{"id":5152,"date":"2025-09-12T08:59:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T08:59:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/david-gilmour-pink-floyd-wish-you-were-here-syd-barrett-151372\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T08:59:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T08:59:12","slug":"david-gilmour-pink-floyd-wish-you-were-here-syd-barrett-151372","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/david-gilmour-pink-floyd-wish-you-were-here-syd-barrett-151372\/","title":{"rendered":"David Gilmour on Wish You Were Here: \u201cSyd was the elephant in the room\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div class=\"post-preview\">\n<p><em>To commemorate the 50th anniversary of Pink Floyd&#8217;s monumental Wish You Were Here, here&#8217;s <strong>David Gilmour<\/strong> reminiscing to <strong>Uncut<\/strong> about the making of the album&#8217;s emotional opener (and closer), &#8220;Shine On You Crazy Diamond&#8221;\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"post-content google-ld-json\">\n<div class=\"editable-content\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-layout-flex wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button has-custom-width wp-block-button__width-100\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link has-vivid-green-cyan-background-color has-background wp-element-button\" href=\"https:\/\/shop.kelsey.co.uk\/uncut-magazine?offer=UNC1025&amp;source=UNC1025brandsite&amp;channel=banners#anchor-shop\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Click here to subscribe to Uncut<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"height:43px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n<p><em>To commemorate the 50th anniversary of Pink Floyd\u2019s monumental Wish You Were Here, here\u2019s <strong>David Gilmour<\/strong> reminiscing to <strong>Uncut<\/strong> about the making of the album\u2019s emotional opener (and closer), \u201cShine On You Crazy Diamond\u201d\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s the purest Floyd song, the peak of that particular stage in our development. We wrote the song in a dingy rehearsal room near Kings Cross \u2013 I have no idea why we were in such a dark, cheap and horrible rehearsal space when we\u2019d just released one of the biggest-selling LPs in history! Ha! Maybe it was tight-arsed management.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe song fell out of a four-note guitar figure that I came up with \u2013 that distinctive opening sequence. Roger [Waters] really liked it. It had that haunting, serial quality, like something from a piece of modern classical music, or from a film soundtrack. The rest of the song was a joint effort, which was becoming rare at around that time, where me and Roger tended to write separately and bring the ideas into a rehearsal. But here the song seemed to emerge organically out of a jam. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s the pedal bassline that links into the last part, lots of interesting chord changes, and Nick [Mason]\u2019s drumming, which switches between a kind of 12\/8 shuffle to a swing beat and back. The ideas were all so good that we wanted room for them to breathe, which is why the complete version is about 26 minutes long, and needed to be split in two as it didn\u2019t fit on one side of an LP.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"cWGE9Gi0bB0\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Pink Floyd - Shine On You Crazy Diamond [Official Music Video]\" width=\"696\" height=\"522\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/cWGE9Gi0bB0?feature=oembed&amp;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>\u201cRoger would always disappear for a few days to write lyrics and he came up with this tribute to Syd. They\u2019re beautiful words and it\u2019s a heartfelt tribute that speaks for us all. It had been four or five years since we\u2019d last seen him, and I think it was all tied up with our feelings of regret and possibly guilt. It was a remarkable coincidence that, not long after we\u2019d finished recording \u2018Shine On\u2026\u2019, Syd wandered into the studio at Abbey Road. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cEveryone\u2019s memory of the event is a bit hazy. My memory is of a rather plump chap wandering around No 3 studio while we were mixing in the control booth. God knows how he managed to get past security \u2013 it was pretty tight then and I\u2019d imagine that it\u2019d be impossible nowadays! And it took us all a while to work out who it was \u2013 we were all a bit shaken as to how different he looked. We had a chat with him. When we played him some of the stuff we were working on he thought it was really good \u2018but a bit long\u2019. Ha!<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor years after he left, Syd was the elephant in the room when it came to Pink Floyd. He was the glue that linked us all. He knew Roger, Rick [Wright] and Nick from the first incarnation of the band, obviously, before I joined, but me and Syd were also close friends, dating back before the band. I liked to remember the Syd of my teens, this sweet, crazy, fun-loving friend that I went to France with and went busking with. And the terrible thing is that I couldn\u2019t really equate that figure with the person that he turned into. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe thing was, his mental problems always seemed to come up when the issue of the band surfaced. So it was his family\u2019s preference that members of Pink Floyd didn\u2019t visit him, as it might set off another relapse. So it\u2019s astonishing to think that that time in Abbey Road was the last time I ever saw him.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cObviously, the news of his death was enormously sad. I\u2019d known he was ill for a long time, but the reality was terribly sad, even if me and the rest of the band had been grieving for him for over 30 years. The thing was that the Syd I knew hadn\u2019t been around for a long time. If I have one regret it\u2019s that I\u2019d not been more forceful with his family and gone to visit Syd in Cambridge. But it\u2019s a difficult one to negotiate, isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSyd\u2019s death affected the way I play \u2018Shine On\u2026\u2019. It\u2019s a tremendously adaptable piece of music. On the original it\u2019s a pretty big production, with harmonies and backing singers. On my [2006] tour, it became more mournful. I stripped away everything. After a few dates, it became more experimental. We developed a new way of playing the opening where Phil Manzanera, Guy Pratt and Dick Parry would play wine glasses \u2013 you know, rubbing a wet finger over the rims \u2013 that had been tuned to an open chord, replicating the organ part, and I\u2019d play the guitar riff over the top. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat was a throwback to the LP we were initially going to make instead of <em>Wish You Were Here<\/em>, in which the sounds were going to be made with household objects, an idea we ditched but which influenced some of what we did after that. It makes the track even more haunting and ethereal.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>This interview was originally published in Uncut Take 137 (October 2008)<\/strong><\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-layout-flex wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button has-custom-width wp-block-button__width-100\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link has-vivid-green-cyan-background-color has-background wp-element-button\" href=\"https:\/\/shop.kelsey.co.uk\/product\/ultimate-music-guide-pink-floyd-definitive-edition\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Click here to buy Uncut\u2019s Ultimate Music Guide to Pink Floyd<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>The post <a href=\"https:\/\/www.uncut.co.uk\/features\/interviews\/david-gilmour-pink-floyd-wish-you-were-here-syd-barrett-151372\/\">David Gilmour on Wish You Were Here: \u201cSyd was the elephant in the room\u201d<\/a> appeared first on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.uncut.co.uk\/\">UNCUT<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To commemorate the 50th anniversary of Pink Floyd&#8217;s monumental Wish You Were Here, here&#8217;s David Gilmour reminiscing to Uncut about the making of the album&#8217;s emotional opener (and closer), &#8220;Shine&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2993,31,35,3090],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-david-gilmour","category-features","category-interviews","category-pink-floyd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5152\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}