Wish You Were Here (Album)

Wish You Were Here
Pink Floyd studio album
Publication (s)	15th September 1975
Label (s)	originally: Harvest Records (Europe) Columbia Records (USA) New editions: EMI (Europe) Capitol Records (USA)
Format (s)	LP, MC, CD, SACD
Genre (s)	Progressive rock , art rock
Title (number)	5
running time	44 min 28 sec
occupation	David Gilmour - guitar, vocals Nick Mason - drums, percussion Roger Waters - bass, vocals Richard Wright - keyboard, vocals
production	Pink Floyd
Studio (s)	Abbey Road Studios
chronology The Dark Side of the Moon (1973) Wish You Were Here Animals (1977)

Warner Bros. film studios where the cover photo was taken.

Mono Lake in California. The motif was used on the inner plate cover and the enclosed postcard.

Wish You Were Here is a music album by the English rock band Pink Floyd . It was recorded at Abbey Road Studios from January to July 1975 and was released on September 15, 1975.

content

The original album Wish You Were Here consists of five tracks that merge seamlessly into one another. The first and last, entitled Shine On You Crazy Diamond is a tribute to the former band member Syd Barrett is. Barrett was in charge until 1968 as a composer , singer and guitar player involved, but not acceptable due to a mental disorder for the band. In 1968 he was replaced by David Gilmour .

The best known was the title Wish You Were Here , which is dedicated to the genius and madness of Syd Barrett.

The titles Welcome to the Machine and Have a Cigar are about the record industry and its fixation on money and lack of interest in musicians. In Have a Cigar a fictional monologue of a record boss to a representative of the band is played. It contains the sentence: “The band is just fantastic, that is really what I think. Oh by the way, which one's Pink? "(" The band is just fantastic, I really mean it. Oh, by the way: Which of you is actually Pink? "). Have a Cigar was sung by guest musician Roy Harper .

Wish You Were Here followed the album The Dark Side of the Moon (1973) and is the predecessor of the 1977 album Animals .

Recordings

Alan Parsons , the sound engineer on the previous album The Dark Side of the Moon , had declined the offer to take over the recordings of Wish You Were Here because he was busy with The Alan Parsons Project , Steve Harley and Pilot and was a successful one Future as a sound engineer at Pink Floyd could not imagine.

Therefore Brian Humphries was employed as a sound engineer, as in 1969 with the album More . While recording the background tracks of "Shine On", he accidentally deleted the recording that Waters and Mason had worked on for many hours. The tracks had to be recorded again.

The work took place in Studio 3 of Abbey Road Studios. The group found it very difficult to develop new material for the album at the beginning, especially since the success of The Dark Side of the Moon weighed on all band members. Richard Wright described the recording as an experience “at a difficult time” and Roger Waters called it an “agonizing” process. Drummer Nick Mason remembered the multi-track recording process as "tedious," and David Gilmour was more interested in improving the band's existing material.

After a few weeks in the studio, Waters slowly developed a concept for the album. Three new pieces that had already been played on the tour in 1974 were like a starting point for the new album. Waters was of the opinion that Shine On You Crazy Diamond should be split into two parts with other songs in between. Gilmour disagreed, but was overruled by the other band members. The other two tracks, Welcome to the Machine and Have a Cigar, were an attack on the record industry.

instrumentation

Abbey Road Studios , where the recordings were made.

Richard Wright's keyboards are particularly prominent in the sound . In the song Shine On You Crazy Diamond , a Minimoog synthesizer is used for the trumpet-like sound and an ARP Solina String Ensemble for string sounds. In the last two parts, Richard Wright dominates the sound. In part 8 the song theme by Wright and Gilmour is continued in a jazz rock variation; Wright plays a Hohner D6 Clavinet and a Fender Rhodes , and also the Mini Moog with a different sound setting. A VCS 3 from EMS is used on Welcome to the Machine .

The beginning of Shine On contains excerpts from the unfinished recording Household Objects ; wine glasses were used as a glass harp .

The opening sequence of the song Wish You Were Here has also become famous . The song begins on a radio with the opening chords of Wish You Were Here softly playing . A fictional radio listener plays on his acoustic guitar to these opening chords . Radio and guitar slowly merge and the whole band joins. In order to reinforce the impression of a radio in a living room, various noises of the radio listener (rustling, breathing, clearing throat) can be heard initially. Little attention is paid to the barely audible violin solo by Stéphane Grappelli at the end of the piece. Grappelli also took it in for a fee of £ 300 when he was recording with Yehudi Menuhin in another studio in the same building . In the remastered version released in 2011, the solo has been significantly reinforced.

Album versions

Wish You Were Here is, like Atom Heart Mother and The Dark Side of the Moon , one of the few albums that even in a quadraphonic - LP version, roughly equivalent to 4.0- surround sound , exist. It also appeared in a so-called "Quadrophonic 8-Track" cassette version, which, like the Quadrophonic LP, was a little widespread in the early 1970s, but mainly in the United States . However, the 4-track and 8-track cassettes must not be confused with the compact cassette , a completely different format.

For years no Quadrophonie version was officially released on CD or DVD , although some pieces live very much from the spatial effects of the original Quadrophonie recording. Even before the official release, an unofficial DVD-Audio was circulating on the Internet, which is equipped with an MLP-96/24 , a DTS and a Dolby Digital track. The author claims to have used a Mint Quadrofonie vinyl record for this version. However, the sound quality of this recording cannot be compared with the high-quality SACD from The Dark Side of the Moon . This version has also already been discovered on two unofficial CDs - each intended for the two front and two rear speaker channels. In addition, the quadraphonic version of Wish You Were Here contains an additional song, an instrumental piece of around 50 seconds; the lengths and the mixes are very different from the original. Since November 2011, both the original quadrophonic version from 1975 and a 5.1 mix from 2009 have been officially available as part of the “Immersion Box” . The 5.1 mix was also released individually as an SACD .

Track list

1. Shine On You Crazy Diamond , Pt. 1-5 (Gilmour / Waters / Wright), 13:31 min
   1. Pt. 1 (Wright / Waters / Gilmour), 2:09 min
   2. Pt. 2 (Gilmour / Waters / Wright), 1:45 min
   3. Pt. 3 (Waters / Gilmour / Wright), 2:33 min
   4. Pt. 4 (Gilmour / Wright / Waters), 2:15 min
   5. Pt. 5 (Waters / Gilmour / Wright), 4:49 min
2. Welcome to the Machine (Waters), 7:31 min
3. Have a Cigar (Waters), 5:08 min
4. Wish You Were Here (Gilmour / Waters), 5:34 min
5. Shine on You Crazy Diamond, Pt. 6–9 , (Gilmour / Waters / Wright), 12:23 min
   1. Pt. 6 (Wright / Waters / Gilmour), 4:55 min
   2. Pt. 7 (Waters / Gilmour / Wright), 1:29 min
   3. Pt. 8 (Gilmour / Wright / Waters), 2:39 min
   4. Pt. 9 (Wright), 3:20 min

reception

When the album was released in 1975, it received mixed reviews. Influential journals Rolling Stone and Melody Maker accused Pink Floyd of a lack of passion and ingenuity. Regardless of this, the album was a huge commercial success, and over the years it also rose significantly in the appreciation of music critics, so that it is now considered a classic in rock history.

Wish You Were Here was in the WDR 2 -action WDR 200 selected as the best album of all time in September 2007 over a million listeners a winner. In June 2015, the renowned trade journal Rolling Stone selected the album as number 4 of the 50 best progressive rock albums of all time .

Cover

The album was originally packaged in black sales foil, which is printed in the middle with the motif that also adorns the middle section of the LP itself: A black and a white robotic hand intertwined in front of painted quarter-circle motifs that represent the four elements (fire, water, Symbolize air, earth). Only after removing this film was the actual cover of the album visible, which is embossed by photos of Storm Thorgerson on a white background. On the front there are two stuntmen (Ronnie Rondell and Danny Rogers), one of which has a suit on fire. The motif of the element fire is repeated in that the white border around the photo is singed on the top right. On the back is a man in a suit, bowler hat , suitcase and a transparent LP of the album in a desert , whose hands and feet are not connected to his body. The motif of the earth element shown is repeated in that sand trickles out of the white border around the photo below.

On the inner record shell, which was made of cardboard like the cover, a photo of Mono Lake with bizarre tufa towers and a swimmer plunging into the lake without splashing water is shown. Here the water element shown is repeated in that water runs out of the lower edge of the photo. The last picture finally shows a meadow and trees planted as dead straight, moving in the wind, with a red silk scarf in the foreground. The air element discussed here is repeated in that the photo itself is printed in a wavy form, i.e. whether it is being moved by the wind. All pictures seem surreal and were mostly created without image processing .

Enclosed was a postcard, which also depicts the dipping swimmer. It is on the back of the album distributed in Germany with the album title in English, Spanish and German, supplemented by a photograph of Hipgnosis at Lake Mono California in 1975 .

Trivia

While recording Wish You Were Here , Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Richard Wright and Nick Mason received an unexpected visit from their former bandmate, Syd Barrett . According to statements from the band members, they did not recognize Barrett right away, because he had changed a lot and was very bloated.

“Roger was there at the table, I came in and saw this guy sitting behind him - a huge, bald, fat guy. I thought, "He looks a little strange." I sat down at the table with Roger and we worked for about ten minutes. The guy kept getting up, brushing his teeth, and sitting down again - doing strange things but remaining calm. I asked Roger, "Who is that?" Roger replied, "I don't know." I said, "I assumed he was a friend of yours," and he, "No, I don't know who he is." Anyway, it took me a long time, but suddenly I realized it was Syd, maybe after 45 minutes. He came in while we were singing "Shine On You Crazy Diamond," which was basically about Syd. He just picked the day we recorded a song about him for an incredible reason. We hadn't seen him in two years, I think. That's what's so incredible ... And disturbing when you see a man you don't recognize. And that he chooses the day when we play the lyrics about him. Very strange."

- Richard Wright

Roger Waters later stated that after the recordings had been completed, consideration had been given to breaking up the band. Instead, it was decided to make a musical change of direction with the follow-up album Animals .

use

Music from the album Wish You Were Here was used in films in the series Wunder der Erde with Ernst Waldemar Bauer .

DVD

In June 2012 an official DVD documentation was released under the title Pink Floyd - The Story of Wish You Were Here , which describes the genesis of the album in 85 minutes with various interviews and original recordings.

Web links

• Reviews of Wish You Were Here on the baby blue pages
• Video: Pink Floyd - The Story of "Wish You Were Here"

Individual evidence

1. ^ A song concerning Barrett's plight. In: ingsoc.com (English).
2. ↑ Ryan Meehan: Foh Exclusive: 5 Questions with Alan Parsons. In: firstorderhistorians.com. August 6, 2012, accessed on September 10, 2015 (English, interview with Alan Parsons): "I never would have got rich or got any real recognition with the Floyd as their engineer." 
3. ↑ Nick Mason, Philip Dodd: Inside Out - A Personal History of Pink Floyd , pp. 202 f, Phoenix 2005, ISBN 0-7538-1906-6 .
4. ↑ Nick Mason, Philip Dodd: Inside Out - A Personal History of Pink Floyd , pp. 208 f, Phoenix 2005, ISBN 0-7538-1906-6
5. ↑ Schaffner, Nicholas (1991), Saucerful of Secrets (1 ed.), Pp. 184-185, London: Sidgwick & Jackson, ISBN 0-283-06127-8 .
6. ↑ Nick Mason, Philip Dodd: Inside Out - A Personal History of Pink Floyd , pp. 202 f, Phoenix 2005, ISBN 0-7538-1906-6 .
7. ^ Mason, Nick (2005), Philip Dodd, ed., Inside Out - A Personal History of Pink Floyd, 205.
8. ^ Violin solo by Grappelli ( Memento from January 24, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
9. ↑ Richard Gehr: 50 Greatest Prog Rock Albums of All Time - Pink Floyd, 'Wish You Were Here' (1975). In: Rolling Stone . Wenner Media, June 17, 2015, accessed on September 10, 2015 . 
10. ↑ Mark Blake: Floyd Extra! How Wish You Were Here Went Up In Flames. Interview with Storm Thorgerson. MOJO magazine, August 23, 2011, archived from the original on October 13, 2011 ; accessed on September 23, 2014 (English). 
11. ↑ Biography - Syd Barrett. In: Laut.de .
12. ↑ webcitation.org: Gilmour, Waters, Mason, Wright: Shades of Pink - The Source, 1984