{"id":22263,"date":"2013-01-06T17:01:10","date_gmt":"2013-01-06T17:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/austinkleon-pink-floyd-wish-you-were-here\/"},"modified":"2018-12-05T21:31:12","modified_gmt":"2018-12-06T04:31:12","slug":"austinkleon-pink-floyd-wish-you-were-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/austinkleon-pink-floyd-wish-you-were-here\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

tumblr_mg7nviuvbu1qz6f4b<\/a><\/p>\n

austinkleon<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Pink Floyd, \u201cWish You Were Here,\u201d off Wish You Were Here<\/em><\/a> (1975)<\/strong><\/p>\n

1973\u2019s Dark Side Of The Moon<\/em> made Pink Floyd rich. When they came off the tour, they were emotionally and physically exhausted, but they went into the studio in 1975 to record their next album anyways. It wasn\u2019t going well. David Gilmour (via Wikipedia<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\n

It was a very difficult period I have to say. All your childhood dreams had been sort of realized and we had the biggest selling records in the world and all the things you got into it for. The girls and the money and the fame and all that stuff it was all \u2026 everything had sort of come our way and you had to reassess what you were in it for thereafter, and it was a pretty confusing and sort of empty time for a while.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Eventually, Roger Waters started coming up with a new concept \u2014 they\u2019d take this song called \u201cShine On You Crazy Diamond,\u201d split it in half, and make a sandwich of it with three other songs: \u201cWelcome To The Machine,\u201d \u201cHave a Cigar,\u201d and \u201cWish You Were Here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Much is made of Wish You Were Here<\/em> as being a tribute to former bandmate Syd Barrett (there\u2019s a sad, sad story<\/a> of how Barrett showed up at the studio during mixing and nobody recognized him), but it\u2019s also an album about the music business, made just over the hump of Floyd\u2019s success.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve probably hear \u201cWish You Were Here\u201d hundreds of times over the years on FM radio and never given it a second thought. (\u201cOh, a sad song about missing someone.\u201d) But now, when I listen to it (\u201cthe ears that are listening\u2026\u201d<\/a>), it sounds less like a man missing a friend or a lover, and more about a man who\u2019s gained the whole world, but is missing something in himself.<\/p>\n

\n

Did they get you to trade
\n Your heroes for ghosts
\n Hot ashes for trees
\n Hot air for a cool breeze
\n Cold comfort for change
\n Did you exchange
\n A walk-on part in the war
\n For a lead role in a cage?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It really sounds to me like a song about success \u2014 something that is utterly useless when it comes to making art, because no matter what happens, you\u2019re back in the studio, with \u201cthe same old fears.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

How I wish
\n How I wish you were here
\n We\u2019re just two lost souls
\n Swimming in a fish bowl
\n Year after year
\n Running over the same old ground
\n What have we found?
\n The same old fears
\n Wish you were here<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A beautiful, beautiful song. Sneak out into your garage some night and sit in your car and listen to it really loud. Then go hug somebody.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

tumblr_mg7nviuvbu1qz6f4b austinkleon: Pink Floyd, \u201cWish You Were Here,\u201d off Wish You Were Here (1975) 1973\u2019s Dark Side Of The Moon made Pink Floyd rich. When they came off the tour, they were emotionally and physically exhausted, but they went into the studio in 1975 to record their next album anyways. It wasn\u2019t going well. David […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"audio","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[169,615,614],"class_list":["post-22263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-audio","hentry","category-words","tag-creativity","tag-motivation","tag-seeking-to-make-beauty","post_format-post-format-audio"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6PWot-5N5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22263"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22266,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22263\/revisions\/22266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}