Wish You Were Here is the ninth studio album by the British rock band Pink Floyd. It was first released on September 12, 1975 in the UK by Harvest Records and a day later in the United States by Columbia Records. Inspired by group material created while performing in Europe, the album was recorded in various sessions at Abbey Road Studios in London. Two of his songs criticized the music business, others expressed alienation, and the multi-part composition of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" was a tribute to Pink Floyd Syd Barrett's founder, who had left seven years earlier after experiencing mental health problems. Like their previous album Dark Side of the Moon (1973), the band used studio effects and synthesizers, and brought guest singers: Roy Harper, who provided lead vocals on "Have a Cigar", and Venetta Fields, who adding backing vocals to "Shine On You Crazy Diamond".
Wish You Were Here topped the charts in the United Kingdom and the United States, and Harvest Records parent company EMI could not print enough copies to meet demand. Although initially received mixed criticism from critics, the album received critical acclaim, appearing on Rolling Stone's list of "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" and "50 Album Rock Biggest Prog of All Time ". Pink Floyd Keyboardist Richard Wright and guitarist David Gilmour have both quoted Wish You Were Here as their favorite Pink Floyd album.
Video Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd album)
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During 1974, Pink Floyd sketched three new compositions, "Raving and Drooling", "You Gotta Be Crazy" and "Shine On You Crazy Diamond". These songs were performed during a series of concerts in France and the UK, the band's first tour since 1973. The Dark Side of the Moon . When Pink Floyd never hired a publicist and distanced himself from the press, their relationship with the media began to deteriorate. Following the publication by NME negative criticism of the band's new material, written by Nick Kent (Syd Barrett's devotee) and Pete Erskine, the band returned to the studio in the first week of 1975.
Maps Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd album)
Drafts
Wish You Were Here is Floyd's second album with a conceptual theme written entirely by Roger Waters. It reflects his feelings that the friendship that has served the band, at the time, is largely absent. The album begins with the opening of instrumental and segues lengths into the lyrics for "Shine On You Crazy Diamond", a tribute to Syd Barrett, whose mental disorder has forced him to leave the group seven years earlier. Barrett is remembered with lines like "Remember when you were young, you shined like the sun" and "You reach the secret too soon, you cry for the moon".
Wish You Were Here is also a critique of the music business. "Shine On" crosses smoothly into "Welcome to the Machine", a song that begins with the opening door (described by Waters as a symbol of music discovery and a betrayed advancement by the music industry more interested in greed and success) and ends with the party, the latter symbolizes "the lack of contact and the real feeling among the people". Similarly, "Have a Cigar" scoffs at the recording industry of "fat cats" with lyrics repeating the cliché streams heard by newcomers in the industry, and includes the question "by the way, which ones are Pink?" ask about the band on at least one occasion. The lyrics of the next song, "Wish You Were Here", relate well to Barrett's condition, and to the dichotomy of Waters character, with greed and ambition fighting with compassion and idealism. The album concludes with a reprise of "Shine On" and further instrumental journey.
"I have some criticism about the Dark Side of the Moon ...," David Gilmour said. "One or two vehicles carrying an idea are not as strong as the idea they are bringing in. I think we should try and work harder to marry the idea and the vehicle that carries it, so they both have the same magic.This is something I personally encourage when we create Wish You Were Here . "
Recording
Alan Parsons, EMI's staff engineer for Pink Floyd's previous studio album, Dark Side of the Moon , has rejected the band's offer to continue working with them (Parsons became successful in itself with The Alan Parsons Project). The group has worked with engineer Brian Humphries on More , recorded on Pye Studios, and again in 1974 when he replaced an inexperienced concert engineer. Therefore, Humphries was a natural choice to work on the band's new material, though as a foreigner at EMI Abbey Road, he encountered some initial difficulties. On one occasion, Humphries inadvertently damaged the supporting track for "Shine On", the part that Waters and drummer Nick Mason had spent many hours perfecting, with echoes. All parts must be re-recorded.
The session for Wish You Were Here at Abbey Road's Studio Three lasted from January to July 1975, recording on four days each week from 2:30 pm. until late at night. Initially the group found it difficult to find any new material, especially as the success of the Dark Side of the Moon had left all four physically and emotionally. Keyboardist Richard Wright later described the session as "falling in a difficult period", and Waters reminded them as "torturing". Mason found the recording process multi-track being pulled out and boring, while David Gilmour was more interested in improving the material of the band. Gilmour is also becoming increasingly frustrated with Mason, whose failed marriage has caused general inaction and apathy, both of which disturb his drums. Mason has since pointed out that Nick Kent's critique at NME may have an influence in keeping the band together.
It was a very difficult period I have to say. All your childhood dreams have been realized and we have the biggest sales records in the world and all the things you get. Girls and money and fame and all that stuff all... everything has come our way and you have to reassess what's in it forever, and that's a pretty confusing time and a kind of empty time for a while. - David Gilmour
Humphries gives his point of view of the struggle sessions in the 2014 interview: "There are days when we do nothing I do not think they know what they want to do We have darts and air rifles and we" Play the game these words, sit around, get drunk, go home and come back the next day. That's all we did until suddenly everything started falling into place. "
After a few weeks, Waters began visualizing another concept. The three new compositions of the 1974 tour are at least a starting point for the new album, and "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" seems a sensible choice as the hub for the new job. Most of the twenty-minute instrumental parts are similar to "Echoes", the opening of a four-tone guitar phrase reminiscent of the ghosts of long-time former band member Syd Barrett. Gilmour had compiled the sentence entirely by chance, but was motivated by Waters' positive response. Waters wanted to share "Shine On You Crazy Diamond", and included two new songs between the two halves. Gilmour disagreed, but lost three to one. "Welcome to Machines" and "Have a Cigar" are hardly veiled attacks on the music business, their lyrics work neatly with "Shine On" to provide an accurate summary of Barrett's resurgence and fall; "Because I want to be as close as I can to... what sort of things can not be determined, the inevitable sadness about Syd's disappearance." "Raving and Drooling" and "You Gotta Be Crazy" have no place in the new concept, and are set aside until the next album, 1977's Animals .
Syd Barrett's visit to the studio
On June 5, 1975, on the night of the second US Pink Floyd tour of that year, Gilmour married his first wife, Ginger. That day, the band was finishing a mixture of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" when an overweight man with shaved head and eyebrows came in carrying a plastic bag. Waters initially did not recognize him. Wright guessed he was Waters's friend, but realized it was Syd Barrett. Gilmour initially thought he was an EMI staff member. Mason also fails to recognize him and "horrified" when Gilmour identifies himself. In Mason Floyd's pink memo Inside Out, he remembers Barrett's conversation as "disrespectful and completely absurd". Storm Thorgerson reflected on Barrett's presence: "Two or three people were crying, he sat and spoke for a while but he was not really there."
The waters are reported to be a tear by seeing his former bandmate. When fellow visitor Andrew King asks how Barrett gained weight, Barrett says he has a large refrigerator in his kitchen and has eaten a lot of pork. He mentioned that he was ready to help with the recording, but when listening to the mix "Shine On", showed no sign of understanding his relevance to him. Barrett joined Gilmour's wedding reception at the EMI cafeteria, but left without saying goodbye. This is the last time the band members saw Barrett until his death in 2006. Barrett's appearance may have influenced the last version of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond"; the subtle repetition made by Wright from "See Emily Play" sounded towards the end.
I am very sad about Syd. Of course he is important and the band will never start without him because he wrote all the material. It could not have happened without him but on the other hand it was not possible to walk with him. "Shine On" is not really about Syd - he's just a symbol for all the extremes of absence some people should enjoy because it's the only way they can overcome how sad it is, modern life, to attract it entirely. I find that very sad. --Roger Waters
Instrumentation
Like on the Dark Side of the Moon, the band uses synthesizers like EMS VCS 3 (on "Welcome to the Machine"), but smoothed with Mason's acoustic and percussion guitar. The beginning of "Shine On" contains the remains of previous studio recordings but is not complete by bands known as "Household Objects". Wine glasses have been filled with varying amounts of fluid, and tapes made of wet fingers that surround the edges of each glass. These recordings are tracked to chords, and are used in the opening of "Shine On".
The jazz violinist StÃÆ' Â © phane Grappelli and classical violinist Yehudi Menuhin were performing in another studio in the building, and were invited to record a song for the new album. Menuhin watched Grappelli play the song "Wish You Were Here"; However, the band then decided its contribution was not appropriate and, until 2011, it was believed that the piece had been removed. Apparently the game is included in the album, but it is very low in the final mix that the band considers to be insulting to him. He paid £ 300 for his contribution (equivalent to £ 2,300 by 2018). Dick Parry returned to play the saxophone, in "Shine On You Crazy Diamond". The opening bar of "Wish You Were Here" is recorded from Gilmour's car radio, with someone playing the dial (classical music heard is the end of Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony).
Vocal
Recording sessions have been twice distracted by a US tour (one in April and the other in June 1975), and the last session, which occurred after the band's performance at Knebworth, proved to be very inconvenient for Waters. He struggled to record vocals for "Have a Cigar", requiring multiple times to perform an acceptable version. The problem stems partly from the pressure placed on his voice while recording the main vocals of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond". Gilmour was asked to sing in his place, but refused, and eventually Roy Harper's colleagues and friends were asked to stand up. Harper is recording his own album at another Abbey Road studio, and Gilmour has done some guitar rolls for him. Waters later regretted the decision, believing he should have done the song. The Blackberries recorded backing vocals for "Shine On You Crazy Diamond".
Tour
The band played a lot from Wish You Were Here on July 5, 1975 at the Knebworth music festival. Roy Harper, performing on the same show, when he found out that his stage costume was missing, began to destroy one of Pink Floyd's cars, injuring himself in the process. This delayed the normal setting procedure of the band sound system. As a pair of Spitfire planes of World War II had been ordered to fly over the crowd during their entrance, the band could not postpone their set. The result was that the power supply problem pushed Wright's keyboard completely out of tune, damaging the band's performance. At one point he left the stage, but the band was able to continue with a less sensitive keyboard, piano and simpler light show. After a short break, they went back to do Dark Side of the Moon , but the critics were unhappy about being denied access backstage that was miserable to the show.
Packaging
Wish You Were Here sold in one of the more complicated packages to accompany the Pink Floyd album. Storm Thorgerson had accompanied the band on their 1974 tour, and had thought seriously about the meaning of the lyrics, finally deciding that the songs were, in general, related to "unfulfilled presence", rather than Barrett's disease. The theme of this absence is reflected in ideas generated by the long hours spent brainstorming with the band. Thorgerson has noted that Roxy Music Village Life is sold with a green, translucent glass sleeve censoring the cover image - and he copied the idea, hiding the artwork for Wish You Were Here > in black packets (hence making album art "none"). The concept behind "Welcome to the Machine" and "Have a Cigar" suggests the use of a handshake (frequent empty gestures), and George Hardie designs a sticker containing the mechanical two-album album involved in the handshake to be placed on the opaque arm ( the mechanical handshake logo will also appear on the label of this vinyl album in black and blue backgrounds). The album cover image was photographed by Aubrey 'Po' Powell, Storm's partner in the Pink Floyd design studio, Hipgnosis and was inspired by the idea that people tended to hide their true feelings, for fear of "burning", and thus two entrepreneurs with trembling hands, burning. "Burned" is also a common expression in the music industry, often used by artists who refuse royalty payments. Two stuntmen are used (Ronnie Rondell and Danny Rogers), one wearing a flame-retardant suit that is covered by a business suit. His head is covered by a hood, under a wig. The photo was taken at Warner Bros studios in Los Angeles. Initially the wind was blowing in the wrong direction, and the fire was forced into Rondell's face, burning his mustache. Two stuntmen change position, and the image is then reversed.
The back cover of this album depicts "Floyd's" faceless seller, in Thorgerson's words, "selling his soul" in the desert (shot in the Yuma Desert in California again by Aubrey 'Po' Powell). The absence of wrists and ankles signifies his presence as an "empty suit". The inner sleeves show a veil that hides a naked woman in a wind-shrouded Norfolk family, and a flawless diver on Mono Lake - titled Monosee (German translation of Lake Mono) on a liner note - in California (once again emphasizing the theme of absence). The decision to wrap the cover in black plastic was unpopular with the record company's US band, Columbia Records, who insisted that it would be changed (they were denied). EMI is less concerned; the band were reportedly very happy with the final product, and when presented with a pre-production mockup, they received it with spontaneous applause.
Critical reception
The album was released on September 12, 1975 in England, and the following day in the US. In the UK, with 250,000 advance sales, it's straight to number one, and demand is such that EMI tells retailers that only 50 percent of their orders will be met. With a 900,000 advance order (the biggest for the Columbia release), it reached number one on the US Billboard chart in the second week. Wish You Were Here is the best-selling Pink Floyd album ever.
Upon release, the album received mixed reviews. Ben Edmunds writes in Rolling Stone :
Shine on You Crazy Diamond was originally trustworthy as it was meant to confront the subject of Syd Barrett, a long and possibly long guided light from the original Floyd. But the potential of the idea is not realized; they gave readings about facts about the damn thing they might sing about Roger Waters's brother-in-law who got a parking ticket. The power of this insolent attitude, among other things, is the reevaluation of their relationship with all the space cadet's orchestras that they unconsciously become fathers. The only thing the bands have done for them, in their careless way, is their sincere desire for their "art". And passion is everything that Pink Floyd does not have.
Melody Maker Finder writes: "From whichever person approaches Wish You Were Here , it still sounds unconvincing in its sincerest sincerity and displays a lack of imagination critical in all departments. "However, Robert Christgau writes in The Village Voice :" The music is not only simple and interesting, with synthesizers being used mostly for textures and guitar breaks for commenting, but actually achieving some dignity The symphony (and cross-references) on the Dark Side of the Moon are so simulated. "He later wrote:" My favorite Pink Floyd album is always Wish You Were Here , and you know why "It has a soul, that's why - it's Roger Waters lament to Syd, not my idea of ​​a tragic hero but as long as he's Roger, it does not matter."
According to Acclaimed Music, Wish You Were Here is ranked 185th in the list of critics of all time. In 2012, was voted 211 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of "500 Greatest of All Time Album". In 2015, it was voted the fourth largest progressive rock album by Rolling Stone . In 1998 Q readers voted Wish You Were Here the 34th greatest album of all time. In 2000, the same magazine placed her in number 43 on the list of 100 Greatest Album UK ever. In 2007, one of Germany's largest public radio station, WDR 2, asked his listeners to choose the best 200 albums of all time. Wish You Were Here was chosen as the number one. In 2004 Wish You Were Here ranked 36th on Pitchfork Media's list of the top 100 albums of the 1970s. IGN is ranked Wish You Were Here as the 8th largest classical rock album. and Ultimate Classic Rock puts the second best Wish You Were Here in the "Worst to Best Pink Floyd Albums" list,
Despite the problems during production, the album remains Wright's favorite: "This is an album I can listen to for fun, and not many Floyd albums I can." Gilmour shared this view: "I have to say that this is my favorite album, Wish You Were Here album." The end result of all that, whatever it is, must have left me an album I can live with greatly happy I like it very much. "
Commercial performance
Pink Floyd and their manager Steve O'Rourke are dissatisfied with EMI's US labeling efforts, Capitol Records, and Wish You Were Here is Pink Floyd's first album with Columbia Records, an affiliate of CBS. The band stays with EMI's Harvest Records in Europe. As a result of the switching of the label, the band acquired ownership of their recordings, so, from Wish You Were Here further, each of their albums has copyrighted either for "Pink Floyd Music Limited" or (Upon Waters departure) " Pink Floyd (1987) Ltd. " not the appropriate record label.
The album was certified Silver and Gold (60,000 and 100,000 respectively) in the UK on August 1, 1975, and Gold in the US on September 17, 1975. It was certified six times platinum on May 16, 1997, and in 2004 has sold an estimated 13 million copies worldwide. "Have a Cigar" was chosen by Columbia as their first single, with "Welcome to the Machine" on the B-side in the US.
Resend and remastering
Wish You Were Here has been remastered and re-released in several formats. In the UK and US the album was re-published in quadraphonic format using SQ in 1976, and in 1980, a special audiophile print Hi-Fi Today was released in the UK. In the US it was released on CD in 1983, and in Britain 1985, and again as a remastered CD with new artworks in 1994. In the US, Columbia CBS Mastersound label released a semi-knowledgeable audiophile LP in 1981, and in 1994 Sony Mastersound released a 24 karat gold-plated CD, remastered using Super Bit Mapping, with original artwork from LP both in long boxes and jewelry boxes, the latter with cardboard gloves. The album was included as part of the Shine On set box, and five years later Columbia Records released an updated remastered CD, 17 seconds longer than EMI remastered from 1994, giving it 44:28. The label is a recreation of the original machine's handshake logo, with a black and blue background. The album was then re-released in 2000 for the 25th anniversary, on Capitol Records label in the US. The album was re-released and remixed in 2011 in several editions as part of Why Pink Floyd...? republish campaign. The Immersion Box Set includes a new stereo digital remaster (2011) by James Guthrie on CD, the unreleased 5.1 Surround Mix (2009) by James Guthrie on DVD and Blu-ray, a Quad Mix (which has been released only on vinyl LP and 8-track tape) on DVD, as well as the original stereo mix (1975) on DVD and Blu-ray. The campaign also features a 2011 stereo remaster on 180g heavyweight vinyl as well as a 2011 stereo remaster and 5.1 surround sound mix (2009) as a Super Audio hybrid CD (SACD). In 2016, vinyl 180g was re-released on Pink Floyd Records label itself this time which was remade by James Guthrie, Joel Plante and Bernie Grundman.
Track list
All the lyrics are written by Roger Waters.
Personnel
Graphics and certification
References
Information notes
Quotes
Bibliografi
Further reading
External links
- Pink Floyd Official Website
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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