Music
Fifty years after Pink Floyd created rock’s most profound meditation on absence and exploitation, ‘Wish You Were Here’ returns in a range of editions that proves some masterpieces don’t just endure—they evolve. James Guthrie’s new stereo mix, particularly his decision to present ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’ for the first time ever, as one continuous 25-minute epic rather than splitting it across album sides, feels less like revisionism and more like finally hearing the band’s original vision realized.
The album emerged from creative exhaustion. Following ‘Dark Side of the Moon’s unprecedented success, Pink Floyd found themselves physically and emotionally drained, struggling to devise new material while touring relentlessly. That depletion became the album’s subject—a savage critique of the music industry’s machinery that chews up artists and spits them out. The burning figure on Hipgnosis’s iconic cover [a stuntman actually set on fire, years before digital trickery could fake such images] wasn’t just striking imagery but brutal metaphor. “Getting burned” was industry shorthand for artists denied their royalties, and Waters channeled that rage into some of his most satirical writing.
Yet ‘Wish You Were Here’s emotional core remains to honour Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd’s lost genius and childhood friend. ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’ functions as both eulogy and guilt-laden love letter, with lyrics like “Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun / you reached for the secret too soon, you cried for the moon” capturing Barrett’s brief, brilliant flame-out with devastating economy. The song’s creation yielded rock folklore’s most poignant episode: Barrett arriving unannounced at Abbey Road during final mixing in 1975, so physically transformed that none of his former bandmates initially recognized him. That ghost in the machine haunts every note.
Storm Thorgerson’s packaging concept—originally shrouded in opaque black cellophane, rendering the artwork “absent”—understood the album as exploring “unfulfilled presence” beyond just Barrett’s loss. Whether the deluxe box set includes that black polythene bag or not, the new, visual presentation stuns, featuring unseen photographs, a hardcover book, Simon Armitage’s specially commissioned poem Dear Pink Floyd, comic book tour programme, and Knebworth poster alongside exclusive clear vinyl pressings.
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The real revelation comes from Steven Wilson’s meticulous restoration of Mike Millard’s legendary April 26, 1975 Los Angeles Sports Arena bootleg. The renowned taper captured Pink Floyd at a fascinating transitional moment—performing the material months before the album’s release, yet notably omitting the title track and ‘Welcome to the Machine’, which wouldn’t debut live until 1977’s In the Flesh tour. The audio, previously circulated in murky, generational copies, now sounds extraordinary, revealing the band’s improvisational power and Gilmour’s guitar work in crystalline detail. Thankfully, they haven’t tried to drown out the devoted crowd in any slick over-production of it.
Nine studio rarities provide insight into the album’s difficult gestation, documenting a band whose interpersonal cracks were beginning to show. These tensions would eventually destroy Pink Floyd, but here they generated creative friction that sharpened the album’s themes of disconnection and cynicism.
Guthrie’s Dolby Atmos mix offers the most immersive experience yet, Wright’s keyboards and Gilmour’s guitar occupying distinct spatial positions while Waters’ bass anchors everything. The format suits material already conceived cinematically, each arrangement vast and deliberate.
‘Wish You Were Here’ became Pink Floyd’s first transatlantic chart-topper and fastest-selling album, yet its commercial triumph felt almost perverse given its subject matter—a record about the music industry’s soul-destroying machinery that immediately fed that same machine. That irony hasn’t diminished; if anything, fifty years of streaming economics and playlist culture make the album’s critique feel prescient.
This anniversary edition doesn’t just celebrate a classic—it recontextualizes one, proving that even familiar masterpieces can reveal new dimensions when treated with appropriate care and ambition. The flames still burn.
9/10
Words: Lee Campbell
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