While I was working on my computer upgrade yesterday, I watched The Story of Wish You Were Here, which began its life as a VH1 rockumentary or some such and is now available on DVD. It’s a fascinating look at the creative process, the conflicts within the band and the processes that went into creating one of the most iconic albums.
The hour-long show contained a lot of information I didn’t know. For example, I had no idea that the lead vocals on “Have a Cigar” weren’t performed by either Roger or Dave, but rather by a bloke named Roy Harper who happened to be hanging around Abbey Road at the time and witnessed the failed attempts by the Pink Floyd members to crack the song.
I was fascinated by the bits featuring album engineer Brian Humphries, who brought out the master tapes and deconstructed the songs on the sound board, bringing up the various components that went into the mix. Hearing Rick Wright’s keyboards all by themselves, for example, or the isolated guitar or vocal tracks. Very cool.
I’d never even seen a picture of Storm Thorgerson before, though I’ve long been a fan of his album covers, especially those he did for Pink Floyd and the Alan Parsons Project, so it was neat hearing him talking about the photographs that illustrated Wish You Were Here. The shot of the diver’s legs extending out of the lake (Mono Lake in California): that was a live shot done with a yoga expert wearing a breathing apparatus and holding his breath. And the shot with the men shaking hands while one of them is on fire was taken on a back lot in Hollywood and the man really was on fire. The stunt man talks about his experience during the shoot, how a wind came up near the end and blew the flames in front of his face and that was that. He was done for the day. And the photographer kept on snapping throughout it all.
It was fun hearing from the vocalists who did the backing tracks on Shine On You Crazy Diamond. “They liked a lot of ooohs,” one remembered. Though they’d toured with Pink Floyd for The Dark Side of the Moon, that was the only track they ever recorded for an album.
I didn’t know that the album was released wrapped in opaque black vinyl shrinkwrap with the band’s name on a sticker, so you didn’t get to see the cool artwork until you opened it up. Thorgerson said that he knows of some collectors who slit the vinyl and took out the album without ever looking at the cover art.
I’m always intrigued by the differing points of view expressed by Roger and Dave. They are two vastly different individuals. Perhaps I show my bias, but I think Roger was probably a tough bastard to work with much of the time and even know he’s a little shrewish about certain things. The only time he really opens up is when he talks about the title track and how well that collaboration with Gilmour went.
Of course, they spend a lot of time talking about Syd and how he was the inspiration for “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” and their experience with and without him. A tragic story. I always wonder if it really was the LSD that did him in or if some sort of mental illness emerged in his early twenties. I’ve heard of other cases where that has happened. Maybe a combination of factors.
