By Marc Dutro
Hello all. I have
another album review for you. This one
is one is for Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here.
Album Stats
Recorded from January to July 1975 at Abby Road Studios.
All lyrics by Roger Waters.
Tracks-
Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Part One)
Welcome To The Machine
Have A Cigar
Wish You Were Here
Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Part Two)
Wish You Were Here (WywH) is the follow up album to Pink Floyd's
breakthrough album, Dark Side Of The Moon (DSotM), which launched the band to
super-stardom. The album serves as both
a tribute to fallen band leader Syd Barrett and as a biting criticism of the
recording industry. While those concepts
sound rather disjointed of each other, Waters manages to blend them together
into what is arguably Pink Floyd's best, and definitely their most seamless
album. The album opens with the
beautifully blended sounds of Gilmour's guitar and Wrights keyboards in Shine
On You Crazy Diamond, which loosely details Barrett's fall from grace in
London's burgeoning music scene of the late 60's and then fades directly into
Welcome To The Machine. This song
details Water's disenchantment with the formula-like efficiency that record
companies use to squeeze the creative juices from their bands. The next song is Have A Cigar, in which Pink
Floyd takes a direct stab at the record execs themselves. They manage to play off every stereotype
imaginable and it's not hard to imagine the events they describe as actually
taking place. The title track,Wish You
Were Here takes us back into the tribute part and finally leads into Shine
On You Crazy Diamond (Part two) which brings the whole album
into sharp
focus:
"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!"
With those closing lines Waters is saying, not "Wish you
were here," but rather that he wishes that he and Barrett could still be
together and anywhere else. Success had
been the bands ultimate downfall by this point. The super-stardom that they'd experience following DSotM had
disillusioned them all and the growing isolation and hostility Waters was
feeling towards his fans and bandmates was already starting to form a seed that
would later become The Wall.