This programme contains some strong language.
# How I wish How I wish you were here
# We're just two lost souls Swimming in a fish bowl
# Year after year
# Running over the same old ground
# What have we found?
# The same old fears
# Wish you were here. #
It did stem from those first four notes
that popped out of the guitar one day in King's Cross.
Somehow, those notes evoked a song about Syd
and his disappearance, absence, if you like, in Roger.
It's my homage to Syd
and my heartfelt expression of my sadness and...
But also my admiration for the talent, and my sadness
for the loss of the friend.
# You were caught in the crossfire
# Of childhood and stardom
# Blown on the steel breeze. #
I think the song is brilliant in its sort of evocation of what
Roger obviously felt about Syd, and certainly, it matches mine.
I think what was so important was to not try
and write him out of history.
# Come on, you stranger
# You legend, you martyr
# And shine! #
There are no generalities, really, in that song.
It's not about, "All the crazy diamonds", it's about Syd.
THEY VOCALIZE AND EMIT NOISES
When I first saw the Floyd, I remember...
I mean, the first thing you noticed was the lights,
because nobody was doing that then. At least I hadn't seen it.
But Syd really started to shine.
You know, you couldn't really take your eyes off him,
even in the murk and the purple and green blobs, you know,
the bright-eyed Syd and his singing and his guitar playing
kind of jumped out at you.
# Blinding signs flap Flicker, flicker, flicker
# Blam... Pow! Pow!
# Da, da-da, da, da-da, da-da
# Da-da, da-da
# Ooooh! #
By the time I was working with them in the studio,
it was clear that the real creative shape of the group emanated
from Syd, although,
you know, it certainly wasn't Syd and backing group.
Syd was a very wonderful chap.
Very, very witty. Very, very sharp.
You know, he was out-going, charming, wonderful, friendly.
You name it. I mean, a wonderful man.
He was one of the gang, I guess you'd say.
A good friend. Funny.
Rather annoying, though - he was good looking
and played guitar and could paint,
and always had nice girlfriends.
No-one that you ever really would have imagined
would wind up the way he did wind up.
# Remember when you were young
# You shone like the sun
# Shine on, you crazy diamond. #
# Little by little The night turns around
# Counting the leaves Which tremble at dawn
# Ah, aaah, ah, aaah, ah
# Set the controls For the heart of the sun
# Heart of the sun
# Heart of the sun. #
In this post Dark Side Of The Moon period,
we were all having to assess
what we were in this business for,
why we were doing it, whether we were artists or business people.
Having achieved the sort of success
and money out of it all that...
that could fulfil anyone's wildest teenage dreams,
why we would still want to continue to do it.
Yeah, I remember the disappointment of Top Of The Pops
or having the first hit single or whatever.
It's not as world-shaking
and changing as perhaps you expect it to be.
So maybe, you know, because of the enormous success
of Dark Side, there was still that sense of,
"Well, this hasn't made us feel enormously different or satisfied."
Roger, I think, has sometimes said that he thinks
that we were kind of finished at that point,
and he may have been right.
I think we were at a watershed then,
and we could easily have split up then.
And we didn't, because we were frightened
of the great out there, beyond the umbrella
of this extraordinarily powerful and valuable trade name - Pink Floyd.
It was the first song they played, and it was like, "Whoa,"
it was like singing about Syd Barrett.
The band that was known for their musicality,
they weren't doing their music justice.
Do you recall there was a famous review by Nick Kent?
How could I forget?
I kind of over-reacted, obviously.
I mean, I feel now that I over-reacted,
but at the same time, they partly deserved it.
It was a bad gig.
It was, it was shambolic.
I mean it was...it lacked enthusiasm and it lacked a sort of purpose,
a sense of purpose, and I don't really know why.
From my perspective now, to look back upon how I felt then,
scared as I was of my own shadow, you know,
never mind my relationship with audiences,
and there were real concerns about not making any contact
with the audience during much of that tour of England
that we did in 1974.
And we didn't. We were... we were very disconnected.
If we weren't giving 100%, we couldn't quite sort out why not.
You know, there was an element of frustration
in having someone tell us that.
I think we probably knew it and couldn't quite sort of deal with it.
That review would have been one of the things which would have -
once we'd got over our initial ire - we would have taken on board
and realised that there was more than a germ of truth in it.
I was asked to record the Floyd at what was then called
the Empire Pool, which is now the Wembley Arena,
and when I saw the Floyd before they went on, they said,
"Oh, do us a favour, will you go and sit with our sound engineer?"
And I said, "OK."
How long is it since you've been here, Brian?
30 years.
And anyhow,
I went back in the interval and they said
"Well, what do you think?" And I said, "It's rubbish."
Because I'd been used to working with smaller groups
on smaller mixing desks, and theirs was massive.
So anyway, cut a long story short,
next thing I knew, I was doing the next night at the Empire Pool.
Oh, God, this does take me back.
And then I ended up doing the rest of the British tour.
Somebody better just run through this.
And then, as I say, then came Wish You Were Here.
There were a lot of days where we didn't do anything,
while they were thinking about ideas.
The reality was that we were struggling with making the follow-up
to Dark Side, and we rushed back in to the studio to do that.
You know, we put ourselves under a sort of ridiculous pressure,
in a way, trying to make a record from nothing.
It was disengagement.
It was not being willing to apply yourself sufficiently.
A lot of moments where any one of us might have been much more
interested in thinking about what they were doing that weekend.
It became a case of two would be in the studio and two were running
late or, as it was always known, they were out playing squash.
And then we had the dartboard with the air rifle.
The concentrated activity was rather diluted,
and I'm sure for a...
..a very pushing, driving sort of person
like Roger, it was more frustrating than it was for anyone else,
although considerably frustrating for all of us, I suspect.
When I'm in the studio, I'm there to do something,
otherwise I'd rather be somewhere else, frankly.
So I'm there to work.
Well, you know, there's the legendary argument
that I must have had with the rest of them about...
..my thought at the time that it would be better to use
the other two tracks as well that we had been working on.
I had to fight David for a bit, as he acknowledges completely,
you know.
We had a completely different idea about it,
and that was a...that was a fight that I won.
Dave saw a record that had those two songs and Shine On,
and it felt cobbled together to me.
It didn't feel like real.
And so at some point in that process, yeah,
I came up with the idea of, "No, this has to be thematic,"
and that's the way I expressed it.
This will make this a more coherent work,
and because it's more coherent,
it will be better than if we just throw all the songs
we've been working on together and go boom, there you are, that's it.
There's one song that's about Syd, but the rest of it isn't.
It's a much more universal expression of my feelings
about absence...
..because I felt that we weren't really there,
we were very absent.
I remembered it.
# Come in here, dear boy Have a cigar
# You're gonna go far. #
"Come in here and have a cigar,"
you know, and become a star and become immortal.
# You're gonna make it if you try
# They're gonna love you. #
You become part of the whole buying and selling machine.
It's high.
I would need to do a number of vocal exercises before I attempted that.
I think the lyrics so much sum up the recording business.
Rock 'n' roll, man.
# Come in here, dear boy Have a cigar
# You're gonna go far. #
The record companies were... they were all-powerful, in a way.
No-one worked without a record deal in those days,
so they had a lot of power.
You're not longer really an individual any more,
you're just...you're a cipher,
you're playing a part, you're a puppet.
You're not your own man.
# The weather's just fantastic That is really what I think
# Oh, by the way Which one's Pink? #
By the way, which one is Pink?
Which one's Pink?
# And did we tell you The name of the game, boy?
# We call it Riding the gravy train. #
It was felt that Syd's madness had partly come about
through the demands of the record industry.
"You've had a hit, now I want you to do another hit."
"I want you another hit, and I want another hit."
"And that's not as good as your last hit."
"That's not as good as your last record," you know,
"And I want you to do a bigger show and have more lights
"and more people."
I mean, it's...
"Hey, all I wanted to do is to play a guitar
"and write a song, and suddenly I'm in the middle of all this."
The star thing doesn't make... doesn't make you happy, you know.
That, the star thing, can make you want to withdraw from society.
# It's awfully considerate of you To think of me here
# And I'm most obliged to you For making it clear
# That I'm not here. #
Well, you could argue that Syd was burned by the music business,
but actually, he was probably burned more by us.
# And I never knew the moon... #
Syd had sort of gone off the idea of doing Top Of The Pops,
and being sort of commercial.
# ..shoes and brought me here. #
I think it wasn't the record company putting the pressure on, it was us
putting the pressure on, because that's the way we wanted to go.
# I don't care If the sun doesn't shine
# And I don't care If nothing is mine
# And I don't care If I'm nervous with you
# I'll do my loving in the winter. #
# Come in here, dear boy Have a cigar
# You're gonna go far
# Fly high... #
With Have A Cigar,
both of them knew that neither of them could sing it.
I always thought that Dave's voice was not deep enough.
# I've always had a deep respect I mean that most sincerely. #
Yeah, that's Dave.
# I think the band's fantastic That is really what I think
# By the way, which one's Pink? #
That's Roger.
They wanted the ferocity which Roger gives on other tracks.
At the time, he just felt that he hadn't got it.
"Come in here, dear boy, have a cigar.
"You're gonna go far."
Roy was definitely one of the great characters around for a lot
of our early... our early life, really.
We used to do quite a lot of shows where Roy would be on the bill.
A good guy to have around.
I was in Studio 2 and they were in Studio 3.
I think Roy was actually rather...
..lacking in momentum himself.
I think we were...
It didn't only seem to affect Pink Floyd.
You know, that's why I have this vision,
I guess, of me being in and out all the time, in and out, in and out.
He spent quite a lot of time in the studio with us.
Very expensive recording time that he would spend just
in our control room chattering and...
Anyway, I digress.
Roger was really struggling with it,
and then Dave... then they both tried.
There was a lot of arguing about how we were going to do it
and how we were going to make it work.
At one point Roy, who was in the room, piped up and said...
I just said, "I'll do it if you like, for a price."
# I've always had a deep respect and I mean that most sincerely
I mean, Roy really put his heart in this.
I mean, I can picture him now...
# Which one's Pink? #
..putting his heart and soul in to it,
as if his life depended on it.
# You gotta get an album out You owe it to the people
# We're so happy We can hardly count. #
I mean, the lyrics...
If I'd have written those lyrics, I'd feel well pleased.
# And did we tell you The name of the game, boy
# We call it Riding the gravy train. #
It was played millions of times around the world as a single.
That was my vocals on a... You know, really...
a kind of a number one selling single.
Everybody thought it was Roger.
I was a bit peed off about that.
I think if I'd sung it, it would be more vulnerable
and less cynical than the way he did it.
But that's not the way Roy sings.
He went off and did it and did a great job, and thank you very much.
I don't think Roger liked his version terribly much,
but I think his version is the perfect version.
He was singing a sort of parody, anyway...
..which I don't like. I never liked it.
The worst of it is that sometimes when I'm doing,
you know, when I'm doing a gig...
..there's some wag'll shout, "Have A Cigar", you know.
I regret it, and that's not
cos I've got anything against Roy, I haven't, you know.
And, um...
I think if I'd persevered with it, I would have done it better.
# Come in here, dear boy Have a cigar
# You're gonna go far
# You're gonna fly high
# You're never gonna die You're gonna make it if you try
# They're gonna love you. #
I was so unbelievably thrilled
to be there, and I was just very young,
I was just about 21.
There is actually a rather nice picture of me
that Nick Mason took, and it sort of sums up, because I just look
wide-eyed and,
you know, thrilled is the only word, I think.
I'd baked some fairy cakes,
and I thought it would be a good idea to bring them to the studio.
There's this wonderful sequence of Roger proving that he did
enjoy the cake.
I think that Nick took these pictures,
because I can't imagine that I had the courage to sort of,
you know, take them, but perhaps I did.
Roger is in the driving seat in these pictures,
as far as the studio's concerned, and perhaps that position is hard.
But, actually, it's probably better
if just one person is in the driving seat.
Roger, actually, you know, kept a tight hold on the helm,
and that's what he - that's what he did.
And, you know, you can't gainsay that,
because the records, you know, the records were very good.
Dark Side was just a such a sort of thing.
All the pieces fell into place,
or as Nick Mason says,
"The drumming did it."
So I think that that was quite hard to deal with.
What do you do next? What do you do to top it?
What do you do to be different?
Well, I couldn't draw,
so fantasy pictures were out.
I couldn't paint, so artsy fartsy was out.
I wasn't a graphic designer, and also, I was not interested
in band pictures, because I found them a bit dull, you know, a group
of four musicians who play guitar, drums and bass or keyboards
would seem to me to be four musicians. They could be anybody.
We always felt that representing the music was the order of the day.
I know, it sounds radical, even revolutionary!
So in order to represent the music, one didn't really want to be limited
in the great palette of art and life to a picture of four geezers.
We'd mostly, in those days, left it to Storm to come up with
things which we would give him a desultory two minutes
of our mixing time, to say that one, maybe, that one, not that, not that.
They were recording at Abbey Road, and I remember going there,
and I remember I was very...
I was very nervous in doing the presentation.
He came up with these - this, you know, from the lyrics,
from this theme of absence, and it just seemed like a very good idea.
I remember getting a little round of applause.
I was most gratified, I can tell you.
Storm, actually, is probably one of the most argumentative people
you could ever meet.
Roger and Storm would have these intense conversations
over fine wines and so on.
Storm and Roger were two great intellects and, you know,
there was sparks flying in their brains, those two.
I got very pre-occupied with four, with the number four.
There were four words in the title, four members of the band,
and four elements to life - air, fire, water and earth.
So the first thing that was done was a postcard.
The postcard said "Wish You Were Here."
Po found this fantastic location, called Lake Mono,
which is such an amazing location
that you could just about photograph a plastic duck in it
and you'd like it.
We always thought there was an element of Storm loving to find
the most expensive, distant location in the world
so he could go off and have a little jolly for a few days at our expense.
This guy is doing a yoga position
in a yoga chair locked into the mud,
poor man, with a breathing apparatus on.
And he had to hold his breath so I didn't get any bubbles.
That's all shot for real. That's not airbrushed or cut or anything.
That was a moment in time on a magical evening,
with amazing light.
Did that take a long time to set up, that shot?
A fucking long time.
This shot was a pain in the arse.
I came to the notice of Pink Floyd,
because I made a film in Los Angeles for the BBC.
I thought that I would do a kind of a visual diary
of Americana at that time.
So I drew everything that I could think of at the time,
like Black Power, Playboy magazine, Mickey Mouse.
Hi, guys.
There was a fantastic Mickey Mouse sequence, where Mickey
goes from being the mouse to being a sort of drug crazed mouse.
HE SIGHS
Hey, man. That was far out, man.
Mickey's such a clean living guy, and there he was...
..on drugs.
I thought it was absolutely brilliant, and I just thought
this, we could really...
It'd be great to work with someone who produced
something like this.
And I took it to Roger and showed Roger and Roger loved it.
It was very awkward, like all relationships at the beginning,
because they wanted one thing from me,
and I wasn't coming up with the goods, I felt.
When I say this to Roger today, he says, "Oh, I don't remember that."
I just remember it was an enormous relief
after a lot of the flailing around visually
that we'd done with Dark Side Of The Moon.
I think the Sandman is a particularly great image.
You know, the fact that we're all bits of sand that can blow away,
I think it's just an idea I had, really.
I wanted to do the impermanence of life or whatever, you know.
It all sounds rather... pretentious crap, really.
The beginning of the record sounds very melancholy,
and is very melancholy and is melancholy music.
Sort of blues,
it's a sort of G Minor blues that whole first six or seven minutes.
We obviously found a mood that we wanted to not exactly jam to,
but play around with and find something within.
And we were never too afraid of leaving quite a long period
of time instrumental before vocals came in.
You see, at the time, it was a case of let's see what works.
So then, hence, the wine glass tape came out.
The wine glasses were recorded for an album
they were going to make called Household Objects,
which we had on a loop
and then Rick then built up the sound
with synthesisers and organ.
They wanted a big sound, so the guitar was recorded
in a different studio,
so hence the click track.
He put his amplifiers and speakers down in studio one...
..being a classical music studio, and then mic'd it from a distance.
I think it comes across on the album.
You could picture it being played out somewhere in an auditorium.
This will be Rick featured on the end of Shine On,
where he really came in to his element.
You have a Hammond organ on there, you have grand piano...
..plus the other synthesised instruments he plays.
I can't remember exactly what synthesiser that was,
but this is Richard's...trademark.
He's a great piano player,
and does highlight, I think, his classical training.
And I think if he'd had another 20 minutes, you would have heard
probably like a Rick Wright concerto.
And at the very end, where he does the tribute to Syd Barrett,
I don't remember if that was just Rick thinking of that
at the spur of the moment.
That was a nice... a nice touching thing.
He was kind of a crazy diamond,
and all the things it says about him
in those brilliant lines are very, very accurate, you know.
"You wore out your welcome with random precision",
was certainly a part of him.
# Well, you wore out your welcome With random precision
# Rode on the steel breeze
# Come on, you raver,
# You seer of visions
# Come on, you painter, you piper
# You prisoner, and shine! #
My memory is that we were recording a Radio One show
at the BBC...
..and Syd didn't turn up.
And I think it was a Friday.
And no-one could find him.
So we basically waited and waited, and I think
we had to cancel the recording, or we tried to do some without him,
I'm not sure, and then the managers went off trying to find him.
And when they found Syd, which I think was a Sunday or Monday,
they told us, "Well, something's happened to Syd."
And something had happened to him, total difference.
And I remember him being right like this, and looking in his eyes,
and it was just like...
HE MAKES CLICKING NOISE
..somebody had turned the lights out, you know,
he just looked so blank.
He was a living with a whole sort of community of people who were
very much believing acid can release you and, you know,
get to the truth and all that stuff,
and...he took too much.
And he went up on stage
and he just stood there for long stretches
and he'd play the guitar for a bit and then he'd stop.
He had done so much damage, because acid, that's what it does to you.
Too much acid will literally fry your brains.
# Nobody knows where you are
# How near or how far
# Shine on, you crazy diamond. #
We were unable to help Syd and probably, I won't say deliberately,
but had our own interests at heart, and so consequently
probably tried to hold on to him for far longer than we should have done.
Syd left the band in 1968.
Syd was only around for that one record, it was a tiny piece.
It was a very important piece, it was the opening piece
of the Pink Floyd Story, and it may well be that Pink Floyd
would never have started and would have never carried on
and nothing would have happened. We will never know.
He was a real hindrance to the band in many ways.
Having said that, we simply wouldn't have got to where we got to.
There would be no Dark Side Of The Moon if Syd
hadn't been around to take us on that first major step.
I found it so upsetting working with Syd in those days.
It was like trying to...seeing someone sort of drowning
and trying to pull them out, but they kept on slip...you know,
the hand slipped away all the time.
We were hoping that it would be therapeutic for him
and might help him come back.
Trying...it was like trying to bring him back.
"Come back, Syd, come back."
And there was never likely to be any way back, and that is...
..quite awful to think about.
GUITAR MUSIC
# You reached for the secret too soon
# You cried for the moon
# Shine on you crazy diamond. #
And of course, they loved their ooohs,
so we just oooh'd them,
saying, "Shine on, you crazy diamond," and just oooh'd
the rest of the way. They loved ooohs.
Carlena and Venetta, being Americans and soulful,
was a wonderful contrast
between the sort of Britishness of Pink Floyd.
I didn't know them from a bar of soap,
and I didn't like their music in the beginning.
It was all in a minor key, it was all very low,
and everything was oohs and ahhs. Who are these people?
I thought Motown was meticulous, but this was the most meticulous
four musicians that I had ever seen work before.
And something told me in my head, "Venetta,
"you're here for a reason, you must enjoy this music,
"you must get on with this music, cos you're here,
"there's something for you to learn."
They managed to do their job without getting involved in the band
politics, so those two were very good at just..
You know, we might be all furious with each other
about something or other and having some great row
at the dinner table or in the car on the way to the show or whatever,
and they'd just be very, very relaxed and just get on with it.
And they always sang beautifully.
One of my fondest, fondest memories of being with Pink Floyd
recording Shine On You Crazy Diamond,
because that was the only thing that we got to actually record with them,
as opposed to singing-performing Dark Side Of The Moon.
So that was the great thing about it, we actually got on a record.
# Shine on, you crazy diamond. #
Welcome To The Machine.
They just wanted bits of ad-hoc animation bunged into the show
willy nilly. And, of course,
I had my little team of animators who are strictly trained to work
to a track, and without a track, they don't know what to do.
And I used to go and tell Roger this,
and he said, "It doesn't matter about a track, just let them do something."
I assume he made all that spherical stuff having heard
the VCS3 throbbing at the beginning of Welcome To The Machine.
Boom, boom, boom, boom... All of that stuff.
HE CLICKS AND WHIRS
When it came to Welcome To The Machine,
I think Roger was really getting into his synthesisers.
So, hence you have all these different effects.
I mean, some of these noises are, to me, just futuristic.
I loved that machine.
I used it a lot back in the day.
I've still got one. It's still good for wind and explosions.
THROBBING
See, and the throb
is basically what Roger would have played on bass.
He adds to it later on with the real bass.
THROBBING AND BASS
The only real instruments that really are on there are
Dave's acoustics.
'One, two, three, four...'
GUITAR
DRUMS
To add a bit more to the aggression of the song,
the timps and cymbals were added.
It just sounded like a very angry song to me, always did.
Very angry.
That somebody was getting something out of their system.
# Welcome, my son
# Welcome to the machine
# Where have you been?
# It's all right We know where you've been
This particular creature I created,
I remember showing it to the gang,
who sort of went along with everything I said at that point,
they didn't sort of correct anything.
Roger, particularly, has this idea that
if you hire an artist,
you don't try and change what that artist does,
you hire an artist for what he does.
Gerry has a very similar kind of...bolshie attitude
towards all status quo and all the powers that be that I do.
# So, welcome...
# To the machine. #
And the sea of blood that comes towards us
and crashes through the steel towers.
God knows what it's about.
But I thought it was a very kind of a strong image, a sea of blood.
I did really add piece by piece the animation, so when I'd done
the sea of blood, Roger probably said we need it a bit longer.
So then the sea of blood had to turn into hands, praying,
grasping hands,
hopeless lost kind of hands, I suppose,
searching for some god or some reason to it all.
You could say that Welcome To The Machine
is only about my experience in the music industry...
It's not, it's about all of our experience
in the face of that monstrous,
grinding thing that chews us up and spits us out.
In the meetings that Storm and I had, one of the topics
was somebody getting burnt in the business, you know,
which was an expression at the time. "Man, I've been burned."
You know, so, what more logical, kind of, concept, if you like,
would be than two men shaking hands and one of them is getting burnt?
And we both went, "Yeah!" Maybe because it was so outrageous.
And these are the days before computers,
so it meant setting a man on fire, which we did.
Yeah, it wasn't very difficult. Issuing orders from the bunker,
it's really easy. "Over the top, men."
Anyway, that was done for real in a studio lot in Hollywood.
What could be more absent than a studio lot?
I believe it was a Warner Brothers lot.
I was doing a lot
of fire work in those days,
and I had the special suits
and all this stuff
for full envelop fire, but a partial is basically,
you know, a pretty safe, pretty easy one to do.
And... In most cases.
He had a team of...20 people around him with fire extinguishers,
ready to deal with any emergency.
The effects man will step out
and he's got a wand about that long with a fire on the end of it,
and they go, "We're ready, action, and he just touches the three
or four spots like that, steps out, everything is burning,
and it's a still picture, so shake...shaking hands -
nothing to it.
And after I had shot about, I suppose, 15 shots,
and 15 times for somebody to catch fire is rather a lot,
suddenly a gust of breeze came up.
And the fire whipped round his face.
There's a funny thing about fire - when it gets in your face
you're going to move, that's just part of the thing.
And once it blew it around, I turned as fast as I could.
He fell to the ground, absolutely smothered with foam
and blankets and everything like that. He got up and he said,
"That's it, no more."
Luckily, I got it in the can.
And here we see his foot leaving frame.
And that's a sort of surreal image of absence in itself, you know?
But that's real absence.
Out of frame, out of sight, you know?
And you just kept shooting?
I just kept shooting, yeah.
I mean, I had to get this shot and it had to be right.
So, you know, I didn't have time to be concerned with his singed body.
You know, if they want somebody burning and they're going to pay me,
I don't care if they have an artist drawing the fire.
When developing a theme of absence,
it seemed therefore appropriate that in the end,
the cover should be absent.
The...um... Got it here.
The...um...
This is the end piece, or the end part of the puzzle.
Anyway, the record company, especially in America,
went complete apeshit.
"You mean wrap Wish You Were Here in black opaque shrink wrap
"so you can't see it? Are you completely fucking mad?"
But you had to have a sticker that said what it was,
otherwise the factory wouldn't pack it properly,
let alone the fans buy it.
I hear stories that there are some aficionados...
..who have had...who have had Wish You Were Here for many a year now,
and have carefully slit the opaque vinyl shrink wrap
and extracted the record
and actually haven't seen the cover in 35 years.
Brilliant. That's really absent.
Well, that's the one I can remember quite clearly.
That was me strumming a 12 string guitar,
which I'd recently purchased from a guy I know,
and coming up with, you know, the opening riff
of Wish You Were Here.
And again, like...
like the four notes at the beginning of Shine On You Crazy Diamond,
other people start going, "Hey,
"that's good, you've got something there."
And I said to him, "What's that you're playing? That's really nice."
And he played it.
And I said, "That's really good.
"Maybe I should try and do something with it."
I think Roger and I then worked on writing the verses
and putting those chords in to the... in to the whole thing, and Roger...
..did those brilliant words, and there we were.
# Did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts
# Hot ashes for trees
# Hot air for a cool breeze
# Cold comfort for change
# And did you exchange
# A walk on part in the war
# For a lead role in a cage? #
That collaboration between David and I, I think is, you know,
really good. All bits of it are really, really good.
So I'm very happy about it.
# So, so you think you can tell
# Heaven from hell
# Blue skies from pain
# Can you tell a green field
# From a cold, steel rail?
# A smile from a veil?
# Do you think you can tell? #
I think most of the songs that I've ever written
all pose similar questions.
Can you free yourself enough to be able to experience the reality
of life as it goes on before you
and with you, and as you go on as part of it or not?
Because if you can't, you stand on square one until you die.
And I know that may sound like bullshit,
but that's what the song is about.
# How I wish How I wish you were here
# We're just two lost souls Swimming in a fish bowl
# Year after year
# Running over the same old ground
# What have we found?
# The same old fears
# Wish you were here. #
All the songs are encouraging me,
I guess I write them for me,
and it's to encourage myself...
..not to accept a lead role in a cage...
..but to go on demanding of myself
that I keep auditioning
for the walk on part in the war, because that's where I want to be.
I want to be in the trenches.
I don't want to be at headquarters or I don't want to be sitting
in a hotel somewhere.
I want to be... I want to be engaged...
..probably, I might say,
in a way that my father would approve of.
It's a very simple sort of country song, if you like.
It's still... Because of its resonance
and the emotional weight it carries,
it is one of our best songs.
People do attach to it lots of internal feelings that they may have,
and they may not be entirely sure what it's about, and neither am I.
I mean, I'm only telling you what it's about for me.
But there's no reason why other people shouldn't put
other interpretations on it, which could be just as valid.
Although Shine On You Crazy Diamond
is the one that is specifically about Syd, and Wish You Were Here
has a broader remit...
..I can't sing it without thinking about Syd.
My memory is that I came in to the studio
and there was this guy standing there in a Gabardine raincoat,
and a large, large bloke, and I had no idea who it was.
And surprisingly, no-one's saying, "Who's that person?
"What's he doing wandering around all our gear in the studio?"
And then...then him coming in to the control room and standing around,
and how remarkable, how long it was before anyone actually woke up.
Finally, I think it was David who said, "Nick, do you recognise him?"
And I looked and I think I either shrugged my shoulders
or at some point Dave sort of put me out of my misery
and said, "It's Syd".
And we just sort of stood there,
or sat there and just were shell-shocked, basically.
And then until somebody thought of something to say to him.
And then we were all unbelievably shocked at his appearance.
I mean, I didn't recognise him, I didn't know it was him.
But it was pretty...
..pretty affecting, really.
I mean, Roger and Dave cried.
You know, this slim, elegant...
..if bedraggled and dazed person that I had last seen, had turned
rather balloon shaped, and had no eyebrows and not much hair, and...
And there is the photograph of him in the studio at the time,
and if you looked at Syd in early '67
and Syd then, it was so different.
It was a great loss and, you know...
..imagining what he would have gone on to do is...
Speculating on that, if you like, is...
He could have become so great.
It's actually kind of nice standing up here with these three guys
after all these years.
Standing to be counted with the rest of you.
Anyway, we're doing this for everyone who's not here,
but particularly, of course, for Syd.
HE INTONES
To me, it's about the most complete album, in some ways,
and we all know how difficult it was to get to that point,
and the problems we had.
It's full of grief and anger, but also full of love.
You've got to see beyond the grief and anger to the possibilities of love.
APPLAUSE
Thank you.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd