My #17 All-Time Favorite Album: Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd

My #17 all-time favorite album, WISH YOU WERE HERE by the British progressive rock band Pink Floyd, came out in 1975, two years after their breakthrough, critically acclaimed work Dark Side of the Moon.  Although I recognize the quality of that album, I never really got into its music that much...other than those amazing few seconds of transition between the tracks On the Run and Time.  This next album, though, is in my mind a masterpiece...although it took me a few years to put it all together.  Wish You Were Here is not a singles-generating album, but four of its five songs have received much album rock radio play over the years.  It opens with Shine On You Crazy Diamond, a 13-minute jewel that most assuredly gave DJs across the country time to get in a couple of smokes and hit the bathroom.  When I initially would hear it, I would usually grow impatient and switch the station.  Then on one evening in the late 1990s I heard it played from the start without any distractions on my end...it was beautiful!  There's a great amount of musical/instrumental depth on this track as well as the others on the album.  Diamond has two parts (although the album misleadingly lists nine): the opening track on Side One and the closer on Side Two.  The latter is good listening, but to me doesn't measure up to the rest of the album.  Here are my takes on the album's five songs:

1--Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Side 1)...a lengthy, slow instrumental lead-in followed by a sad ode giving tribute to a lost friend, presumably former bandmate Syd Barrett who left them suffering from mental illness...

2--Welcome to the Machine...nothing sounds as foreboding and haunting as the opening to this song of Big Brother dystopia...but songwriter Roger Waters apparently meant for it to be about the record industry...

3--Have a Cigar...nobody in Pink Floyd wanted to sing this one, so they brought in a friend, Roy Harper, to perform the honors.  It's all about how the band is mishandled and misunderstood in, you guessed it, that pesky record industry.  The line "Oh, by the way, which one's Pink?" stands as one of the greatest in rock lyrics...

4--Wish You Were Here...another tribute to Syd Barrett, David Gilmour's virtuoso guitar playing stands out here, making it one of the greatest ever "air guitar" pieces.  My favorite track of the album...

5--Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Side 2)...slightly shorter than Side 1's version, lots of interesting musical stuff here...maybe if I listened to it as much as I have the other tracks, I'd like it more...

For the core, most popular years of their existence, Pink Floyd was composed of four musicians: bassist/singer Roger Waters, guitarist/singer David Gilmour, keyboardist Richard Wright and drummer Nick Mason.  Wright passed away in 2006 and Waters is no longer with them.  Waters wrote all the lyrics to Wish You Were Here. By the way, this album's cover is one of the deepest I've ever seen: check it out...

Next week: Album #16...