Wish You Were Here isn't my favorite Pink Floyd album, but I can't deny its success or how often it has played within earshot over the course of my life. Released mid-1975 to mixed reviews, time worked in its favor: Today many consider it a peer to the group's masterpiece, The Dark Side of the Moon.
Wish You Were Here 50, from Pink Floyd Music and Sony, is a golden anniversary Super Deluxe package of four LPs, two CDs, and a Blu-ray disc. LPs 1–3 and the two CDs contain the same material: the 2016 James Guthrie remix/remaster of the original album and a pile of outtakes and demos that will surely be of great interest to hardcore Floyd fanatics. It hardly matters that they were of less interest to me, though there was one piece I found interesting: a version of the title track featuring jazz-violin legend Stéphane Grappelli.
The fourth LP contains two extended live tracks recorded at Wembley, UK, in 1974: an early run at "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" and "You've Got To Be Crazy," a very early version of what became "Dogs" on their next album, Animals.
The Blu-ray disc and the streamed version of the album include Mike Millard's famous bootleg recording of the band's April 26, 1975, concert at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, which Millard recorded on a Nakamichi 550 cassette deck with a pair of AKG 451E small-diaphragm condenser mikes. He hid the recorder in the seat of a wheelchair, pretending to be disabled. The bootleg circulated for years on cassette and then online. Steven Wilson remastered it for WYWH 50 using two digital transfers, likely from the original cassette: a recent version with audible tape degradation but a better transfer and an older version from when the cassette was less deteriorated but in lower fi. In a short essay, Wilson notes that he "applied minimal mastering," concentrating most of his time editing together a composite of the two digital transfers. The result has a boomy, somewhat distorted low end, somewhat shrill upper mids, and not much top-top end—in other words, it sounds like a 1975 arena sound system—even Pink Floyd's deluxe multichannel system.
I found Millard's recording most enjoyable through headphones, where the sense of space is palpable and it's easy to hear when someone walks in front of the mikes. The performance is merely okay. Waters, guitarist David Gilmour, and keyboardist Rick Wright were often off-key on harmony vocals, but the playing is robust. On the Blu-ray disc, we can see the movies that ran on a huge screen behind the stage. In person, it must have been a fun event. It's nice to hear Millard's recording restored as well as possible.
Also in the Super Deluxe box set is a 12" × 12", 64-page hardcover book that charts the development of WYWH starting with its prebirth in 1972 at recording sessions for Obscured by Clouds, during which Pink Floyd acquired and figured out how to use the EMS VCS 3 and AKS synthesizers that became big parts of the sound on Dark Side and WYWH. The book describes the 1975 recording sessions at Abbey Road Studio 3 with its new Neve console; then it's on to the 1975 North American tour before and after the album's September release. There's also an extensive section about the making of the album cover and its distinctive imagery.
Also in the book are photos of the poignant day—July 7, 1975—when founding member Syd Barrett showed up at Abbey Road, shaven-headed and pudgy. At first he was not recognized by his former bandmates. Waters played some of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond"—written as a tribute to Barrett, whose mental health decline forced him to leave Pink Floyd prior to their mainstream success—as Barrett looked on impassively.
Inside the box is a 12" × 12" folder called "Ephemera," containing a reproduction Japanese 7" single of "Have a Cigar" backed by "Welcome to the Machine"; a reproduction poster for the Knebworth Festival 1975, which Pink Floyd headlined, premiering early performances of WYWH songs; and a reproduction of the 1975 tour program, which was a comic book drawn by Gerald Scarfe, who later created graphics for The Wall.
The Blu-ray disc is jam-packed with unique audio and video. There are no fewer than four 24/96 versions of WYWH: a new Atmos mix by Guthrie, his 2009 surround 5.1 mix, Brian Humphries's 1976 four-channel Quad mix, and the 1975 original stereo mix. I preferred the original mix to Guthrie's recent remix if only because this album was cemented into my consciousness by my older brother's original Columbia LP. Of all the surround mixes, I especially dug the Quad; I think it represents the band's intentions and the technological capabilities of the time the album was created. No doubt Pink Floyd fans with Atmos systems will dig the sound all around and overhead.
The Blu-ray contains 24/96 versions of the outtakes and demos; a 24/96 version of the Millard bootleg; those concert-screen films with music added in, for "Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Part 1)," "Shine On You Crazy Diamond," and "Welcome to the Machine"; and a short film from 2000 by graphics codesigner Storm Thorgerson featuring primitive-looking computer animation and snippets of WYWH songs.
Pink Floyd was always an artsy multimedia band, which makes this reissue package a feast for the eyes and ears. The concert recordings, the original stereo, and the Quad mixes take us back. The modern remixes bring the album forward into the present.
The Blu-ray disc is jam-packed with unique audio and video. There are no fewer than four 24/96 versions of WYWH: a new Atmos mix by Guthrie, his 2009 surround 5.1 mix, Brian Humphries's 1976 four-channel Quad mix, and the 1975 original stereo mix. I preferred the original mix to Guthrie's recent remix if only because this album was cemented into my consciousness by my older brother's original Columbia LP. Of all the surround mixes, I especially dug the Quad; I think it represents the band's intentions and the technological capabilities of the time the album was created. No doubt Pink Floyd fans with Atmos systems will dig the sound all around and overhead.
