal albums, a fitting tribute to Syd Barrett   October 11, 2007
Mike London (Oxford, UK)
54 out of 54 found this review helpful

If DARK SIDE is about insanity, and ANIMALS and THE WALL is Waters working out his own neurosis brought on by fame, WISH YOU WERE HERE could be the most sentimental thing the band ever recorded.

After DARK SIDE broke in 1973, the band surely must have felt the pressure to record that monster's followup. So what did they do in light of all the success they recieved? Why, revisit their roots of course, and issue a concept album about the loss of their first lead singer. And while "concept album" has so many negative connotations, or at least pretension, self-important "art", WISH YOU WERE HERE is none of these things. While certainly self-styled as a tribute, it doesn't get as bogged down in its "concept" as THE WALL, and is truly one of Pink Floyd's most personal, most honest albums that the band ever cut.

WISH YOU WERE HERE returns to the longer song format dominant on the earlier PF records. At only five songs, two of them take up around 27 minutes of the album's 40 minute running time.

Lyrically, WISH YOU WERE HERE is primarily a tribute to the band's now long departed lead singer, Syd Barrett. His story is well known. He had a long history of mental illness, peaked with the Floyd's first album PIPER AT THE GATES OF DOWN, did some singles and two unreleased songs (Scream Thy Last Scream and Vegetable Man), and had some participation on SAUCERFUL OF SECRETS. After that, Barrett was out and Gilmour was in full time. Barrett then went on to release two solo albums (Madcap Laughs and Opal), and then, like Graham Parsons and Nick Drake, his career was cut tragically short. While the other two died, Syd Barrett became a recluse, and for the last thirty plus years of his life (he died summer 2006) lived as a recluse with his sister in England (my mother country).

Much of the remorse and sorrow on WISH YOU WERE HERE is regarding Barrett's fate. Here's a man who was in Pink Floyd, one of the biggest bands ever, and now he's gone. The Illness took over. Some of Waters' most poignant lines come from the title cut, especially the lines about trading a walkon part in the war for a lead role in the cage, meaning he left fame and rock life to become something much more reclusive.

As far as being a followup to DARK SIDE, though there aren't that actual many songs on WISH YOU WERE HERE, there is some great aural qualities. "Welcome to the Machine" really points the way to Waters' paranoia that would culminate in ANIMALS and THE WALL. "Shine On You Crazy Diamond", both parts, is vintage Pink Floyd, and some of the best Floyd around. Great instrumentals, great lyrics, heart-felt tribute to Barrett. "Have a Cigar", sung by Roy Harper (you Led Zeppelin fans would now him by the song off LED ZEPPELIN III, "Hats Off To Roy Harper"), is all about the music business, and how clueless record executives can be in regards to the bands their companies represent. Of course, I'm referring to the classic question of which person in the band is named Pink Floyd, not realising that's the name of the band, not a person in the band. Deep respect indeed.

Ironically enough, Syd Barrett showed up for an afternoon in 1975 during the recording of this album. He listened to the band play "Shine On You Crazy Diamond". He was fat and bald, and the band didn't recognize him. His appearance really shook everyone up.

For me, Strom Thorenson's cover art truly captures the spirit of the album. The man, representative of the band, is shaking the truly incendary man's hand. The band must continue on, and though the other man is on fire and a brilliant star, he simply cannot continue on their world. And so they bid adieu.

Overall, this is one of Pink Floyd's better post DARK albums, and serves as a great followup to a fantastic album. It's a nice concept album, and a very fitting tribute to one of rock's great lost icons, Syd Barret. We all wish you were here Syd.


Still the most effective Roger Waters rant   February 23, 2000
24 out of 32 found this review helpful

Let's be honest, the only thing Roger Waters has ever written about since THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON is how f**ked-up his life became after he made more money than most small nations have in their treasuries. You begin to wonder why he stayed with working in the music business if he hated it so much. That said, WISH YOU WERE HERE is one truly great Pink Floyd album and contains Waters' best sets of invective against the crassness of the pop industry. While Syd Barrett may be the silent presence throughout this album, the music and the subject matter are timeless. Dave Gilmour displays some of his best guitar-work throughout, with phrases that cry in ways not heard on a Pink Floyd album before. Richard Wright and Nick Mason turn in solid journeyman performances as well. And when you hear the simple beauty of the title cut, it's easy to speculate that Waters has stayed the course because those moments and those songs CAN occur, in spite of the garbage around that gets in the way. Of course, in the mid-80's, the garbage DID get in the way for this band, but WISH YOU WERE HERE still finds them pulling together to create a masterpiece.


I wish I wasn't, frankly: the Floyd miss their mark   July 5, 2000
Mr. O. Buxton (Highgate, UK)
23 out of 59 found this review helpful

Purposefully, I am writing this without having viewed any Amazon customer reviews of this album. Deliberately, I am writing this drunk, for as Latin speakers amongst you know, in vino veritas. The sober are a cautious lot.

I start, therefore with a handful of assumptions (to wit: the received wisdom that Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" is one of the great statements of the rock 'n' roll idiom), and an express intention (to debunk that received wisdom: to say, not only is "Wish You Were Here" an inessential piece of art, but it is, by miles, the most dispensable Waters-era Floyd record of them all).

I would like to think, of course, that vocal Amazon readership, for whom by and large I have the greatest respect, are one with me, but I realise that Floyd-heads are a peculiar, un-self-reflexive bunch. So I'm skeptical that anyone other than a spotty eighteen year-old stirrer with a Limp Bizkit (or whatever it is THIS month) fixation will agree with me. Nevertheless, I present my arguments to the best of my ability, and gleefully flip the bird to the dogmatic foot-soldiers of the Floyd faith:

"Wish You Were Here" is a load of old rot.

Argument # 1: Fifteen minute instrumentals in the key of G do not a tune make: "Shine on you crazy diamond" is an elegy, so we all rehearse, for Syd Barrett. Syd, if we are all honest with ourselves, was a short-fused acid-head who, in a short-fused career, produced a couple of minor-league - and quintessentially Cambridge-educated - gems ("See Emily Play", but little else, leaps to mind) and a lot of completely impenetrable pap. The FIRST PART of the song in his honour drones on for fifteen minutes largely in ONE CHORD, says little of any significance (even about Syd Barrett), and then fades out, only to be met with a reprise at the end of the album, of a further twelve minutes. Same key. No further message. Instrumental solos which can only be described as indulgent. Syd Barrett, after all, wasn't even especially good at the guitar. David Gilmour, as we all now know, is. Tremendous Cafe Music, but of little use other than to (i) those, toked up to the eyeballs, who enjoy staring at candles; and (ii) those young men who think they *understand* the electric guitar.

Argument # 2: An extension of "Dark Side of the Moon" it is not: This one is particularly baffling: where "Dark Side of The Moon" at least purports to comment on (and therefore connect with) the lot of the "Ordinary Man", traversing themes such as time, carpe diem, sex, money, sanity and amateur astronomy, "Wish You Were Here" comments solely on the lot of the Cambridge-Educated Rock Star. Not even Roger Waters, so adept at feeling that his listener ought to feel sorry for him, can score a sympathy vote here. So, Syd had too much Acid. Shame. So, Floyd's accountants ripped them off. Diddums. So, the nasty record companies were made money out of Floyd. Capitalist pigs! All such railing, mark it, from the comfort of one's stately castle in Oxfordshire, is hardly calculated to make any form of connection with the casual listener. Or the intent listener. A more copybook case of champagne socialism (other than The Beatles' "Taxman") it is scarcely possible to imagine.

Argument # 3: The songs simply aren't any good: The histrionics of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" and the self-absorption of "Welcome to the Machine" and "Have a Cigar" are dealt with above. "Shine on" has (when it finally arrives) a pretty enough chord progression, but the best part if half an hour of it? Methinks that urine is being extracted. Neither of the other two is particularly memorable for its tune, tone or sentiment. The harder edge may have laid the way for the content of "Animals", but the content is so self-centred as to defy belief.

Which leaves the song "Wish You Were Here". It is a beautiful song; as good as any Waters - or the Floyd, with or without him - have ever devised. It says, more elegantly than in three entire discs, almost everything of merit which Waters was getting at in The Wall and the Final Cut (and, for that matter, most of his solo material). But it only goes for five minutes, and five subliminal minutes cannot justify forty other minutes of rubbish.

Go on , vote me as unhelpful as you like, but I say that "Wish You Were Here" is, bar none, the silliest record the Waters-involved Floyd ever came up with, by a country mile. (I'm afraid however, Mr. Gilmour, this does NOT include (or excuse) either of "A Momentary Lapse of Reason" or "The Division Bell".)