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Pink Floyd: The Story of Wish You Were Here': The Band's Most Haunting and Affecting Album
By Jedd Beaudoin 2 July 2012
It began with four notes and went on to sell more than 13 million albums worldwide.

Having come off the enormously successful ride of Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd decamped to a London studio to begin work on a follow-up release. But there were problems, including a scarcity of satisfactory material. The track “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”, which featured the four notes that came from David Gilmour’s guitar and which then fired Roger Waters’ imagination, was one of three that the group began to play live. It would become the centerpiece of the album, occupying––in various shapes––the whole of the record.

It was also about the group’s fallen former leader and creative well, Syd Barrett, the man that the other Floyds had grown fond of until, by the end of the ‘60s, he’d become an acid casualty and unable––or unwilling––to deliver the kind of material that had brought the band much of its early acclaim. Like Gilmour’s four simple notes, Barrett had been the spark that caught wind and became the Pink Floyd fire.

Certainly Wish You Were Here has its place in the hearts of Floyd fans––it doesn’t take the listener on a trip to the aural cinema the way that Dark Side does, and it’s not the ambitious concept record that The Wall would become, and its not the should-have-failed success that Animals is, either. It’s a strange record, short on actual songs and filled with tales of absence and longing for a return to something, anything that feels like home. Even David Gilmour’s guitar lines are more about what one doesn’t hear than what one does, and the echo-driven sound is filled with a longing and melancholy that haunts the listener.