Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd Album) - Recording

Recording

Alan Parsons, EMI staff engineer for Pink Floyd's previous studio album, The Dark Side of the Moon, had declined the band's offer to continue working with them (Parsons became successful in his own right with The Alan Parsons Project). The group had worked with engineer Brian Humphries on More, recorded at Pye Studios, and again in 1974 when he replaced an inexperienced concert engineer hired at short notice. He was, therefore, the natural choice to work on the band's new material, although as a stranger to EMI's Abbey Road set-up he encountered some early difficulties. On one occasion, Humphries inadvertently spoiled the backing tracks for "Shine On", a piece that Waters and Mason had spent many hours perfecting, with echo. The entire piece had to be re-recorded.

Working from Studio Three, the group found it difficult at first to devise any new material, especially as the success of The Dark Side of the Moon had left all four physically and emotionally drained. Richard Wright has since described these early sessions as "falling within a difficult period", and Roger Waters found them "torturous". Drummer Nick Mason found the process of multi-track recording drawn out and tedious, and David Gilmour was more interested in improving the band's existing material. He was also becoming increasingly frustrated with Mason, whose failing marriage had brought on a general malaise and sense of apathy, both of which interfered with his drumming. Mason has since admitted that Nick Kent's unrestrained diatribe in NME may have had some influence however in keeping the band together.

It was a very difficult period I have to say. All your childhood dreams had been sort of realized and we had the biggest selling records in the world and all the things you got into it for. The girls and the money and the fame and all that stuff it was all ... everything had sort of come our way and you had to reassess what you were in it for thereafter, and it was a pretty confusing and sort of empty time for a while ... —David Gilmour,

However, after several weeks Waters began to visualise another concept. The three new compositions from 1974's tour were at least a starting point for a new album, and "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" seemed a reasonable choice as a centrepiece for the new work. Mostly an instrumental twenty-minute-plus piece similar to "Echoes", the opening four-note guitar phrase reminded Waters of the lingering ghost of former band-member Syd Barrett. Gilmour had composed the phrase entirely by accident, but was encouraged by Waters' positive response. Waters wanted to split "Shine On You Crazy Diamond", and sandwich two new songs between its two halves. Gilmour disagreed, but was outvoted three to one. "Welcome to the Machine" and "Have a Cigar" were barely-veiled attacks on the music business, their lyrics working neatly with "Shine On" to provide an apt summary of the rise and fall of Barrett; "Because I wanted to get as close as possible to what I felt ... that sort of indefinable, inevitable melancholy about the disappearance of Syd." "Raving and Drooling" and "You Gotta Be Crazy" had no place in the new concept, and were set aside.