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Pink Floyd "Wish You Were Here" (1975)
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)
'Running
over the same old ground, what have we found? The same old fears - wish you
were here'
How do you follow up a record everyone, including
your worst critics and rivals, hailed as a masterpiece? Why you make another
masterpiece of course! Or at least that's what the perfectionist Pink Floyd set
out to do with this album, some three years delayed from the success of 'Dark
Side Of The Moon'. The path was a difficult one though including half of one
aborted album made up of the sounds of household objects (which sounds more
promising than critics always say, but at the Floyd's usual speed was
complicated enough for them to still be working on it now!) and half of another
(which will with a few lyrical tweaks and a colossal change of perspective will
become 'Animals' in 1977) before the Floyd finally fell into the most natural 'concept'
facing a band who's seen such a massive success: an equally massive fear of
failure. If it wasn't for the Floyd's trademark epic style and production sound
(which is drawn out to its greatest length across this album, the most 'Pink
Floydesque' of them all) you'd be hard pressed to believe this was the same
band as 'Dark Side' simply because The Floyd go about things in an entirely
different way. 'Dark Side' was a concept about life written from the beginning,
made by a band feeling confident and sharp after recent successes and moulded
into shape after lengthy tours which represent the peak of the Floyd as a
combined, fully-functioning unit. For all the album's tales of woe and worries,
what made it sell more than anything else was the confidence levels, as the
band pulled off eleven ridiculous game-changers per track and still tied it up
in little digestible nuggets everyone (nearly) could understand. By contrast
'Wish You Were Here' is the sound of a dejected band going through oh so many
bad times of their own making musical and personal and figuring that it was all
over so they may as well just write whatever, with the gloom in the room the
'real' subject matter on display.
Roger Waters' most quoted line about this project is
that he thought in retrospect they should have named it 'Wish We Were Here' in
reference to how dejected and disinterested the band were. What nobody mentions
is what a change it is: every Floyd album up to and especially 'Dark Side' are
assertive works all about changing the world around you, whether it be in this
world, hippies in a French colony, cutting people up into little pieces or
roadies having breakfast. The 'moral' of 'Dark Side' especially is about not
waiting for other people to tell you when to start living your life because
it's happening now and will be gone before you know it, so stop being
distracted by life's petty concepts and act! By contrast 'Wish You Were Here'
is a passive album, full of re-actions into life events beyond the narrator's
control. It's a record about absence, not presence, haunted by ghosts of lovers
and bandmates gone and the spectre of unfinished business, while even the
band's biggest successes can't help them escape the twin issues that have them
pinned and helpless: the music business machine and the capitalist machine. For
all its woe 'Dark Side' made the world sound a great place to be - yes 'Money'
is sarcastic but it's sung with joy, not yet greed, 'Us and Them' sees a
solution to divisions and wars up and down human history so obvious it hurts
('be kind to one another and embrace your similarities without getting hung up
on the differences!') and even 'The Great Gig In The Sky' sounds like a nice
place to end up thanks to Clare Terry's beautiful voice. 'Wish You Were Here'
though is a world where everyone hurts you, either by leaving you or never
leaving you alone. Throughout Roger Waters' second set of complete album lyrics
runs the theme of betrayal from the last people he ever thought would let him
down: the loved one of the title track, the music world he embraced so
whole-heartedly in his youth, the 'machine' he was brought up to think was kind
and caring but turns out to be evil and soul-destroying and most of all the
band-mate with so many ideas always pouring out of him it seemed like he would
never, ever stop. If ever there was an album of grief it's this one, which
starts with what sounds like the most melancholy synth chord in existence
that's held on to for a full four minutes before the band finally learn to 'let
go' and which ends with a five minute eulogy that cries deep dark bittersweet
tears. 'Wish You Were Here' is an album that begs for our forgiveness for ever
being told that life was kind of OK, because it isn't.
Why is this album, the sequel to a mega blockbuster success
after all, quite so 'down'? Well, Roger was in a funny place in the head since
'Dark Side' came out (1974 especially). His childhood marriage to first wife
Linda is over, with the way that such love turned to such hatred so fast the
dominant theme of his next few works (of all the 'bricks' in 'The Wall' it's
the loss of Pink's girlfriends that causes him to truly go insane at last, the
'last straw' after a hard life). Nick Mason, too, was in the middle of a
painful divorce to wife Lindy (who plays the flute to his drums on 'The Grand
Vizier's Garden Party'). David and Rick's first marriages are also coming
unglued, both falling apart after the release of this album and before the next
two. When this happens to bands they either get tighter together or looser,
blaming the music and touring for the problems in their personal life. The
Floyd took the latter course, finding out with bemusement and more than a
little resentment that their dreams of collectively 'making it big', answered
by 'Dark Side', hadn't solved any of their problems really: they were still
unhappy and just happened to now be unhappy with the world and their dog (and
pig and sheep) staring at their every move, an uncomfortable experience for a
band as resentful of publicity as the Floyd. What's more the irony is that
'Dark Side' was a record that had seemed to warn against success, that 'Money'
was a trap as you can't take it with you when you die - or go mad. Becoming
disillusioned millionaires who really didn't want to make another record and
didn't need to make another record, but who really didn't want to go out and
face the world because they'd decided not to make another record, they were in
a stalemate.
The Floyd also knew how quickly times change, for
everybody. Almost half this album's running time is taken up with 'Shine On You
Crazy Diamond', a requiem for Syd Barrett. The Floyd were in such an unusual
position here. Of all the other bands of the last fifty years only two other
bands who made records you could name had band members who had effectively
'gone mad': one was Moby Grape (who never sold anywhere near enough records to
reach the level of influence the Floyd had - Skip Spence, once of Jefferson
Airplane, being the casualty) and the other was The Manic Street Preachers (who
after Richey Edwards walked out on them and his family and 'disappeared' went
down exactly the Floyd tack of songs about absence and loss). The Floyd felt
they owed it, as the new hottest thing in town, to warn audiences and other
bands alike just how tough and brutal the music business was. Syd didn't leave
because he had enough or wasn't good enough: he was actively drained of his
talents by the music 'machine', with eyes that were once full of such hope and
wonder and brilliance (much like the Floyd's pre-Dark Side) turned into black
seas of nothing. The Floyd spend a full twenty-five minutes in one great last
pleading with Syd to come back, to pull himself together, to be as brilliant as
he always was and 'lead' a band who suddenly feel like leading themselves all
over again and they can't help but wonder what they might have all achieved
with Syd still in the band in 1975 (no leader was more assertive than Syd at
the beginning or bursting with ideas). Spookily, in a much-reported story, Syd
turned up on one of the (many) days dedicated to making this song, desperate
for money after five years away from the public-eye but not quite sure in his
confused state where to go for it. Somehow getting past security he stood at
the back, passive, balding and over-weight. Used to hangers-on the band ignored
him, each one assuming one of the others had invited him, until the penny
dropped that it was their leader watching them record their requiem to him, the
penultimate great 'Syd' moment in their canon (if only he'd turned up for
'Nobody Home' too!)
That seems to have been the catalyst for the Floyd
to pull themselves together and make this album about loss, after dithering
uncertainly for the past eighteen months. Ignore what it says in the 1990s CD
booklet that this album was recorded 'between January and July 1975'; actually
the process stretched back as far as January 1974 in one form or another. Actually
either one of the Floyd's previous ideas could have worked - indeed does work
given that two songs 'Raving and Drooling' and 'You Gotta Be Crazy' already
count for well over half of 'Animals'. But that album would have been perhaps a
bit too acerbic, aggressive and, well, cruel for fans to take on board quite
yet (It's one thing to warn the hand that feeds you not to follow you into the
lions' den and quite another to physically set that lion on to them!)
'Household Objects', long dismissed as the lengthiest procrastination in rock,
actually sounds like a god idea to me: Adamant that they didn't want to use 'everyday'
voices again like 'Dark Side', the next logical step was 'everyday sounds':
footsteps, milk bottles, pinged elastic bands and wine glasses (the one sound
effect that was recycled, for the opening of 'Shine On' where it merges
seamlessly with Rick's synth to 'beef up' the sound). We don't know what the
songs might have sounded like when finished and Roger would have had one hell
of a job writing lyrics to fit that lot, but the two finished songs (one on the
deluxe 'Dark Side' set, one on the deluxe 'Wish You Were Here' set) reveals a
band that were full of ideas, with a 'second' twist on the 'Dark Side' theme of
looking at everyday life in a slightly different way. After spending months
with just two songs half-completed and half an hour plus to fill, however, the
Floyd decided to call a halt and abandon the album, following the biggest
success of theirs (or - nearly - anyone's) lives with what everyone referred to
as an abject failure.
Failure is the keyword of the finished 'Wish You
Were Here', the band finally 'getting' their direction by focussing not so much
on what they'd done as much as their fear of not quite doing it again. Poor Syd
is the perfect example of what a cruel world can do to even the world's
brightest and best, a diamond in reverse, not formed from a lump of hard black
'fuel' into a beautiful sparkly diamond, but a beautiful sparkly fuel fizzing
with ideas turned into a black shapeless rock (or at least that's what happens
to his eyes). Poor Syd never gets to see how much he meant to so many fans and
how much his bandmates still miss him (the beautiful guilt-ridden 'If' aside,
it's notable that the Floyd have largely ignored Syd and his legacy till now
and been too concerned with rescuing their careers while they still had them - only
after the success of 'Dark Side' it is clear that the Floyd can continue
forever if they so choose with no record company ever being brave enough to
turn down a band who once stayed in the charts for nearly a decade). 'Welcome
To The Machine' reveals how the world is set up to fail each and every one of
us, unless we play by its rules by becoming servants of the machine itself and
its Roger's most paranoid lyric, seeing his past as nothing more than, well,
another brick in the wall for the 'man' to play his puppet strings and help him
enslave more people. As if to prove that the music business is as much a trap
as any other the song is followed by 'Have A Cigar' and as if to prove that it
isn't even a particularly Pink Floyd track band friend Roy Harper is roped into
singing it after both Roger and David admit defeat (that word again: actually
Roger sounds pretty good on pre-album live renditions, sneering the lyric the
way the 'Teacher' reads out one of 'his' childhood poems in class in 'The Wall'
film). 'Wish You Were Here' is as lost and broken and lonely as any song you'll
ever hear, taking all that direction drive and purpose from 'Dark Side' and
turning it into a world where nobody knows what they're doing, the narrator and
his lover two goldfish chasing each other round in a goldfish bowl never quite
getting it together. The pair are now on different ';wavelengths', leading to a
big joke at the end as the band switch from 'FM' to 'mediumwave' (the two
dominant bands of radio signal in the UK at the time. It makes perfect sense,
given the topsy-turvy nature of the Floyd, that arguably Roger's most
successful, poetic and hauntingly emotional lyric is not only set to David's
most successful, straightforward and detached piece of music but that both are
about failure. Clearly written too about Roger's failing marriage, it's a song
where with all the will, all the love and all the means in the world a
millionaire rock-star and his wife who've been through it all across a decade
together still can't find enough in common to stay together, big success or
not. 'Wish You Were Here' never made as big a splash with the general public as
'Dark Side' because failure is never as 'sexy' as success and even if 'Dark
Side' had never sold a single copy it sounds like an album full of confidence,
assertiveness and belief. However 'Wish You Were Here' is a fan favourite
because failure is so much more of a Floyd theme than success ever was, full of
the band at their most lost, their most sad and their most grief-stricken.
That's not the only difference between the two
blockbusters. 'Dark Side' is a very 'busy' album which succeeds as well as it
does partly thanks to engineer Alan Parsons who manages to make speech and
sound effects sound like the heartbeat of the record rather than a gimmick
(literally at the beginning and end!) 'Wish You Were Here' is a record of big
empty silences, long wastelands of emptiness and a cold frosty feel that makes
even its most emotional moments feel guarded. It's an album dominated, for the
last time, by Rick's unique sounding keyboards that manage to sound as close to
a robot as anyone had come pre-Kraftwerk. The album opens with four minutes of
next to nothing and ends nearly the same way, with only the lightning bolt of a
David Gilmour guitar part breathing blood into the album. It's a sound only the
Floyd could have made work, one of profound emptiness as the lovers never meet,
the musician discovers he's still part of the machine (twice!) and the band's
chief inspiration ends his days quietly fading away. Rick deserves huge
applause for his nuances and space, putting to good use all the lessons the
Floyd had learnt on their previous few albums (not just 'Dark Side' but
'Meddle' especially), learning how to make the 'gaps' and silences where nothing
happens as important as the parts that are. Rick gets the whole final eight
minutes or so to himself (Nick's drums aside) and it's sad to think that it's
virtually a last hurrah for the band's co-founder, the band's quietest member
the perfect instrument for the quietest moment of the band's quietest album.
Gilmour gets the opposite job, charging like a bull through 'Machine' and
'Cigar' with all the wild fury of a heavy metal band, but there's a difference
between the taut disciplined lines of 'Dark Side' and this album as he gets
more and more frustrated, his solo on 'Machine' especially amongst his best
work (and a good 'warm-up for arguably his best work on 'Dogs'). Nick gets
little to do, certainly compared to 'Dark Side', but few drummers would have
'understand' this alienated lonely and helpless little album as well as he and
his cymbal work during the second 'Shine On' especially is stunning, a
slow-motion, feet-dragging 'do I have to?' as the band finally bids us goodbye.
This is, however, Roger's baby - even more than
'Dark Side' was. Waters underwent something of a change in personality around
here, going from being firm but fair and part of a democracy to being 'bloody
unreasonable' according to many reports. I think part of the problem was that,
after years as (roughly) a democracy in between Syd bowing out in 1968 and
'Obscured By Clouds' in 1972, Roger had started dominating the band, with 'Dark
Side' his concept and every word his work too (even if Rick actually gets more
credits on that album, courtesy of his involvement in instrumentals). For this
album he sat back to see what the others would bring - but found they were
waiting for him. With so much going wrong at home, you get the sense that Roger
really really really didn't want to be in the recording studio delivering
another baby in 1975, but facing that or releasing nothing wrote an album about
his feelings and went through hell to make it. This was a hell he never quite
forgave his fellow bandmates for and will lead him to 'assume' his leader role
on the next three Floyd albums, even to the point of becoming a crazy
dictatorship for a time.
Hipgnosis and Storm Thorgerson too deserve a whole
machine-load full of kudos for their part in this album's artwork, which has
been much pored after ever since, as full of imagery and surrealism as this
album ie empty and quite often brutal. While stupidly changed for the CD
re-issues with whole new ugly pictures (why do that?!), the original LP is a
work of beauty. The album originally came in its own unique black bag, as if
hiding the record from view (and fitting with album themes of failure and not
wanting to be 'looked at'). A 'seal' over the top (an unbroken one thus becoming
an instant collector's item!) features a fleshy hand and a robotic one meeting
in the middle, a 'pact' between the human and machine worlds, over a 'backdrop'
of each of the four elements: earth, fire, air and water. The album cover underneath focussed on
'fire', shot in the parking lot of movie studio Warner Brothers (why? They were
rivals with EMI weren't they?!) where two businessmen are shaking hands and one
of them is, literally, getting 'burned' but appears to feel nothing (and yes
one poor stuntman really was set on fire, although his business suit is
actually a flame-retardant suit and he got 'put out' immediately, with the
cover shot as quickly as possible). Unfortunately a first take went wrong when
the wind blew the wrong way and the poor chap got the edges of his moustache
singed - what a courageous move to agree to a second take after that! The other
image shots featured on the back and middle of the original's gatefold sleeve
were easier to shoot: For 'Earth' we see a businessman in the Yuma Desert who
isn't 'really there' with just his clothes, shoes, hat and briefcase depicted
(his features air-brushed out by computer). For 'Air' a naked woman floated
past, barely seen inside her dress, floating around in Norfolk. For 'Water' a
diver splashes into California's Mono Lake without causing any ripples; the
most time-consuming picture which meant
the poor swimmer had to stand still for several minutes, holding his breath.
The actual record label itself features an 'extra' image, of a swimmer drowning
in the desert, getting his 'elements' out of kilter (this cover may well be
referring to the Medieval medicinal belief that a patient had four 'humours' of air, earth, fire and water that
had to be kept in 'alignment' equal with one another and that illness was a
case of one getting out of control compared to the others, which is as good an
explanation before the knowledge of bacteria and viruses as any I suppose). The
Floyd, expecting big things of Hipgnosis after 'Dark Side', asked not to see
the designs until they were final (although for the first time Storm got to hear
the music for 'clues' as they were making it) and when they first saw the
mock-up cover, complete with bag, they all applauded. sadly things will never
go this well for Hipgnosis and their most high-profile clientele ever again...
Overall, then, 'Wish You Were Here' is something of
an odd fish adrift in a tiny goldfish-bowl of its own self-indulgent making
compared to the sheer accessibility and everyman status of 'Dark Side'. Not
everyone (you hope) would identify with this album's songs of heartbroken loss,
mind-breaking paranoia or soul-destroying visions of a friend, leader and
inspiration turning slowly inside out from light to darkness. And yet this is
an album fans keep coming back to, partly I think because it feels 'special'
and offers something no other album (including every other Floyd album) can.
Grief is a hard thing to keep up in an album and no other album I know stays
there for good ('The Wall' perhaps comes close, but that album also features
anger, bitterness, fear, dark humour and ultimately hope, not to mention lust).
Most albums are 'afraid' to anywhere near somewhere as bleak as this album's
landscape, full of wild empty spaces, broken promises and hearts too numb and
exhausted to cry proper tears. But this one revels in its misery, turning the
screws up so high that you can't help but feel touched by it, even whilst the
Floyd try the double-trick of keeping this album largely emotion-free. There
are other albums as mad, sad and dangerous to know as this one -and other
albums as cool, calm and level-headed. But never together. The sound of a child
whose stopped crying because no adult comes to feed or play with it anymore and
he's left to fend for himself in a cold grey world but inwardly never stops
crying, it's a record for lonely misfits and struggling geniuses alike. Is it
Pink Floyd's greatest work as so many people say? Not quite - not with just
four songs (and one of them a novelty comedy) and much as I love 'Shine On'
nine parts of it is at least two too many. 'Dark Side' has so much more going
on and therefore so much more to enjoy, while 'The Wall' looks at
disintegration in an even more unique and thorough manner and even unloved,
ignored albums like polar opposites 'Piper At The Gates Of Dawn' (fun and
fierce) and 'The Final Cut' (political and pathetic) offer me personally a much
more intriguing and fulfilling listen. But there's no mistaking this album's
cold-hearted power either: for an album about failure, made in a relative hurry
after the abortion of two others, it's still one hell of a success.
At first the recording of 'Shine On You Crazy
Diamond' was a failure too. The Floyd all agreed that it was their most
promising song written by 1974 and given that the Floyd didn't agree on a lot
back then it was an obvious track to spend a lot of time on. But a first early
version just didn't work, though to be too slow and boring and not 'epic'
enough to be the cornerstone of an album. After several expensive weeks the
band tried again, recording what they considered to be a tighter, more powerful
version of the song only to find a few days later on playback that two of the
channels recorded had been draped in echo (while the others weren't) which put
the whole song out of synch (so far neither version has been released).
Dejected the band started a third time, far more disillusioned than before -
but fittingly for the composition this is a real case of triumph out of
adversity and the performance that grew out of these trials ended up embracing
the best of both versions, together with some new additions, such as Gilmour's
majestic four-note guitar riff which now became the 'link' between Rick's
mournful synths and Roger's equally mournful lyric. The track is unusually structured
into multiple 'sections' and apparently split into two 'halves' almost from the
minute the song was born (the second half doesn't differ from the first half as
much as you might think). The sub-sections are marked, in part one, as I (0:00
when Rick hits the saddest chord in rock history), II (2:09, when Gilmour's
bluesy guitar starts sighing along), III (3:54, when Gilmour hits the mother of
all guitar riffs, pausing to let it s power sink in before the rest of the band
finally answer the call-to-arms and chime in at 4:30), IV (6:27, when Rick hits
the 'trumpet' setting on his synth) and finally (for now) Part V. It takes a
full 8:42 until the lyrics come in at all and many first-time-round Floyd fans
assumed this track was going to be left as an instrumental.
However it isn't and the lyrics are the central part
of the song - it's just that, to hear them, the stage has to be set and this
song about coaxing, helping and abetting talent and visionaries needs to take
it's sweet time, just as the band mourning the loss of it needs their 'space'
too. It's as if the band get to mourn Syd in turn: Rick, his original
right-hand man, setting the tone with his melancholy, close friend Gilmour
turning in sad anger, Nick his friend hitting a drum with true misery and
finally Roger, Syd's biggest devotee, writing a lyric of desperate betrayal and
hurt. What a lyric it is too, both a celebration and a commiseration for rare
talent, as Roger tries one last time to urge his friend out of his shell and
back to what he used to be, to 'shine'. Waters grew up with attention falling
naturally on Syd: he was so full of life and a ball of energy that everyone
naturally deferred to him, seeing him as a 'sun' giving off heat - now the
tables are turned and it's Roger in the spotlight and Roger in the shadows as
the bass-player tries to get his friend to 'shine' once more. The lines about
being 'caught in the cross-fire of childhood and stardom' are the two things
that most 'got' to Syd, as fame and attention and responsibility sat so poorly
with the childlike qualities (and songs) that fans flocked to hear. Now Syd is
a rock and roll myth, no longer a human
being, a 'target for far-away laughter' whenever anyone writes a story dissing
the Floyd. In a second verse, that comes several minutes later, Syd 'reached
for the secret too soon', falling so heavily into drugs and his own mind that
he left himself no way back to talk to us mere mortals still waiting for the
answers. Roger is a caring friend here, trying to protect him from 'shadows at
night' and the harsh spot 'light' that exposes his character to the world, with
everyone wanting a piece of him including his inner demons. He's realistic
enough thought to tell us that Syd 'wore out his welcome with random
precision', a great line that rings true with the accounts you can read in most
Floyd biogs of Syd's behaviour in early 1968, when he was reliably unreliable
but in a different and more unmanageable way each day. Along the way Roger
tries to see Syd as a bigger character than any of the restrictive labels the
music press use, but even he can only think of single descriptive words that
all sound rather other-worldly. Syd is no longer remembered as a human being
but as a legend, a martyr, a raver, a 'seer of visions', a painter, most sweetly
a 'piper' (a name-check for the Floyd's first and Syd's only band album 'Piper
At The Gates Of Dawn') and most hauntingly as a 'prisoner', a life of freedom
now given way to one small house in one small street of one small town of one
small country. It's an astonishing lyric, personal to the story and so accurate
that nobody could be in any doubt who it referred to and yet resonating for anyone
whose ever grieved for someone lost, whether to death or for someone's real
self, knows where this lyric is coming from.
The performance is slow and sullen, deliberately
conceived so that it feels like the heaviest thing in the universe. The Floyd
seem to have deliberately gone for the 'feel' of Syd as he is now rather than
he was 'then', claustrophobic and trapped, but there are touches of sunshiney
brilliance dotted throughout the song both to keep us interested and to remind
us of what Syd once represented. There are lots of great subtle touches, which
is odd given that the song is so straightforward and bare (and slow). There's
the 'wine glasses' piece from the abandoned 'Household Objects', which seem to
have been quite coincidentally fitted the key of the song (or maybe this third
re-make was deliberately made in that key so as to use them?), twinkling away
under Rick's opening synth-work. There's a whole choir of female backing
singers as per 'Dark Side' but here they're used sparingly for colour, way down
the bottom of the mix. There's some lovely harmony work from Gilmour which
points the way forward to his future solo/post-Roger Floyd performances of this
song where his sweet falsetto offers a very different interpretation than
Roger's still-hurting, still-vulnerable performance here. There's even a
saxophone solo from band friend Dick Parry, returning after the success of his
star turn on 'Money' which should be the last thing that could work in such a
setting ('Shine On' is slow, sad and humble - saxophones are fast, joyous and
epic) but somehow does, answering Roger's vocal in a whole different 'language'
as if Syd is speaking to us in tongues we can't quite hear. When the song
started life, as a few melancholic Rick Wright phrases, few would have guessed
they'd end up here, but Roger's lyric and David's guitar riff both clearly
point to such a song and Syd was clearly on everyone's minds now that the band
were enjoying the success they'd once dreamed of with him in the band. It's a
sweet tribute, a little too long and slow in places (Part IV could have been
cut out with no loss whatsoever and it's a brave if not foolhardy decision to
keep this song playing for a full thirty seconds before you can hear anything
on even the highest setting of your vinyl or CD player) but from the heart and
doing the Pink Floyd thing of paying a huge emotional tribute to a bandmate who
was clearly still much loved and much missed, without getting all emotional
about it. No wonder so many fans like it and rate it so highly, although for
most of the wider public this track lacks the power and universality of most of
'Dark Side' and 'Comfortably Numb'.
As we fade on the sax solo we're met with the ugly
alien landscape of chugging robots and blaring synths. The segue to 'Welcome To
The Machine' seems designed to portray Syd - a unique creative genius - and his
madness as an unfortunate by-product of an industry designed to make us all the
same and for all of us to make money for our higher-paymasters. Success didn't
soften Roger the way it did so many of his peers - on the contrary, once his
livelihood was assured he got darker and meaner in his pursuit of portraying
life the way he saw it (ie darkly). He turned up to the band's revived 1975
sessions with this song's lyric in tow and probably got an equally dark
reception from his bandmates as this song takes the acerbicness and acidness of
'Dark Side' to new levels. There isn't a collective of outside pressures we
have to face up to on this song - instead there's only one pressure and it's a
colossal one, to hunker down, to get a job, to live out a certain lifestyle, to
make money (a little for us and a lot for the 'machine') and no one escapes it,
except through madness it seems. The 'machine' (ie 'the man') know everything
about us: they have our names, they provide us with 'toys'; designed to turn us
into good citizens and run 'scout' meetings and school to develop this
instinct. They 'allow' us dreams they can control of stardom and music before
we discover that they too are a trap and they 'own' that as well, with music and
art a factory-line of pressure to live up to past glories and flog your guts
out promoting your new ones. Everyone whose 'thick' lives inside the system
because they can't imagine life outside it - and everyone whose 'clever' still
can't escape it, following each other in a long line of disillusioned artists
scrabbling for pennies, buying guitars to 'punish your ma' even though she's
got the world behind her telling you to 'knuckle down' and 'get a proper job'
and rebelling against a school system that can mark you down for life if you go
too far and fail your exams.
It's a stupid corrupt evil system, recycled by every
generation that comes to power, and doesn't Roger know it, using up his spare
time between recordings writing a melody and backing for his monster of a
mini-masterpiece. This is a song that sounds huge and even more sterile and
uncaring than 'Crazy Diamond', especially when treated with endless amounts of
machines apparently running a 'rinse cycle' until the throbs between programmes
slowly come together to form a beat that's joined by David's guitar and Rick's
gloriously sinister synth. Gilmour, who apparently wasn't that taken with the
song, still sings the vocal double-tracked: one voice angry, snarling and
haunted, the other spoken, calm and cool. The result is eerie, as if David's
inner turmoil is already being drained out of him by the 'machine', made to
behave, to get into line, not to shout. The only emotion, ironically, comes
from Roger's glorious bleeping electronics who cackle, stomp, march and yell
their way through the song, the closing alien landscape seemingly tearing our
characters to bits. Only a short flamenco-like burst from Gilmour's guitar
escapes the entrapment for any length of time, twice, before being slapped down
by the synths as two Roger basses seemingly 'throw' the melody from one hand to
another. But it's short-lived, dying in a thunderous drum roll from Nick. On
this song evil wins and it still sounds pretty stunning today - goodness only
knows what it must have sounded like back in 1975 when these synths were still
fairly new!
'Have A Cigar', a leftover from 1974, doesn't really
fit. It's not just the lyrics, which are no longer direct and honest but
acerbic and sarcastic and dripping with 'haha jokes on you!' glee in contrast
to the rest of this pulling-no-punched album. It's not just the melody which
goes back to featuring 'proper' instruments and up-front guitars, the one track
here that a pre-'Dark Side' Floyd fanatic might have recognised on first
hearing. It's not even that - in a move surely unthinkable by any other major
group of its day - none of the Floyd sing this song (Roy Harper was asked to
take part by Roger after he nixed his own vocal and David requested not to sing
it as he didn't agree with it). It's everything: 'Have A Cigar' is the 'real'
world breaking through this album's cosy if melancholic little sojourn, the
little nagging voice of industry that seems to repeat from 'Money' all over
again but from a more specific music-business point of view. The song is sung from
the point of view of a record executive, overjoyed at an album's unexpectedly
good sales after they'd dismissed the talents creating it as no-hopers messing
around (it's not much of a stretch to see this as EMI's re-action to 'Dark
Side', especially the 'Which one's Pink?' gag which apparently really was
uttered in the band's presence during a meeting with an American record company
executive who had never heard of the band and assumed it was a person's name,
not two obscure bluesmen stuck together).
The record executive's cigars are seen as a symbol
of his over-indulgent rich lifestyle and offered to 'us', the 'rockstar', as
we're clearly now 'one of them' now we've made some money. Along the way we get
called 'Dear Boy', get told what 'respect' he has for us, get told to rife the
'gravy train' for as long as it lasts and get told to look at the 'charts' to
measure our success. Nowhere does this music label boss talk to this musician
about music, which rather says it all. Roger must have been really feeling the
pressure from everyone to come up with another album that sold as many copies
as 'Dark Side' which was clearly impossible - if the band knew how to get that
big that quick they'd have done so with album one of their career, not album
eight. Roger is already feeling pressure enough from himself to write an album
that's as good, creative, artistic, meaningful, groundbreaking and moving as
his past record - he doesn't care less for the sales and the two are clearly
looking at the world through different eyes. This song is, like 'Machine',
another 'trap' - musically too, stuck together with a rigid bass note and synth
system (Roger and Rick working together well, for nearly the last time), with
the dashes of colour and freedom only represented by David's angry squeals on
the guitar (His solo at the end of the song is one of his best, going from
mocking and hollow and flashy to desperate in the time it takes Rick's synths
to 'swoosh'). As for Roy, he's tremendous and although the band have all since
regretted 'giving this song away' (and as magnificent as Roger sounds on
bootleg performances of this track from 1974) he's the outside voice this song
needs. Nobody would have believed a word the Floyd had said, but hearing
someone else we hadn't come across before, acting as a 'guest' voice on the
album, we're temporarily fooled by what this track is really all about. Maybe we are meant to care what people think
of us and make money to feed our families and line the pockets of greedy record
executive fat-cats and...hang on a minute, we nearly fell into that trap
ourselves as listeners there, it's such an easy hole to fall into and everyone
around you seems to want you to fall into it, whether you're a musician or a
creative or not. The result is a song that lacks the layers of this album's
other four pieces but is, nevertheless, a forgotten and under-rated song. Perhaps
missing the point (deliberately?), EMI released this as a single in a few
countries they had power over, but sensibly took the Floyd's advice to leave
this album 45-less in the UK and USA.
As if to show just how 'far away' from the Floyd's
own interpretation of 'success' this is, a funny thing happens during the segue
to the next track as, without warning, the full thick heavy metal sound of
'Have A Cigar' 'whooshes' and turns tinny on us, mimicking the sound of an FM
Radio (the place most singles were turned into hits back in 1975 before the
internet and talent shows). It's a brilliant invention, especially when the
haunting guitar lick to 'Wish You Were Here' itself starts up and David starts
playing along to himself in 'our' dimension, the two guitars so far apart yet
still so much in tune it physically hurts. This song has become a beloved fan
favourite for a reason: it's possibly the world's most unemotional band's most
emotional track and despite the poetry, despite the slow tune where not much
happens, despite the emptiness at the heart of the song it says so much. This
is a song about two people who want to like and be with each other not quite
getting it together for something petty and minor. Roger probably wrote it
about his disintegrating first marriage, still unsure as to why it was going so
wrong. To fans it's ambiguous enough to mean anything they want it to mean. The
song takes a picture-postcard sentiment spoken everyday ('How I wish you were
here') and makes it deeper: the narrator doesn't just want his loved one to tag
along with him to the beach he wants to be with her for the rest of his life,
to experience everything with, to share everything with, for life to mean
something with.
As so often happens with Roger's warmer-hearted
songs he passes this one to David to sing and he excels, even though it's subtle
poetry is a world away from anything he's ever had to sing before. The grass is
not always greener apart: indeed the green field the lover left for turns out
to be a 'cold steel rail', at least for the narrator left behind, while her
vision of Heaven is his Hell and her blue skies 'pain'. Syd's spectre might
linger again on the line about 'trading heroes for ghosts', while 'trees' full
of life have become 'hot ashes' of death and 'change', that great lure, has
become 'cold comfort' dished out by a patronising world. Roger then returns to
the theme of his lost father Eric Fletcher Waters, whose death in WW2 as a
conscientious objector made to fight anyway is going to dominate the next few
years of Floyd-dom as he sums up the only possible ends to life: a 'walk-on
part in the war' or a lead role in a cage'. It's the last verse though that
makes this song, as a sad narrator bidding a minor key farewell suddenly shifts
position, the love in his heart rising up as he tries one last time to wish his
loved one was here and seeing the world the way he does. Without her - and for her
without him - they're just 'two lost souls swimming in a fish-bowl', trapped to
go over the same old ground over and over. Apart they're failures. Together,
though, they could have accomplished anything. Fittingly for a song about
collaboration this remains the one last great moment written equally by Roger
(words) and David (music), rather than Roger writing music to an abandoned
Gilmour recording (as per 'Comfortably Numb') or David putting his seal on an
abandoned set of Waters lyrics (as per 'Young Lust'). Both are in perfect sync
here, with David inspired by Roger to write his lovely sighing melody. It's a
piece so raw and vulnerable that you can hear every last pick of his guitar (at
least the one nearest us), including the tap of a string as he slides down to a
new note. Only at the end does this song give way slightly, ending up a busked
Gilmour sing-song and like many a Floyd song lasting a minute or two too long as
it slowly searches for answers but only finds a fade. Even so, it remains one
of the greatest ever Floyd songs, as poignant as any song in their canon and
somehow twice as heart-warming.
Do the lovers get back together again? Not in 'real'
life and probably not on album where the song fades instead to a swirl of wind
as we return to the scene of 'Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Part Two). This time
the mood is meaner, darker, more desperate - less sad, more angry. It may be that
the band saw the 'middle' tracks of this album as an explanation to what
happened to Syd, broken by conformity, record executives and loneliness. This
time around there are nine 'parts': VI (0:00, starting with Rick's throbbing
synth and ending up in a wild screaming Gilmour guitar and ending in the only
truly 'loud' and out of control moment on the album), VII (4:55 when the song
lightens it's mood briefly to return to the main theme and Roger's third
verse), VIII (6:24 with its lightly rolled Gilmour arpeggios that suddenly turn
into a jazzy 'come on!' urgent take on the haunting refrain) and IX (9:03, when
the song goes back to where it nearly began, with a haunting troubled synth
version of the main theme and three Ricks all compete with each other to shed
bittersweet tears, the song finally ending on a fade as the song drifts away, a
cry to Syd to come back left unanswered). That third lyric is by far the most
striking moment in the second half of the song, now set in the present day not
the past: 'Nobody knows where you are' sighs Roger (not strictly true - the
Floyd paid for Roger's house! But making a lot of sense in abstract terms as
Syd disappears into himself) before adding that, as on 'If' and 'Brain Damage',
Waters too feels himself breaking under the pressure of living and may well be
'joining you there'. The song ends sort-of happily, as Roger imagines getting
so far out of it that he somehow ends up roughly where Syd is now and the pair
can take up their old friendship, and 'bask in the shadow of yesterday's triumph'.
Roger's chilling vocal has never sounded more desperate and despite the words
you can tell he believes that they will never actually come true. Instead he
leaves off with one last cry of 'Shine' throwing in a few more descriptions of
Syd for good measure (a 'boy-child' and - notably given this album's theme of
failure - 'a winner and loser', Syd embracing both at different times in his
life). The result is a second half that doesn't quite match up to the first and
once again has a whole section that could have been skipped entirely (VIII this
time, however good Rick's playing). But it's a song that feels as if it needs
to be this long somehow, asking Floydians to remember both effect after showing
us cause and demonstrating again just how badly the band still miss their
comrade in arms. For us fans who miss Syd too, both in mind at the time and
body since, it's a moving tribute.
Overall, then, 'Wish You Were Here' is an album that
I'm surprised is as loved and regarded as it is. That's not to say it's a
record unworthy of adulation at all: every song has its place, each one is powerful
and each one does its job, quite miraculously so in the case of the title
track, one of the greatest AAA achievements of them all. But this is an often
cold, frequently dark album full of clues and symbolism, not to mention just
four actual songs. It feels in many ways as if this album was made to be
deliberately heavy-going, to put off the average record fan who might be
interested in buying this record after 'Dark Side' and to make them think twice
about turning Pink Floyd into part of the 'system' again. You suspect even fans
used to the highs and lows of 'Atom Heart Mother' and 'Ummagumma' might have
second thoughts about a slow-burning album of just four songs where everything
happens under the surface. And yet this album did well, reaching #1 in the UK
(which is something 'Dark Side' technically never did) and not just in record
sales terms but by word of mouth as well, this album passed on from friends and
family in exactly the same way as 'Dark Side'. Though less 'obvious' a listening
experience, written with codes, hints and sarcasm, it's still an album a lot of
us clearly identify with, a warm heart radiating and pulsating just strongly
enough underneath cold clouds of loss, despair, grief, frustration, cold anger and
absence. It remains the most 'Pink Floyd' Pink Floyd album ever and while not
necessarily the best thing the band ever did (as some will tell you - it's
maybe another ten minutes shy of perfection?) it remains a colossal
achievement, brave enough to break new ground whilst being brilliant enough
never to lose its appeal. In other words, even this attempt at 'failure', to
give the band breathing space and more manageable following post 'Dark Side',
was itself a 'failure', too successful for its own good. Instead the band - and
Roger in particular - will have another go at shaking everyone off with
'Animals'...
Other Pink Floyd related posts you might be interested in reading:
A Now Complete List Of Pink Floyd and Related Articles To
Read At Alan’s Album Archives:
'The Final Cut' (1983) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/pink-floyd-final-cut-1983.html
The Best Unreleased Pink
Floyd Recordings http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/the-best-unreleased-pink-floyd-songs.html
Surviving TV
Clips 1965-2014 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/10/pink-floyd-surviving-tv-clipsfilm.html
Non-Album Songs
1966-2000 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/10/pink-floyd-non-album-songs-1966-2009.html
Live/Solo/Compilation
Albums Part One 1965-1978 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/10/pink-floyd-livesolocompilation-albums.html
Live/Solo/Compilation
Albums Part Two 1980-1989 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/10/pink-floyd-livesolocompilation-albums_31.html
Essay:
Why Absence Makes The Sales Grow Stronger http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/05/pink-floyd-essay-why-absence-makes.html
