Pink Floyd – Wish You Were Here (1975)

This album was 50 years old a couple of months ago, and to celebrate / commemorate / screw a few more quid out of it, a deluxe box set of the original album with remixes, demos and much other merch was released. Full deluxe 4 LP plus 2 CD plus videos, replica 7" single, tour programme, hardback book and poster, a mere £215.

My version is the first release CD from 1984, picked up second hand long, long ago. This is an album I've had with me one way or another since its first release, their follow up to the zillion selling Dark Side Of The Moon, (interestingly, never a no 1 UK album, unlike Wish You Were Here).

I'm not sure I can add anything the the millions of words written about this album over the last half century, but here's my impressions.

Loosely themed around absence, the head and tail (and two-thirds of the music) of the album are the several parts of the band's opus magnum Shine On You Crazy Diamond, their tribute to former band member, Syd Barrett. The first half of the suite builds up slowly, and ambiently, into a brooding guitar solo, before, in what seems like a blink of an eye (but is nine minutes) the main song kicks in. The story of Syd coincidentally turning up at the studio to 'do his bit' during the recording, and his bandmates not recognising him at first, is legend. Fifty years on, it's still as powerful as ever, and by comparison, the following tracks, Welcome To The Machine, and the Roy Harper sung pop at the record industry Have A Cigar feel ordinary. That's a bit harsh, since both stand up in their own right, but they sit in glorious company. Title track Wish You Were Here, is another career highpoint, a simple acoustic number but with such depth, that on any other album it would shine out, but it leads us into the lovely outro and final verse of Shine On.

It's a stone cold 1970s rock and prog classic, and for me, the last great album that Pink Floyd did. What followed felt weaker and more self-indulgent compared to the peak of DSOTM and this. But it still gives me a buzz when I listen to it, even now.

Link to 50th anniversary release

5* - possibly the band's career peak, certainly a great.