Track Listing

1. Shine On You Crazy Diamond
2. Welcome To The Machine
3. Have A Cigar
4. Wish You Were Here
5. Shine on you crazy diamond pt.2

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #400 in Music
• Released on: 1994-08-01
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered

Amazon.co.uk Review
Wish You Were Here is a song cycle dedicated to Pink Floyd's original frontman, Syd Barrett, who'd flamed out years before: two grimly funny songs about the evils of the music business ("By the way, which one's Pink?"), and two long, touching ones about the band's vanished friend. The real star of the show, though, is the production: sparkling, convoluted, designed to sound deeply oh-wow under the influence--and pretty great sober too, with David Gilmour getting lots of space for his most lyrical guitar playing ever. And, though the album is big and ambitious, even bombastic, it somehow dodges being pretentious--the Barrett tributes are honest and heartfelt, beneath all the grand gestures and stereophonic trickery. --Douglas Wolk

CD Description
The breakthrough success of DARK SIDE OF THE MOON made WISHYOU WERE HERE a crucial follow-up in strictly commercial terms. Further pressure came from it being Pink Floyd's first recording for a new label, Columbia. Yet the demands on the band only provided Roger Waters with more fodder for his lyrics, which glanced at the band's roots as well as their new responsibilities.
The mechanised throb of a VCS3 synthesizer, fed through a repeat-echo unit, signals the opening bars of "Welcome To The Machine", a diatribe against an industry more concerned with money than creative music-making. "Have A Cigar" further establishes Waters' contempt by bringing in singer Roy Harper to play the role of a "faceless suit", who none-too-innocently asks, "Which one's Pink?" The remaining songs indirectly look back to the first casualty of PinkFloyd's growing fame, the group's founder, Syd Barrett.
The 20-minute-plus "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" has its roots in earlier pieces like "Atom Heart Mother Suite" and "Echoes". But rather than just another Floydian soundscape, its lyrics make it a paean to Barrett's genius and a requiem for his subsequent breakdown. The first five of the song's nine movements open the album with sax player Dick Parry wailing as effectively as he did on DARK SIDE. The final four sections, which close the album, form a reprise that starts with the sound of wind and David Gilmour's guitar screaming and crying. The band then settles into a laid-back jam that ends with Richard Wright's billowing synth delicately fading out.
The title track deals also with Barrett, as well as the tension the idealist Waters was feeling in battling the greedthat surrounded the band's success. The themes of disillusionment planted throughout WISH YOU WERE HERE would eventually sprout full-blown on THE WALL.

Customer Reviews

One of the most beautiful rock albums ever.
Wish You Were Here really has to be listened to all the way through from start to finish in one sitting. Any other way just doesn't do it justice. David Gilmour's opening guitar notes on Shine On You Crazy Diamond ring out like cathedral bells and this was the inspiration for Roger Waters' haunting lyrical tribute to lost band member Syd Barrett. Welcome to the Machine is a gutsy attack on the recording industry and has to be heard just for the clarity of the stereo acoustic guitars ringing out over the swooshing synthesizers and rolling tympanies. Have A Cigar features Roy Harper on vocals and funky guitars and continues the disillusioned rock star theme. The absolute classic Wish You Were Here follows, with one of the best openings of any rock song ever produced. Shine On You Crazy Diamond returns to conclude the album. If there is a better album from this era, I'd like to know what it is. The packaging of this album (designed by long-time Pink Floyd cohort, Storm Thorgerson) is as equally as impressive as the music itself and likewise deserves to be studied at length. Although released in 1975, this album has not aged or become dated with the passing of time at all. Buy it.

Wish They Were Here
Despite the daunting prospect of having to follow ‘Dark Side of The Moon’, ‘Wish You Were Here’ rises to the challenge admirably. What it lacks in dynamics and interplay it more than makes up for in tension and control.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the album’s first four minutes, where David Gilmour’s taut guitar and Rick Wright’s keyboard chords stretch the suspense to breaking point and beyond before Gilmour finally provides exquisite relief with a simple, unadorned four note arpeggio.

That sets the mournful tone of ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’, an epic 26-minute eulogy to Syd Barrett (a former member of Pink Floyd, put simply) that starts and bookends the album and is arguably the finest track the band have ever produced. While the ghost of Syd hovers above many a Floyd album, ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’ is the only track that is specifically about Syd, celebrating the genius that leaked into madness while mourning his loss to the band. Roger Waters’ lyrics and the band’s playing are so complimentary it hurts.

Between the two parts of the epic are two rants against the system – the acerbic ‘Welcome To The Machine’ and the humorously cynical ‘Have A Cigar’ (sung by Roy Harper) – and the simple, melancholic, acoustic title track which neatly sums up how the band were feeling at the time.

Despite Waters’ growing dominance over the band, ‘Wish You Were Here’ is still very much a Pink Floyd album, with all the instrumental elements contributing to the overall sound. It may not have the spark and fizz of ‘Dark Side of The Moon’, but in other ways it cuts deeper. For David Gilmour and Rick Wright, it’s their favourite Pink Floyd album.

Better Than Dark Side
Although the above statement does not seem particularly radical, as this album came after Dark Side of the Moon, in sales terms it was a flop by comparison.

I was lucky enough to have heard this album first when my mate recommended getting into a "Weird band from the 70's", and consequently find myself re-listening to it repeatedly.

I don't think that I can single out any particular song to justify why I like this album so much, or even state what you can expect when listening to it. This is because it varies from person to person, and is highly dependant upon what mood you are in when listening. All I can truly say without fear of contradiction is that it is world-class.

Shine on you crazy diamond splits the album with part 1 at the beginning and part 2 to finish. These tracks owe as much to classical music as they do to rock music. In fact to try and generically pin down what makes this piece of music so good is to belittle it. This kind of originality cannot be pigeon-holed. We move to Welcome to the Machine, Have a Cigar and Wish you Were Here. These songs show a sense of class from the band, in that they prove that they can produce high quality 'normal' songs when required.

Ultimately this is an album to be listened to in one go. It is about music, it underlines the concept that music is its own reward as it steps away from Dark Side and forges its own path. It's relaxing, it's exhilirating, it's class. If you consider yourself to be a music lover and you don't have this in your collection you should fee ashamed.