Abbey Road, 5 June 1975. They did not recognise him.
Parts 1 to 5 of Shine On You Crazy Diamond open Wish You Were Here in a fade, not a downbeat. The chord is G minor, held on an EMS VCS 3, an ARP Solina, a Hammond, and wine glasses. The glasses had been recorded on 5 January 1971 for an abandoned experiment, later called Household Objects, and were flown onto the track on 24 February 1975. Richard Wright’s Minimoog answers. Then David Gilmour’s Stratocaster, neck pickup, compressed, with a lot of room on it. Abbey Road, January to July 1975, engineer Brian Humphries, in the new Studio Three. They cut a backing track, found the new desk had printed echo returns onto the drums and guitars, and had to play the whole thing again. With 16-track tape that big, Nick Mason said, you did not edit. You played from the top.
The four-note figure in part 2 is the one players call Syd’s theme: B flat, F, G, E. Mason and Roger Waters enter after the fourth time through, in 6/8. Part 3 is Wright’s Minimoog solo. Just after eight and a half minutes Waters starts to sing, with Gilmour, Wright, and the backing voices of Venetta Fields and Carlena Williams. Part 5 hands the theme to Dick Parry, baritone saxophone then tenor, and a machine hum carries the tape into Welcome to the Machine. Parts 1 to 5 run 13 minutes 33 seconds. The suite was written to be one side, like Echoes. They split it so the other songs could sit in the gap. Music by Gilmour, Waters and Wright. Lyric by Waters. They had already played an early Shine On on the French tour in June 1974.
On 5 June 1975 a heavy man with a shaved head and shaved eyebrows walked into the studio carrying a plastic bag. Aubrey Powell at Hipgnosis had told him where the band was. Waters did not recognise him. Gilmour thought he was EMI staff. Wright assumed he was a friend of Waters, worked for a while, then realised it was Syd Barrett, who had been eased out of the band in 1968. Waters was reduced to tears. Someone offered to play the piece again. Barrett said they had just heard it, and that it sounded a bit old. He slipped away the same day, during the celebrations for Gilmour’s wedding to Ginger. Storm Thorgerson said two or three people cried, and that Barrett sat and talked and was not really there.
He came in as we were doing the vocals for Shine On You Crazy Diamond, which was basically about Syd. He just, for some incredible reason, picked the very day that we were doing a song which was about him. And we hadn’t seen him, I don’t think, for two years before.
(Richard Wright, on Syd Barrett’s visit to Abbey Road)
Wish You Were Here came out on Harvest in Britain on 12 September 1975 and went to No. 1 there and in the United States. The single was Have a Cigar, sung by Roy Harper, backed with Welcome to the Machine. Shine On was too long for that job. Parts 1 to 5 became the opening of the shows from 1987 to 1994. At Earls Court on 20 October 1994, the concert filmed for Pulse, they added part 7. In 2025 James Guthrie mixed all nine parts as one continuous piece for the anniversary edition. The record they finished in 1975 still starts with the half Barrett heard.
Four notes, a saxophone, a vocal about a man who reached for the secret too soon, and the man himself in the room saying it sounded old. Then the tape runs into the machine. That is the first side of the album, and it does not need the second half to make the point.
