Progarchives, the progressive rock ultimate discography
Pink Floyd - The Story of Wish You Were Here CD (album) cover

THE STORY OF WISH YOU WERE HERE

Pink Floyd

 

Psychedelic/Space Rock

3.97 | 97 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

Guillermo
Prog Reviewer
3 stars A good documentary video (an official one, it seems) done with interviews with David Gilmour, Nick Mason, Richard Wright, Roger Waters, recording engineer Brian Humphries, album cover designer Storm Thorgerson, cartoonist Gerald Scarfe, musician Roy Harper, and other people related with the history of the band and particularly with the making of the "Wish You Were Here" album. It relates the story that I also have read in two books written about the band (one by Miles, and the other by William Ruhlmann) about how hard was for the band to record a new album after the great success of their "The Dark Side of the Moon" album from 1973. They really had hard times trying to top that album or at least to produce an album with the same quality as "The Dark Side...". And while I still think that "The Dark Side..." is a better album, their "Wish You Were Here" album is still a good album . By the time the band was planning to record a new album in 1974 they had some problems to reach an agreement about how to do it. So, with the help of a few musical ideas and with Waters mostly acting like the "main director" the band developed ideas for a new album, which became the "Wish You Were Here" album from 1975. In this video, they said that there were two main themes for the album: one theme was former member of the band Syd Barrett, and the other theme was their growing dislike of the music business and record companies. So, they recorded a tribute song for Barrett, called "Shine On You Crazy Diamond", dividing this musical piece in several different sections which were divided in two main parts (one which started the album and another which closed the album), and putting some other songs between these two main sections of "Shine On...". The songs related to their growing dislike of the music business ("Welcome to the Machine" and "Have a Cigar") were put in the record between those two manin sections of "Shine On...", also including another song, the title song, which was in part also dedicated to Syd but as they said, "it also relates to many other things". They also relate the story about how Syd appeared in the studio (in the video there is a photo about this moment) while they were mixing "Shine On..." and how they could not at first recognize him but when finally they did it it was a shock to them to see Syd when they were working on a song about him.

Well...you have to watch the video to learn about other related stories about this album and about some technical information about how it was recorded. I have to say that it is a good video documentary, but some of the information has been written before in some books about the band and also told in some interviews with some of the members of the band.

Guillermo | 3/5 |

MEMBERS LOGIN ZONE

As a registered member (register here if not), you can post rating/reviews (& edit later), comments reviews and submit new albums.

You are not logged, please complete authentication before continuing (use forum credentials).

Forum user
Forum password

Share this PINK FLOYD review

Social review comments () BETA







Review related links

Copyright Prog Archives, All rights reserved. | Legal Notice | Privacy Policy | Advertise | RSS + syndications

Other sites in the MAC network: JazzMusicArchives.com — jazz music reviews and archives | MetalMusicArchives.com — metal music reviews and archives

Donate monthly and keep PA fast-loading and ad-free forever.