Barrett seemed to have lost his spark for good.įive months later, Barrett’s old bandmates could still feel his presence at Abbey Road. Peter Jenner, Pink Floyd’s original manager, even convinced Barrett to book some studio time at Abbey Road in August 1974, but the sessions petered out after three fruitless days. His crippling addiction to LSD had forced him out of the band in 1968, and a pair of solo albums had done little to resurrect his career in the intervening years.
Meanwhile, former Pink Floyd frontman Syd Barrett was suffering a mental breakdown. Wish You Were Here was going to be tough. Recording a follow-up to Dark Side wasn’t going to be easy, especially with that album still clinging to the upper reaches of the Billboard charts, its success hanging over the band like a cloud. Pink Floyd cemented their new audience by touring heavily for three years, but the time had come to do something new. Their previous release, The Dark Side Of The Moon, had become one of the decade’s biggest hits, transforming the cult musicians into mainstream art rockers. That says a lot for this film I'd say.When Pink Floyd entered Abbey Road Studios during the first week of 1975 to begin work on their ninth album, Wish You Werethe guys were exhausted. Gone will be the casualness an oft listened to record often becomes. I think it will be hard to now listen to the record ever again quite the same.
This was an important album to the band and the fact it achieved such success in the market only strengthens this connection. The film actually makes the viewer often as uneasy as the music evoking a real emotional response. It provoked a strong coda to exactly what the band had been laboring over in jaw-dropping fashion. Almost by some unexplainable coincidence Syd Barrett appears in the studio on the final mix day of Wish You Were Here. But this review is about this film and what makes it special is how it brings the viewer into the band's work on this amazing recording. No let down here and in no way riding on coattails. In other words, a brilliant follow-up album that stood on it's own unique merits. This one came from deep inside the members of the band and it had a personal resonance that was very different than DSOTM. Nick Mason's percussion was never better underneath it all. Richard Wright used his long tenor of experience to underpin the dark atmosphere perfectly with Waters.
David Gilmour rose up to work together with Roger crafting their best. This was a unifying thing members of Pink Floyd could all feel albeit in their own ways guided largely by Roger's hand and writing. The sad loss of Sad Barrett had a lasting effect and it was time to explore that angle against the band's growing disillusionment of the entire music business machinery. It was Roger Waters who gave the band a path. There was a fatigue as well as lack of material.
#WISH YOU WERE HERE PINK FLOYD HOW TO#
The record company, of course, wanted another bombastic sales juggernaut, but the band was searching for where to go and how to get there. After the blockbuster Dark Side of the Moon record there was an intersection of tremendous pressures and changes. That success always had the element of loss hovering. More than 15-years on the band had achieved a rare pinnacle of success. This is a melancholy trip inward to a very personal phase of Pink Floyd.