Cities Made of Song, 1975 - Shine On You Crazy Diamond by Pink Floyd
"Remember when you were young? You shone like the sun. / Shine on, you crazy diamond."
What an incredibly special album "Wish You Were Here" is. And especially special to me. It has the unique distinction of being the first album I ever bought with my own money, albeit digitally, in the age of the iPod. That somewhat lacks the romance of going out and purchasing a real CD or vinyl, but in my defense, the suburb where I live doesn't have a single record store, and never has. It's a desert out here.
How I got to the point of buying this album is sort of a roundabout tale. These were the early days (over a decade ago now) when I was just barely, blearily becoming cognizant of music. I heard an interesting space rock track on the menu screen of a mod for the video game Civilization IV, and happened to see someone mention that it sounded like Shine On You Crazy Diamond. Curious, I investigated and heard Pink Floyd for the first time. Considering that I've written 60,000 words on Doctor Who since then, I think we have to assume that this caused some sort of irreparable damage...
I'm far from the only person who is a fan of this album, now somewhat of a classic, but critics at the time had a considerably more mixed view of "Wish You Were Here". Both Floyd fans and industry mags turned out in some numbers to declaim it as inferior to their last opus, "Dark Side of the Moon". Referring to Floyd's skills of instrumentation, Rolling Stone had this to say about their newest record:
"Their mastery of their tools peaks at competence. The illusion of complexity that caused their drooling legions to make wild claims of high-art accomplishment was actually nothing more than the skillful manipulation of elements so simple — the basic three chords everyone else uses — that any collection of bar hacks could grind out a note-for-note reproduction without difficulty."
And further, on the album's central theme:
"[The record] is initially credible because it purports to confront the subject of Syd Barrett, the long and probably forever lost guiding light of the original Floyd. But the potential of the idea goes unrealized; they give such a matter-of-fact reading of the goddamn thing that they might as well be singing about Roger Waters’s brother-in-law getting a parking ticket. [...] Passion is everything of which Pink Floyd is devoid."
You know, just in case you or anyone else needed further proof that Rolling Stone has never, in its fifty-year history, known what it's talking about.
It's true that Floyd had an uphill battle on their hands with making "Wish You Were Here". "Dark Side" was their first proper commercial success, and after the fairly rapturous response which that record received, the band knew that literally anything they did next would be cast in its shadow. "It was a very difficult period, I have to say," David Gilmour recalled in a 2010 interview. "All our childhood dreams had been sort of realised and we had the biggest selling records in the world, and all the things you got into it for. The girls, and the money, and the fame and all that stuff it was all... Everything had sort of come our way and you had to reassess what you were in it for thereafter, and it was a pretty confusing, and sort of empty time for a while."
Despite these troubles, there was a central idea behind the project that would carry Floyd through all the listlessness, the uncertainty, and the industry scorn, that of their friend and former bandmate Syd Barrett. Barrett's Floyd was a very different creature, more psychedelic and certainly less commercial-friendly. The band put out two mindbending but fantastic albums under Barrett's aegis before they were forced to ask him out of the band in 1968 because of his declining mental health. Floyd ended up making it big, but without Syd. This feeling of absence motivated this beautiful album, which serves both as a paean for a lost friend, and as a scorching criticism of the soulless music industry that Pink Floyd now found itself a part of.
This latter theme comes into view on the album's second track, Welcome to the Machine, a phenomenally cold and complex track which has an industrial sound a few years before industrial music even existed. One imagines being trapped and crushed in the cogs, just as Pink Floyd surely must have, suddenly expected to succeed in a world where their unique sense of artistry didn't matter as much as the bucks they would make. It transitions into the sounds of a jolly crowd and Have a Cigar, portraying the back-slapping world of fake smiles and record executives. The disdain that Roger Waters felt for the type of tweed-wearing, smoking old men the band now had to please is plain in the song's most memorable line: "The band is just fantastic, that is really what I think. Oh by the way, which one's Pink?"
For all the success and renown that they had earned, it's obvious that Pink Floyd wasn't happy to be there without Syd. His struggles with schizophrenia meant that staying with the group would have ultimately been destructive for him, but it wasn't exactly a happily ever after for Barrett when he left, either. During recording sessions for "Wish You Were Here" at the famous Abbey Road studios, the members of the band were shocked by a surprise visit from Barrett, whom none of them recognized at first, so totally had his appearance changed. Reportedly, when he realized, Roger Waters was so distressed that he cried. Barrett stuck around for a while, but without engaging with the music his old bandmates were recording, only to ultimately leave without saying goodbye later in the day during David Gilmour's wedding reception. As incredible as this story is, it's apparently true, and Barrett really did just happen to turn up while his ex-bandmates were recording their tribute to him.
It's fitting that the bulk of the album is devoted to this, really. The title track is painfully honest in its intent, and a beautiful song to boot. For my money, however, the sidereal, nine-part epic, Shine On You Crazy Diamond, is the more moving homage. Originally intended to be cut together into one song spanning an entire side of the LP, like Echoes four years earlier, this was instead split to bookend the album on either side. It works better that way, honestly, and the reprise of the song for parts VI-IX after Wish You Were Here is such a marvelous transition. If I had to pick what makes this song one of my all-time favorites, though, I would say that it has to be the balls of parts I-V to spend almost nine minutes building up the instrumental before we hear the first lyric. And what an instrumental it is! Gilmour's soaring guitar and Richard Wright's keyboards take pride of place in this surreal masterpiece, and the addition of saxophone adds just that little bit more flavor. Those lyrics, too, are so evocative and direct, really reading like a nostalgic cry for a time with a person they knew, a time which no longer exists.
So really, the sneers of the rock and pop music rags of the time matter not a jot. The compositional talent and performing talents of this group were unparalleled then, and are justifiably revered today. "Wish You Were Here" is a beautifully honest transitional album for this band, and remains one of my favorites.
"Well you wore out your welcome with random precision / Rode on the steel breeze. / Come on you raver, you seer of visions! / Come on you painter, you piper, you prisoner, and shine."
I enjoyed this musical interlude very much. At any rate, it's back to the world of television for The Brain of Morbius next.
(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 21 April 2021.)
