Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd Song)
Wish You Were Here is a rock song written by Roger Waters and David Gilmour . It is the title track of the 1975 album of the same name by the Pink Floyd group and also featured on the compilations A Collection of Great Dance Songs and Echoes .
The song has been played irregularly since its appearance by Pink Floyd, and later more and more regularly at concerts. The last public performance by Pink Floyd was in 2005 at the Live 8 concert in London . Gilmour plays the piece as does Waters on his tours.
Content and music
The song was created while recording the album Wish You Were Here . The text is associative and open to various interpretations. It can be interpreted in the context of the entire album: Accordingly, the song, like the other pieces, deals with the departure and psychological decline of the former Pink Floyd singer and guitarist Syd Barrett and mourns him: “I wish , you would be here ”(“ Wish you were here ”). Waters, who wrote the text, said it was also about alienating yourself and wishing to be who you once were again.
Initial sequence
The radio play-like opening sequence of Wish You Were Here , which follows on from the outro of Have A Cigar , is characteristic: someone turns the frequency wheel of an analog radio , which in addition to fragments of the voices of a man and a woman, also includes a short excerpt from Tchaikovsky's 4th Symphony , namely the 3rd and 4th bars from the 4th movement in orchestral line-up.
Finally, a noisy station is tuned in to an acoustic guitar . After a few bars you can hear the radio listener clearing his throat and playing a melody to the chords on the radio on a steel-string acoustic guitar. After this intro this guitar takes over the chords and the radio can no longer be heard, at the same time Gilmour begins to sing. At the end of this first verse, the entire band begins with a prelude and plays in normal studio sound quality until the end of the song.
Sound engineering
For the intro of the song, the first guitar track was initially recorded by Gilmour on a 12-string acoustic guitar in studio quality. Then a cable was laid from the tape machine to the parking lot at Abbey Road Studios and connected to the car radio of Gilmour's car. A microphone was installed in the car and the intro was recorded again with the sound quality of the radio.
The second guitar, a 6-string steel-string acoustic guitar from Martin Guitars , was played in the studio later without the usual sound effects such as reverb and compressor . Background noises such as the sliding of the fingers on the fingerboard, the purring of the strings on the frets and the strike of the pick can be heard well. The steps, the rustling of clothes, breathing and clearing of throat by David Gilmour were recorded via a room microphone, so that the impression arises that a radio listener goes to a guitar and spontaneously improvises to a song.
Studio and live versions
The song Wish You Were Here was regularly performed live by the band and its members. Various approaches were followed in order to implement the “radio sequence”. While Pink Floyd on the live album Pulse had to import the intro from the band chose Roger Waters on his In the Flesh tour another way: The guitarist Andy Fairweather-Low the intro played on a six-string electric guitar that through effect units a received a radio-like sound.
Since David Gilmour played most of the songs at his in-concert events with acoustic instruments, he dispensed with the “radio frequency” and performed solo on a 12-string acoustic guitar. In addition, a Dobro tuned in open G tuning is used for slide play. When the Pink Floyd musicians performed together for Live 8 , they returned to record from the tape.
Cover versions (selection)
The song became one of the band's most popular songs and was frequently interpreted by other artists:
- The song was covered by Wyclef Jean for his album The Ecleftic: 2 Sides II a Book (2000). Before the song, a skit can be heard in which a policeman asks Jean to play some “rock”. During the song, Jean emphasizes that the song is not just any cover song, but that the original played an important role for him in his youth. In its cover version, too, there is a tonal break in the opening sequence, similar to the original.
- The German ska band The Busters covered the song on their album Sexy Money (1993).
- The Gregorian group has released a version with Gregorian choirs.
- In 2001 the song was recorded by Limp Bizkit .
- In 2005 the track was covered by the band Sparklehorse together with Thom Yorke ( Radiohead ).
- 2007 appeared on the album Jah Victory by Alpha Blondy , a reggae version , titled I Wish You Were Here .
- Also in 2007 a version of the Norwegian jazz vocalist Kirsti Huke appeared on the album Deloo .
- Ed Sheeran sang the song as part of the Olympic graduation ceremony on August 12, 2012 in London , accompanied by Nick Mason , Mike Rutherford and Richard Jones ( The Feeling ).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Orchestra performance of the 4th movement of the Tchaikovsky Symphony for comparison with the Pink Floyd quote
- ↑ whosampled.com: Pink Floyd Wish You Were Here
- ^ Wieland Harms: The Unplugged Guitar Book. 20 of the most beautiful songs for acoustic guitar. Gerig Music, ISBN 3-87252-249-3 , pp. 34-39 ( Wish You Were Here ).
- ↑ Britain's Biggest Artists Rock The London 2012 Closing Ceremony Including Liam Gallagher's Beady Eye, The Who, Queen, Muse, Pink Floyd And More ( Memento from January 10, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
Web links
- Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd - Entry on Songfacts
- Lyrics with German translation by Brother Franziskus
- Wish You Were Here Song Lexicon, October 8, 2013