How do you follow a mega-hit album? Make another mega-hit album. That's what Pink Floyd did with Wish You Were Here, two years following Dark Side of the Moon. I remember buying the CD version of WYWH about 1985 - my very first CD purchase. In those days we marveled at the absence of surface noise and were told that CDs provided "perfect sound forever." At Sound Advice in Miami, a salesman made a point of stomping on a demo CD to impress customers that it did not affect play. Such was the hype of digital compact discs.
Of course, a lot of the hype was nonsense. Scratched CDs did skip. "Perfect sound" failed to survive simple comparisons with vinyl, revealing "digititis," a grainy and ear-fatiguing characteristic of early digital discs. But that did not deter their promoters from demeaning "scratchy, dusty old records" in order to sell the new digital medium.
Forty years later, vinyl rules again. CDs are largely missing in action, supplanted by vinyl reissues and online streaming and downloads. Today, my copy of WYWH is a rip from a deluxe Analogue Productions SACD edition, which I later sold to a guy in Spain. It is a much better version than the one I first bought. I also sold my German vinyl pressing because I like my rock music in portable format to hear at the gym or in the car.
I've so far dodged the usual analysis of the music, mostly because everybody should already be clued into this wonderful record. It's constructed around the nine-part "Shine on You Crazy Diamond," an elegy for Syd Barrett. "Welcome to the Machine" and "Have a Cigar" serve as an interlude to the main theme, forming a second related theme critical of the music industry: ("Which one is Pink?" asked the obtuse producer on "Have a Cigar").
Obviously, Pink Floyd had matured into the top band in progressive rock and beyond. With almost guaranteed sales, they could craft whatever they wanted to do musically into beautifully produced albums and live performances.
Probably everyone has a story about their discovery of Pink Floyd. Few bands transcend normal criteria of excellence; the Floyd are one of them.
Steve:
Wish You Were Here was such a strong follow-up to Dark Side of the Moon that fans are evenly divided on which is the better album. It's a vastly different album too, making its popularity all the more impressive. It was during the making of this album that the band began to seriously fragment, leading one member to quip in an interview (paraphrasing) "it should have been called Wish We Were Here." Clearly, it was difficult work, but the band, still in that sweet spot of commercial and critical success enjoyed by few others outside Led Zeppelin and the Beatles, pulled through.
Interestingly, a good portion of what would become the Animals (1977) album was already written and performed live by this time, and the less conceptually minded David Gilmour argued to put these songs on one side ("You've Got to Be Crazy" aka "Dogs", and "Raving and Drooling", aka "Sheep") while putting "Shine on You Crazy Diamond" on the other side. But Roger Waters prevailed, and instead spread out the "Shine On" suite across two sides, with three newer pieces forming its creamy center. I agree with Waters' decision - the sequencing lends weight both to the suite and to the pieces in the middle. Not to mention that the most famous of these tunes, the title track, has an excellent segue from its windswept outro to the ominous bass theme of the second half of the suite.
I remember hearing this album on Dan's stereo not long after we'd discovered Dark Side of the Moon, but I was not aware it was his first CD as far back as 1983. I don't recall CDs entering our household until 1985, when Dan got his first CD player and (what I recall as) his first CD, Avalon by Roxy Music. Soon after, I got my first CD, Candy-O by The Cars. I was already a big Pink Floyd fan by that time, but I think the first Pink Floyd album that I actually owned was Meddle, which I got because Dan didn't already have it.
[Dan's comment: Steve is probably correct about the dates; my brain is older than his and I have more I have to remember. I've changed my part of the post from 1983 to 1985. I'm sure no one reading this post cares anyway.]
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