The creative lights suddenly came back on when David Waters picked up on a particularly haunting four-note melody improvised by David Gilmour. This particular combination of intervals (Bb, F, G, E) does not belong to any specific chord or key, which gives it a feeling of isolation. When each note is played in sequence, it creates an emotionally jarring sense of unresolved conflict for the listener. When played simultaneously, it creates a disturbing dissonance that classical era composers called “diabolus in musica” (the devil in music) for its disruption of harmony and balance. This powerfully emotive 4-note motif (unofficially known as “Syd’s Theme”) solidified “Shine on You Crazy Diamond” and proved to be the conceptual catalyst for the entire album.

The term “concept album” is a broad generalization that gets applied to a collection of songs unified by a larger theme. The loosest interpretation might include contributions from various artists to a soundtrack. In more strict interpretations, each song is essential to a complete narrative, much as chapters in a book are. Although concept albums are found across all musical genres and eras, they are most closely associated with progressive rock bands of the 70s, in no small part due to Pink Floyd. 

Starting with "The Dark Side of the Moon" and continuing through "The Wall" in 1979, Pink Floyd produced four consecutive concept albums, each critically acclaimed and commercially successful. Among these, "Wish You Were Here" arguably best embodies the essence of a concept album. Unlike "DSOTM," which is broader in scope, or "Animals" (1977) and "The Wall," which follow a complete narrative arc, "Wish You Were Here” takes a more thematic approach. It’s also a real-time, sharply focused reflection of the band's currently fractured psyche and emotional state. According to the band's primary lyricist, Roger Waters, trying to make an album “relating to what was going on there and then” was the only way forward. All in all, Wish You Were Here is a profoundly personal outpouring. Yet, its emotionally charged content is communicated in a universally relatable way, giving the album a quality that resonates just as personally to the listener. 

Both lyrically and through the musical vehicle that supports it, “Wish You Were Here” conveys feelings of absence, isolation, disillusionment, and even madness — exacerbated by the pressures of a self-serving music industry. On a deeper level, these themes extend to the band's original songwriter, singer, and co-founder, Syd Barrett, whose already fragile mental health was shattered under the weight of it all. Although the band had little contact with Barret after their 1968 debut, “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.”  Given the band's newfound stardom and success, their feelings of loss over their fallen bandmate were undoubtedly intensified. 

Starting at a whisper and building to a long crescendo, the sustained opening chord of Shine on You Crazy Diamond sets a dramatically lonely mood. For listeners of today, the sustained chords might sound like an early polyphonic synth. Pink Floyd’s keyboard player, Richard Wright, did have an ARP Solina String Ensemble in time for sessions, but the source of the harmonized drone is something far more organic and clever. The eerie sound was obtained by running a wet finger over the rim of a set of wine glasses, each filled with enough water to create a perfectly tuned 3-note chord. Wright adds the first (albeit synthesized) human element, infusing the drone with melody on his Mini Moog. At the 2-minute mark, the sound of David Gilmour's clean and heavily compressed Strat is heard for the first time, before the drone momentarily stops, to make way for Gilmour’s 4-note “Theme for Syd.” The intro lasts over 4 minutes before the drums of Nick Mason and the Bass of Roger Waters add flesh to the song. Clearly, "Shine on You Crazy Diamond" was written to be a classic, not a hit. Most pop songs have already been through one or two catchy refrain sections within the first minute. On this opening track, Pink Floyd takes every second they need to set the tone, direction, and theme into motion, with instrumental passages only. The listener is left in this solitary, instrumental environment for over 8 minutes before finally hearing a human voice. “Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun?” At first, Waters’ voice and lyrics convey promise and creativity, only to be crushed by pressures, isolation, and fears (both autobiographical and reflecting Syd Barrett's descent into madness). “Now there's a look in your eyes, like black holes in the sky.” In the refrain, a dark kind of acceptance of loss and a tribute to  the lost soul—"Come on you target for faraway laughter, come on you stranger, you legend, you martyr, and shine!” After 13 minutes of intensely crafted music and lyrics, the song fades back into the silence it began with. 

From a strictly musical standpoint, the lively tempo, syncopated riffs, standard instrumentation, and arrangement make “Have a Cigar” the album's closest track to a straightforward Rock song. While every song on the album features collaborative efforts, “Cigar” was created by Roger Waters as the sole writer. It's far less abstract, and pointed lyrics are an unveiled jab at greedy, selfish, and demanding elements prevalent within a “soulless” and dirty music industry. Verses include actual remarks made by soulless yes men: “The band is just fantastic, that is really what I think-by the way, which one's pink?” and uncaring bean counters: “You gotta get an album out, We're so happy we can hardly count.”  This sentiment is echoed on the album cover, underneath the black shrink wrapper it was presented in. The cold-machine greeting imagery is revisited with two men in business suits shaking hands, leaving one of them “burned.”  Ironically (and most likely deliberately), its relatively short 5-minute run time and moderate tempo made it the only suitable candidate for a single. 

“Have a Cigar”  is the only song on the album to feature a non-band member on lead vocals, for reasons that remain unclear. It's been reported that Roger Waters had a sore throat, and that Gilmour didn’t feel up to it, or refused to sing the lyrics. All we know for sure is that a friend of the band, singer Roy Harper, was recruited to sing the lead vocals on the spur of the moment from an adjoining EMI-Abbey Road studio. 

The fade out of the raucous jam at the end of “Have a Cigar” transitions into the title track in one of the most famous and creative segues ever recorded. The song begins with the sound of a person turning the frequency knob on an old-school radio receiver, scrolling through stations. The selected low-fidelity broadcast features a lone acoustic guitarist repeating a sequence of chords until the listener joins the broadcast radio with their own acoustic guitar. Without a single word, this brilliant, immaculate piece of production paints a crystal-clear mental image of two lone souls separated by time, distance, and dimension: The very definition of absence. In the refrain, Waters' lyrics repeat the theme: “We're just two lost souls swimming in a fishbowl year after year. Running over the same old ground, what have you found? Wish you were here.”

This sentiment is directed simultaneously towards Waters’ perceived absence of camaraderie with the band members, beginning with the “Wish You Were Here” sessions. On a more literal level, it's also a mournful lament directed to his old best friend, creative partner, and Floyd co-founder — the now-completely lost from reality, Syd Barrett. 

In reflecting on Pink Floyd’s body of work, “The Dark Side of the Moon” clearly marks the end of the band's pre-fame psychedelic era and the beginning of its status as a globally popular musical giant. While “Wish You Were Here” did not equal the commercial achievements of “Dark Side,” it unquestionably cemented Pink Floyd’s ongoing popularity and status as the masters of the concept album. Debuting in the #1 spot, “Wish You Were Here”  is Pink Floyd’s fastest-selling release. It went on to become the best-selling album of 1975 and has since become one of the very few albums to sell over 20 million copies. Pink Floyd followed up with two more epic, blockbuster concept albums during the 70s — Animals in '77 and The Wall in '79. Unfortunately, the band members recall  “Wish You Were Here” as the beginning of a long goodbye. Stress cracks that formed during the 1975 sessions led to escalating tensions. Over the next 10 years, they intensified like a pressure cooker, culminating in Roger Waters's permanent departure from Pink Floyd in 1985

When David Gilmour eventually recognized the strange visitor, his blood ran cold. The overweight man with a shaved scalp and eyebrows, jumping up and down while desperately clinging to belongings crammed into a plastic bag…was Syd Barrett. After only a few years without seeing their fallen friend, he had become nearly unrecognizable. According to Gilmour, he had to take a long look at Barritt’s eyes before the chilling spark of identification came to him. The entire band went into a state of shock, seeing the recently waif-like, handsome, and charismatic friends decaying physical and mental state. Attempts to communicate with Syd were useless. He spoke in incomplete sentences of mostly gibberish. The experience was reported to be unsettling to the point of tears. After his first random visit, Barrett returned to listen over the next 3 days, as “Shine on You Crazy Diamond was being completed, and never returned. Collectively, or individually, it was the last time Pink Floyd would ever see Syd Barrett again. 

The album is a truly melancholy work, yet not without hope. It would be comforting to know that some of that hope, and the realization that he's not alone in his isolation, somehow reached his shattered consciousness. 

“Come on, you raver, you seer of visions… Come on, you painter, you piper, you prisoner, and shine!”