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Pink Floyd – Wish You Were Here 50

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What does it sound like?:

It won’t have escaped the attention of any Floyd fan that 2025 marks the 50th anniversary of this seminal album, one of their top three records for me. The album was rereleased as a deluxe Immersion set back in 2011, coming with a handful of outtakes and a live cd of the ‘Wish You Were Here’ part of the band’s performance at the Empire Pool, Wembley in 1974. (the DSOTM section of the same show was included in the reissue of that album, while the encore, Echoes, appeared in the Early Years box, so you could if you were so inclined recreate the entire concert.) This new edition gives us the same selection of outtakes, but adds a couple of demos of Welcome To The Machine, a pair of alternate takes of the title track, and a rough instrumental mix of Shine On. The Wembley show is dropped and replaced by a much bootlegged performance at the LA Sports Arena from April 1975, which has been restored and remastered by who else but Steven Wilson. The full show with encore is presented on the bluray disc, with the set list being as at Wembley but adding Have A Cigar, so Raving and Drooling and Gotta Be Crazy, which were ultimately dropped, reappearing on 1977’s Animals set, are still present and correct along with Shine On. The sound quality has certainly been improved compared to other versions that have been floating around for years, so this makes a great historical artefact of the band’s live sound at the time. The original album now comes in a new Atmos version created by long time Floyd engineer James Guthrie and is accompanied by the 2011 5.1 version and the stereo and quad mixes from 1975.. If ever there was an album made for an Atmos mix it’s this one, and it sounds absolutely stunning, every bit as good as you’d expect, and is worth the price of admission alone. As if that wasn’t enough, there’s also a new stereo mix of the ‘joined up’ Shine On plus the concert films that were used as back projections during the shows. If you opt for the full fat box set then there’s also a nice hardback book, which includes the famous comic strip tour programme from back in the day plus a few other goodies. All in all, a great album just got even better!

What does it all *mean*?

The bluray version is easily the best choice of the various formats as it includes all the audio material from the main box set plus the films, and even better is very reasonably priced.

Goes well with…

Thinking back to what you were doing in September 1975 when this enduring classic first appeared.

Release Date:

12 December

Might suit people who like…

Following the recent sale of the band’s catalogue, I presume there will be more of this type of release for their other albums in the coming years – great news for all us Floyd fans!

10

Comments

  1. ‘Thinking back to what you were doing in September 1975 when this enduring classic first appeared.’

    Living in South Africa and smoking a lot of very strong weed, as I recall. I was not a great admirer of Dave Gilmour’s guitar at that time; I was into fast and furious guitarists and thought Gilmour’s efforts dull and plodding. So one night, after indulging in some extra strong ‘dagga’ from the Durban region, I was amazed to listen to Wish You Were Here and hear fluid and speedy guitar licks. I woke up the next morning determined to change my opinion of the player, rushed back to the record player to relisten to Wish You Were Here – and found it set at 45rpm!

  4. I remember buying it at the Brighton Virgin records as a 14-year old who’s hair was “starting to get good at the back”. Paid for by my paper round’s money. Amazed by the panning of “welcome to the Machine”, and tried to convince my mother “Shine On…” was almost like classical music (therefore good). She said it went on a bit and was dreary. That’s STRAIGHTS for you. Happy days.

  6. Thanks for the review, Bargey. Good stuff!
    For all Afterworders who haven’t already seen this, I thought I’d post “Dear Pink Floyd”, UK Poet Laureate Simon Armitage’s heartfelt tribute to Wish You Were Here on the occasion of its fiftieth birthday…

  10. My first CD player was a Pioneer 6-disc affair. You could set it to play random tracks and so I loaded up the half a dozen CD’s I’d bought, one of which was WYWH, and set it to random play. In an amazing twist, the first song the machine played was Welcome To The Machine. What are the chances* etc

    *yes, I know, about 50 to one.

  11. I posted this under a Metro review of the album, but as no one took any notice, I thought I’d share it here for a more learned audience …

    Pink Floyd were a teenage obsession of mine and I’ve gone on to listen to just about every bootleg, radio session and French TV recording out there. If we take it as read that Syd’s Floyd was an entirely different beast, then for me Floyd 2.0 peaked with Dark Side of the Moon.

    From 1969 to 1972, More, The Man the Journey, Atom Heart Mother, Meddle, Obscured By Clouds and Live at Pompeii are all flawed but fascinating pieces of work, and their themes and ideas all played into the song cycle the band had always strived towards: The Dark Side of the Moon.

    Unfortunately, in my opinion, its follow-up Wish You Were Here is where the sheen subsumed the songwriting. Shine On You Crazy Diamond is a good case in point: the spacey intro and the See Emily Play coda are lovely, but the thing rumbles on proficiently but unexceptionally for 20 minutes in between. If it was on Dark Side – or if the band had a producer or A&R man to stand up to them – it would have been broken up into three or four discreet parts, rather than being left to plod like that; look at the variety and progression on Dark Side in comparison; it keeps returning to the musical theme explored in Breathe but with loads of great songs in between. Back to WYWH, the title track is essentially a pretty, acoustic Gilmour effort (and it shows how short of ideas they were that they considered adding Yehudi Menuhin and Stephane Grapelli to it *because they were there*), while Welcome to the Machine and Have a Cigar are unwelcome “20-something millionaires railing against the music biz” dirges (though at least Roy Harper gives the latter his all). And that’s it. If it wasn’t for Syd Barrett turning up during the recording, I don’t think the album would have been half as noteworthy. For me, it’s the kind of shiny but empty stadium rock that Coldplay became famous for (and believe me I really love Pink Floyd, 1969-73). I will concede that Gilmour and Wright’s playing is excellent throughout and Waters came up with some memorable, heartfelt lyrics.

    It could be argued that the band got moderately interesting again with Animals and The Wall, though by now the others were largely in service to Waters’s concepts (and in the case of Animals a fairly flimsy one at that). If only they’d asserted themselves and come up with some ideas: there are flashes on The Wall of what Waters and Gilmour could achieve in collaboration, but Waters had sacked Wright by then and was starting to sideline Mason, too. Did mega-money make the other three members rest on their laurels after Dark Side, or had Pink Floyd 2.0 simply achieved everything they set out to do and finally found themselves low on ideas? We’ll never know, but I debate the revisionism that states that Wish You Were Here is their best work. As Nick Mason said in the Guardian this week it’s a “musicians’ album” – and that’s never a selling point in my book.

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