My brother, Colin, posted about Pink Floyd a while back, though it was not a Tuesday post. While I consider Dark Side of the Moon one of the classic albums of all time, in many ways, I have always preferred Wish You Were Here.

For those of you who are not familiar with Pink Floyd or with the history of the band, there is a story behind this album. The band, Pink Floyd, formed in London in 1965, and at the time, their line up consisted of Syd Barrett, Roger Waters, Nick Mason, and Richard Wright. Barret was the leading creative force in the early band, but that was not to last for long. Like many in such artists, Barrett was an experimenter and heavy user of psychedelic drugs, among them LSD, and his health ultimately forced him from the band. He began to rapidly deteriorate by about 1967 and withdraw into his own mind, and for long periods of time, he would stare straight ahead, unseeing and unresponsive. At concerts he would stop playing with the band or play something completely different, and at other times, he would bring a song into group sessions, only to change the arrangement as they played, making it impossible for the band members to learn it.

In late 1967, the band members asked David Gilmour to join the band to be a second guitarist, an invitation which proved the death knell for Barrett. He was so affected by his drug use that while he did eventually recover to a certain extent, he retired from music and stayed out of the spotlight for the rest of his life. Syd Barrett died  of pancreatic cancer in 2006, having struggled with diabetes and other ailments.

The rest, as they say, is history. Roger Waters took over as the primary creative force behind the band, and Pink Floyd went on to become one of the most greatest and most successful progressive rock bands in history. It was primarily Waters who drove Pink Floyd’s sometimes wacky and zany music, which produced such weirdness as flying pigs on album covers and a complete album about a wall. Then when Waters left the group in the eighties, Gilmour and Mason took over, and while they had been contributing, their music became, I would say, a little more mainstream–though no less enjoyable–with Waters’s absence.

Wish You Were Here was a tribute album by the remaining members of Pink Floyd for their absent member. While it is certainly different from most anything else you will find out there, it is largely characterized by a long, soaring instrumental piece called Shine on You Crazy Diamond, though broken into nine parts. I’ve always loved the song, and can sit listening to it for hours on end. I upgraded my computer and bought a new set of speakers recently, and when I tested them, I brought up Shine on You Crazy Diamond.

So I present all nine parts of the song put together in one video. There are others that you can find on YouTube, and if you are so inclined, I would strongly advise giving the Pulse tour version and David Gilmour Live at Pompeii a listen.

P.S. As an aside, I’ve always considered David Gilmour the absolute pinnacle of his craft. There are others out there (Jimi Hendrix and Eddie Van Halen to name a couple) who had more pure skill and talent, but NO ONE plays with the sheer feeling and understanding of the music than David Gilmour. Listening to his guitar solos gives me the chills!