Wish You Were Here is the ninth studio album by the English rock band Pink Floyd, released on 12 September 1975 through Harvest Records in the United Kingdom and a day later in the United States through Columbia Records, as the band's first album for the label. Based on material composed while performing in Europe, Wish You Were Here was recorded over numerous sessions throughout 1975 at EMI Studios in London.

The lyrics express longing, alienation, and sardonic criticism of the music industry. The bulk of the album is taken up by "Shine On You Crazy Diamond", a nine-part tribute to Syd Barrett, a Pink Floyd co-founder who had left seven years earlier due to his deteriorating mental health; Barrett coincidentally visited the studio during recording. As with their previous release, The Dark Side of the Moon (1973), Pink Floyd employed studio effects and synthesisers. Guest singers included Roy Harper, who sang lead on "Have a Cigar", and Venetta Fields and Carlena Williams, who sang backing vocals on "Shine On You Crazy Diamond". To promote the album, Pink Floyd released the double A-side single "Have a Cigar" / "Welcome to the Machine".

Wish You Were Here topped charts in several countries, including the UK Albums Chart and US Billboard 200. It was certified gold in the UK and US in its year of release, and by 2004, it had sold an estimated 13 million copies worldwide. Upon release, it received mixed reviews from critics, who found its music "uninspiring" and "inferior" to the group's previous work. However, it has later been acclaimed as one of the greatest albums of the 1970s and of all time, with Rolling Stone ranking it number 264 in their 2020 revision of their "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list. Keyboardist Richard Wright, drummer Nick Mason, and guitarist David Gilmour have cited it as their favourite Pink Floyd album, while bassist Roger Waters called it their "most complete" album.

Background In 1974, Pink Floyd sketched out three new songs, "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 England, the band's first tour since 1973's The Dark Side of the Moon. As Pink Floyd had never employed a publicist and kept themselves distant from the press, their relationship with the media began to sour. Nick Mason said later that a critical NME review by Nick Kent, who Mason felt preferred the band's earlier music, may have influenced the band to return to the studio during the first week of 1975.

Concept Wish You Were Here is the second Pink Floyd album with a conceptual theme, mostly at Roger Waters's direction, reflecting his feeling that the previous communal structure of the band had disappeared in favour of more professional musicianship. "I had some criticisms of Dark Side of the Moon", noted David Gilmour, saying that "[o]ne or two of the vehicles carrying the ideas were not as strong as the ideas that they carried. I thought we should try and work harder on marrying the idea and the vehicle that carried it, so that they both had an equal magic [...] It's something I was personally pushing when we made Wish You Were Here."Fielder, Hugh: "Sinking the pink"; Classic Rock number 48, Christmas 2002, p. 59 The album begins with a long instrumental introduction shifting from ambient music to the main refrain of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond", the lyrics of which were penned as a tribute to Syd Barrett, whose mental breakdown had forced him to leave the group seven years earlier.

Wish You Were Here also features lyrical criticism of the rock music industry and the then-recent mainstream perception of the band. "Shine On" crosses seamlessly into "Welcome to the Machine", a song that begins with an opening door (described by Waters as a symbol of musical discovery and progress betrayed by a music industry more interested in greed and success) and ends with a party, the latter epitomising "the lack of contact and real feelings between people". Similarly, "Have a Cigar" scorns record industry "fat-cats" with the lyrics repeating a stream of clichés heard by rising newcomers in the industry, and including the question "by the way, which one's Pink?"; this was derived from an actual interaction with an agent who asked this of the band. The lyrics of the next song, "Wish You Were Here", relate both to Barrett's absence and to the dichotomy of Waters' character, with greed and ambition battling with compassion and idealism as the popularity of the band was growing.

Recording

Alan Parsons, the EMI Studios (now Abbey Road Studios) staff engineer for Pink Floyd's previous studio album, The Dark Side of the Moon, declined to continue working with them due to the recent formation of his own group and working on their first album. Pink Floyd had worked with the engineer Brian Humphries on More, recorded at Pye Studios, and again in 1974 when he replaced an inexperienced concert engineer. Humphries, being a stranger to EMI's Abbey Road set-up, encountered some early difficulties. On one occasion, Humphries inadvertently spoiled the backing tracks for "Shine On", a piece that Waters and drummer Nick Mason had spent many hours perfecting, with echo. The entire piece had to be re-recorded.

The sessions for Wish You Were Here at EMI's Studio Three lasted from January until July 1975, recording on four days each week from 2:30 pm until very late in the evening. The group found it difficult at first to devise any new material, especially as the success of The Dark Side of the Moon had left all four physically and emotionally drained. The keyboardist Richard Wright later described these sessions as "falling within a difficult period", and Waters recalled them as "torturous". Mason found the process of multi-track recording to be "tedious", while Gilmour was more interested in improving the band's existing material. Gilmour was also becoming increasingly frustrated with Mason, whose failing marriage had brought on a general malaise and sense of apathy, both of which interfered with his drumming.

Gilmour said the band had realised their dreams of becoming rich and famous musicians, and so had to "reassess what [they] were in it for thereafter, and it was a pretty confusing and sort of empty time for a while". Humphries recalled days of inactivity: "I don't think they knew what they wanted to do. We had a dartboard and an air rifle and we'd play these word games, sit around, get drunk, go home and return the next day. That's all we were doing until suddenly everything started falling into place."

After several weeks, Waters began to visualise another concept. The three new compositions from the 1974 tours were at least a starting point for a new album, and "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" seemed a reasonable choice as a centrepiece for the new work. Mostly an instrumental 20-minute-plus piece similar to "Echoes", the opening four-note guitar phrase reminded Waters of Barrett. Gilmour had composed the phrase while improvising, but was encouraged by Waters's positive response to make it the focus of the song. A subtle refrain performed by Wright, lifted from "See Emily Play", is also audible towards the end. Waters wanted to split "Shine On You Crazy Diamond", and sandwich two new songs between its two halves. Gilmour disagreed, but was outvoted three to one. "Welcome to the Machine" and "Have a Cigar" were attacks on the music business, their lyrics working with "Shine On" to provide a summary of the rise and fall of Barrett; Waters, on the reason of Barrett's experiences as a subject of these, said: "Because I wanted to get as close as possible to what I felt ... that sort of indefinable, inevitable melancholy about the disappearance of Syd." "Raving and Drooling" and "You've Got To Be Crazy" had no place in the new concept, and were set aside until the following album, 1977's Animals.

Syd Barrett's visit On 5 June 1975, on the eve of the second North American leg of their Wish You Were Here Tour, Gilmour married his first wife, Ginger. That day, the band were completing the mix of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" when an overweight man with a shaven head and eyebrows entered, carrying a plastic bag. Waters did not recognise him, and Gilmour presumed he was an EMI staff member. Wright presumed he was a friend of Waters, but realised it was Barrett. Mason also failed to recognise him, and was "horrified" when Gilmour identified him. In Mason's memoir Inside Out, he recalled Barrett's conversation as "desultory and not entirely sensible". Storm Thorgerson would later reflect on Barrett's presence: "Two or three people cried. He sat round and talked for a bit but he wasn't really there." According to Gilmour, Barrett "came two or three days and then he didn't come any more."Musician, 1982

Waters was reportedly reduced to tears by the sight of his former bandmate. Fellow visitor Andrew King asked Barrett how he had gained weight; he said that he had been overeating while living in isolation. He showed an unexpected enthusiasm for participating in the recording of the album, but while listening to the mix of "Shine On", showed no signs of understanding its relevance to him. Barrett also joined Gilmour's wedding reception in the EMI canteen, but left unnoticed. Apart from Waters seeing Barrett in Harrods a couple of years later, it has been agreed by biographers and journalists to be the last time any member of the band saw him alive. This series of events is regarded to have tonally influenced the final version of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond". Waters said later that Shine On' is not really about Syd – he's just a symbol for all the extremes of absence some people have to indulge in because it's the only way they can cope with how fucking sad it is, modern life, to withdraw completely. I found that terribly sad."

Instrumentation

As with The Dark Side of the Moon, the band used synthesizers such as the EMS VCS 3 (on "Welcome to the Machine"), but softened with Gilmour's acoustic guitar, and percussion from Mason. The beginning of "Shine On" contains remnants from a previous but incomplete studio recording by the band known as Household Objects. Wine glasses had been filled with varying amounts of fluid, and recordings were made of a wet finger circling the edge of each glass. These recordings were multi-tracked into chords.

The jazz violinist Stéphane Grappelli and the classical violinist Yehudi Menuhin were performing in another studio in the building, and were invited to record a piece. Menuhin watched as Grappelli played on "Wish You Were Here"; however, the band later decided his contribution was unsuitable and Mason has erroneously stated that the piece was wiped. In actuality Grappelli's playing was included, but so low in the final mix that the band presumed it would be insulting to credit him. He was paid £300 (). The saxophonist Dick Parry, who had performed on The Dark Side of the Moon, performed on "Shine On You Crazy Diamond". The opening bars of "Wish You Were Here" were recorded from Gilmour's car radio, with Gilmour turning the dial (the classical music heard is the finale of Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony).

Vocals