Pink Floyd Look Back On ‘Wish You Were Here’

Pink Floyd are expanding their 1975 album Wish You Were Here for a 50th anniversary deluxe edition due Dec. 12 from Sony Music. The collection is led by six previously unreleased alternate versions and 16 live recordings sourced from a bootleg of an April 26, 1975, concert at Los Angeles Sports Arena.

The first song to emerge from the set is “The Machine Song (Demo #2, Revisited),” which eventually morphed into the Wish You Were Here track “Welcome to the Machine.” Group member Roger Waters’ separate demo of the song is also included, as are an instrumental mix of the title song and the first complete “Shine on You Crazy Diamond” with all nine of its parts, remixed in stereo by James Guthrie.

Blu-ray content includes three concert screen films from the aforementioned 1975 tour and a short film by longtime Hipgnosis art director Storm Thorgerson, while the deluxe box boasts a clear vinyl LP edition of Live at Wembley 1974 and a replica Japanese seven-inch vinyl single of “Have a Cigar” b/w “Welcome to the Machine.”

Wish You Were Here was the follow-up to 1973’s legendary Dark Side of the Moon, which turned Pink Floyd into reluctant rock superstars. Group members funneled their conflicting emotions about success into the new music, including “Shine on You Crazy Diamond,” which was partially written in tribute to long-departed vocalist Syd Barrett. The mentally fragile Barrett showed up unexpectedly during the recording sessions after rarely engaging with his old bandmates following his 1968 exit, and his appearance had changed so much that they initially didn’t recognize him.

“‘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,” Waters later said of the encounter. “I found that terribly sad.”

Wish You Were Here is further revered for its cover art, which depicts two men shaking hands while one of them is on fire. Recalls Hipgnosis’ Aubrey “Po” Powell, “I remember turning around to Storm and saying, how are we going to set a man on fire? Because there was no digital way of doing it in those days. He said, Po, you’re just going to have to do it for real. That was it.”

“One has to remember that Pink Floyd were the only band on EMI and Capitol Records who had the rights to the creative — in terms of album cover — besides the Beatles,” he continues. “That’s why we were allowed to do what we wanted. It was brilliant. Just the same way that Pink Floyd were a very inventive band at the time, so were Hipgnosis. We were determined to keep that abstract, enigmatic image alive and hence, we were able to do that for Pink Floyd.”