Radioinfo is taking you back to the songs that turn 50 this year.
On June 5 1975, while Pink Floyd were putting the final touches on the song Shine On You Crazy Diamond, a gentleman entered the recording studio, with a shaved head and eyebrows and carrying a plastic bag. No one recognised him with singer and guitarist Dave Gilmour assuming he worked for EMI. The band’s keyboardist Richard Wright realised it was Syd Barrett. Syd, for those of you who don’t know Pink Floyd, was a founding member of the band who had left / been ousted in 1968 because mental health issues and drug use had made him unreliable and an increasing liability.
Shine On You Crazy Diamond was written about Syd and was played to him. He didn’t realise, and conversation was stilted as he appeared not fully present. Many tears were shed afterwards, particularly by bass guitarist and vocalist Roger Waters. He’d met Syd when he was 18, and Syd just 16. The influence of the man left behind is everywhere in Pink Floyd’s previous album, Dark Side of the Moon, and the one they were creating, Wish You Were Here. It was Richard Wright, Dave Gilmour and my favourite of their albums.
Richard said:
“It’s an album I can listen to for pleasure, and there aren’t many Floyd albums that I can.”
None of the tracks were released as singles in Australia but the album, like its predecessor went No 1 on the charts. It was going to be a challenge to exceed Dark Side of the Moon however. It is the fourth best selling album in history and still appears on the ARIA vinyl album charts, most recently on its 50th anniversary in 2023.
Wish You Were Here, if you happen to be hearing the full album cut of the song for the first time (above), sounds, at the start, like someone is changing the radio dial for you and you’ve accidentally stumbled on someone’s CB radio frequency playing along on guitar. Dave Gilmour has called it ‘a really simple country song’ and I get that, although it is so much more.
It was recorded in the Abbey Road studios and is a joint composition in the truest sense of the word by Gilmour and Waters. The who album has themes of disillusionment with the music industry, grief, loss and introspection by lyricist Waters:
“We’re just two lost souls swimming in a fishbowl, year after year. Running over the same old ground, what have we found? The same old fears, wish you were here.”
Syd lived out of the public eye for much of the rest of his life. He did release a couple of solo albums but mostly enjoyed painting and gardening in the home he shared with his mother. Dave Gilmour made sure royalty payments always reached him, and he died in 2006 comfortably well off. Richard Wright died in 2008. The other three remain busy and active. Drummer Nick Mason is a car enthusiast. Roger Waters recorded The Dark Side of the Moon Redux, a new version with spoken word segments and no guitar solos in October 2023. Dave Gilmour released his fifth solo album, Luck and Strange last year.
Wish You Were Here still feels fresh, true, relevant, a glorious karaoke moment and a space to remember someone that you wish was here too.
Jen Seyderhelm is a writer, editor and music trivia buff for Radioinfo.