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Pink
Floyd:
David Gilmour (vocals, guitar)
Richard Wright (vocals, keyboards, VCS3 syntheszier)
Roger Waters (vocals, bass)
Nick Mason (drums)
Additional
personnel:
Roy Harper (vocals)
Dick Parry (saxophone)
Recorded at
Abbey Road Studios, London, England from January to July 1975.
All songs written
by members of Pink Floyd.This is part of Columbia/Legacy's
Master Sound series.Master Sound releases are 24-karat gold CDs
remastered from first-generation masters.
This process
utilizes 20-bit technology and Sony's "Super Bit Mapping"
system.
The breakthrough
success of DARK SIDE OF THE MOON made WISH YOU WERE HERE a
crucial follow-up in strictly commercial terms. Further pressure
came from it being Pink Floyd's first recording for a new label,
Columbia.
Yet the demands on
the band only provided Roger Waters with more fodder for his
lyrics, which glanced at the band's roots as well as their new
responsibilities.
The mechanized
throb of a VCS3 synthesizer, fed through a repeat-echo unit,
signals the opening bars of "Welcome To The Machine," a diatribe
against an industry more concerned with money than creative
music-making.
"Have A Cigar"
further establishes Waters' contempt by bringing in singer Roy
Harper to play the role of a "faceless suit," who
none-too-innocently asks, "Which one's Pink?" The remaining
songs indirectly look back to the first casualty of Pink Floyd's
growing fame, the group's founder, Syd Barrett.The
20-minute-plus "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" has its roots in
earlier pieces like "Atom Heart Mother Suite" and "Echoes.
" But rather than
just another Floydian soundscape, its lyrics make it a paean to
Barrett's genius and a requiem for his subsequent breakdown.
The first five of
the song's nine movements open the album with sax player Dick
Parry wailing as effectively as he did on DARK SIDE.
The final four
sections, which close the album, form a reprise that starts with
the sound of wind and David Gilmour's guitar screaming and
crying.
The band then
settles into a laid-back jam that ends with Richard Wright's
billowing synth delicately fading out.The title track deals also
with Barrett, as well as the tension the idealist Waters was
feeling in battling the greed that surrounded the band's success.
The themes of
disillusionment planted throughout WISH YOU WERE HERE would
eventually sprout full-blown on THE WALL.
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