While the writing on the album is tight, Pink Floyd manage to create a whole picture for the listener without ever sounding repetitive. 'Shine On You Crazy Diamond', a dedication to former bandmate Syd Barrett, bookends the project with these slow-building melodies, big bombastic guitar solos and sparse vocals. 'Welcome to the Machine' gives us industrial synths and white noise, an example of the band showing their ability to use absence rather than abundance, something they would go on to perfect with their next release Animals. Guest singer Roy Harper plays a caricature of a sleazy bigwig of the record industry on the bluesy, more guitar driven 'Have a Cigar', it’s fuzzy outro throwing the listener up in the air, only to be brought crashing down again by the clean, acoustic, iconic opening riff of 'Wish You Were Here'. This is Waters and Gilmore at their collaborative best, the lyrics of the first man given depth and grit by the voice of the second. And finally, what better way to end than circling back to Syd Barrett on the remainder of 'Shine On', almost acting as a case study in the world of disillusionment that the band throws the listener into.
On the whole, Wish You Were Here is one of the most succinct albums you will ever hear. While Dark Side of the Moon may remain the more iconic, Wish You Were Here is more thematically poignant and instrumentally interesting. What begins and ends as a touching tribute to a friend becomes an eerie, spatial exploration into the world that caused this loss, and even so many years later, it blows me away every time I listen.
The B sides and demos put out with this new release are interesting for longtime fans but offer very little to newcomers to the band. Songs like 'Wine Glasses' and early instrumentals of 'Shine On' show the roots of songs we've come to love, while the demos of 'The Machine Song' give a real peek behind the curtain into the creative process. It will always interest me to see how a song can develop from a melodic, almost folksy tune into the harsh, scathing critique that 'Welcome to the Machine' eventually became. The star of the show here is the new stereo mix of 'Shine On', uniting parts 1-9. It's rare to hear the whole song as one, and while you don't get the catharsis that you do cutting back into that dazzling chorus after the rest of the album, it's fascinating to hear the song as it was originally written.
it's fascinating to hear the song as it was originally written
The live section of the album really shows the gall that the band had at the time, opening with two tracks that no one had ever heard before. The set kicks off with early versions of 'Sheep' and 'Dogs', lacking the 'Animal Farm' motif they would eventually adopt, but still dripping with the anti-establishment message that would really come to fruition in the next project. The Wish You Were Here live songs suffer a little in the live versions- while the spatial audio is much harder to hear, producer Mike Millard achieves what he can with what practically began as a bootleg tape. The set closes with a stunning rendition of The Dark Side Of The Moon, performing to a crowd who will be telling this story for years to come. They then encore with a full 22-minute rendition of Echoes, which serves only to make me more upset that I was born 30 years after this gig happened.
To any fan of Pink Floyd, this re-release provides insight into the making of one of the most important albums of the 20th century and serves as a reminder of what a once-in-a-generation band Pink Floyd truly were. With the demos and the live recordings on this anniversary edition, listeners get to experience a moment in time where the band were at possibly their most collaborative. Fifty years on, this remains as a landmark project in music, and it will do for another fifty years to come.
Fifty years on, this remains as a landmark project in music, and it will do for another fifty years to come.