Wish You Were Here- Pink Floyd

“Wish You Were Here” is the title track on Pink Floyd’s 1975 album Wish You Were Here. The song’s lyrics encompass writer Roger Waters’ feelings of alienation from other people. Like most of the album, it refers to former Pink Floyd member Syd Barrett and his breakdown. The main riff came to David Gilmour at home, while playing on an acoustic guitar, and it became something which he continued to play in-between takes at Abbey Road Studios where it caught the attention of Roger Waters. They collaborated to complete the song, as Waters had already written some lyrics. In 2004, the song was ranked #316 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. In the original album version, the song segues from “Have a Cigar” as if a radio had been tuned away from one station, through several others (including a radio play and one playing Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony), and finally to a new station where “Wish You Were Here” is beginning. The radio was recorded from Gilmour’s car radio. Gilmour performed the intro on a twelve-string guitar, processed to sound like it was playing through an old transistor radio, and then overdubbed a fuller-sounding acoustic guitar solo. This passage was mixed to sound as though the guitarist was sitting in a room, playing along with the radio; it also contains a whine that slowly changes pitch—emulating the heterodyne between two drifting AM radio signals. The intro riff is repeated several times and reprised when Gilmour plays further …
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