264. Pink Floyd, "Wish You Were Here"

 


[PROGRAMMING NOTE: Funeral to Finish will be on hiatus until probably Tuesday of next week due to me being out of town and not listening to albums probably.  Have a great weekend and see you next week.]

Beloved by stoners and teenage malcontents everywhere, this album has always lived in the shadow of its predecessor, The Dark Side of the Moon.  But it's all relative; this album sold 20 million copies.

Pink Floyd is so successful on their own terms that they can sell 20 million copies of an album that's mostly unplayable on radio and opens with a 13 and a half minute song that doesn't have any vocals until almost nine minutes in.  That song, "Shine On You Crazy Diamond," is widely interpreted as being about one of the band's original members, Syd Barrett, whose sharp mental decline led to his removal from Pink Floyd.  Barrett wandered into Abbey Road studios in London during the recording of this album and the event was apparently so distressing and disturbing that all the other members of the band were totally freaked out.  The lyrics paint a depressing picture of mental illness:

Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun
Shine on you crazy diamond
Now there's a look in your eyes, like black holes in the sky
Shine on you crazy diamond
You were caught on the crossfire of childhood and stardom
Blown on the steel breeze
Come on you target for faraway laughter
Come on you stranger, you legend, you martyr, and shine

Waters later tried to explain that the song was about Syd as a symbol for the dislocation of modern life but it's pretty clearly about Syd the profoundly mentally ill person.  Anyway, there are actually two parts to "Shine," the 13 minutes at the beginning and another 12 1/2 at the end.  Like I said, not exactly radio-friendly.  There are only three more songs sandwiched in between, all of them dealing in the usual Pink Floyd topics of the crushing monotony of modern life ("Welcome to the Machine"), aching loneliness and need ("Wish You Were Here") and, uh, the music business, I guess ("Have a Cigar").

Since I was a teenage boy in the 80's you better believe I had a copy of this record.  I have gauzy memories of lying on my floor with this record spinning on my turntable, listening to "Wish You Were Here," absolutely wallowing in that weird depression that all teenagers get, desperately missing... I don't know who.  The love of my life, who had yet to appear on the scene?  Fuck if I know.  But that song has some kind of special key for unlocking emotion in the heart of a teen.

This is also absolutely a marijuana album, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.  It is probably best experienced while moderately to severely stoned, looking at a candle or a lava lamp, listening to the endless synth sounds play off of David Gilmour's clearly blues-influenced guitar parts.  It's probably the only way to fully appreciate the album.

Does this album deserve to be in the Top 500? Yes.

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