My initiation to Pink Floyd was in 1971, the days when music could only be purchased on 12 inch ‘records,’  which are now called vinyl. I hear that ‘vinyl’ has made a bit of a comeback: go figure. In 1971 I was barely into my teenage years, trying to be cool, and managed to scrape together enough change to purchase a record. I walked down to the music store (I did a lot more walking in those days: it probably took me forty minutes to walk there). There was an album, Meddle (by …the progressive rock band Pink Floyd), displayed in a rack by the entrance. The cover looked cool (apparently it’s a representation of an ear underwater, gathering ‘ripples’ of sound), so I bought it, took it home, and listened to it in my bedroom (my parents couldn’t stand my musical taste, so I’d found a way to beg and borrow old stereo equipment; for example, a friend of my Dad’s gave me a set of woofers, tweeters and associated equipment, and I built speaker enclosures out of particle board: I wish I still had the speakers; they sounded fantastic). Man, I loved that album! Especially the song Echoes, a twenty-three minute opus that took up the entire side two of the record. I’d never heard anything like it. I backtracked through their catalogue and found many more songs that I enjoyed, but Meddle was the album that seemed the most cohesive and lyrical (although I could have done without the song Seamus, but nothing is perfect…).

My friends didn’t enjoy Meddle nearly as much as I did, but when The Dark Side of the Moon was released in 1973, almost everybody agreed that Pink Floyd was pretty darn cool. And I kept buying their albums, but stopped after The Wall.

The Wall was released in 1979 and many point to this album as Pink Floyd’s crowning achievement. It was a fine album, with some glimmers of genius (e.g.: Comfortably Numb), but it has always felt a little too over-produced to me, and I would rank The Dark Side of the Moon as the nadir of the band’s achievements; it was created at just the right time, and spoke to the soul of the youth of that moment. Still, it is another album — Wish You Were Here (1975) — that I think contains the best music that Pink Floyd ever created (and at least two band members — Richard Wright and David Gilmore — have named it as their favorite Floyd album). I dearly wanted to go to the Wish You Were Here concert  when it came to Vancouver, but I couldn’t afford the $10.75 ticket, which seemed a small fortune in those days.

Much of the content of Wish you Were Here was inspired by Syd Barrett, who’d had a mental breakdown and left the band in the late 60s. The album is also an outlet for the band’s criticism of the music business, particularly the songs Welcome to the Machine and Have a Cigar (my least favourite track on the album, especially after I heard a disco version on the radio late one night; many years ago, but the memory haunts me).

For me, the Floyd piece that has aged the best is Shine On You Crazy Diamond, a nine part composition that is split in half to bookend the other songs on Wish You Were Here (Parts I-V start the album, and Parts VI – IX end the album). Shine On was surely inspired by Syd Barrett, who even showed up one day in the recording studio; ironically, the band members didn’t recognize him at first; he had gained a lot of weight, and shaved his head and eyebrows. When he was finally recognized, his old friends had difficulty communicating with him and it was the last time any of them saw Syd.

Roger Keith ‘Syd‘ Barrett passed from this world in 2006

Shine On you Crazy Diamond is a hauntingly beautiful piece; some of the opening sounds were produced by rubbing wet fingers on the rims of wine glasses filled with differing levels of liquid; somehow this, together with the circumstances of the recording session with Sid Barrett, helps to create a meditative mood that pervades my being and remains long after the song is over.

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Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun.

Shine on you crazy diamond.

Now there’s a look in your eyes, like black holes in the sky.

Shine on you crazy diamond.

You were caught in the crossfire of childhood and stardom

Blown on the steel breeze.

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Come on you target for faraway laughter,

come on you stranger, you legend, you martyr, and shine!

You reached for the secret too soon, you cried for the moon

Shine on you crazy diamond.

Threatened by shadows at night, and exposed in the light.

Shine on you crazy diamond.

Well you wore out your welcome with random precision,

rode on the steel breeze.

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Come on you raver, you seer of visions,

come on you painter, you piper, you prisoner, and shine!

 

Lyrics by Roger Waters