Wish You Were Here

The sessions were hard. Wright later called them a difficult period and Waters called them torturous. Engineer Brian Humphries accidentally ruined the backing tracks for Shine On, which had to be recorded again. Waters wanted to split Shine On across the album with two songs between its halves. Gilmour disagreed and was outvoted. All the lyrics are by Waters, and Roy Harper sings lead on Have a Cigar. The violinist Stephane Grappelli plays on the title track, but is nearly inaudible.

Mason told the Guardian in 2025 that the sessions had major false starts. The first plan was to make music from household objects such as rubber bands, wine glasses and brooms, an idea drawn from John Cage. Two tracks survived, including Wine Glasses, which appears on the 2025 anniversary set, and some glassy sounds reached the final mix of Shine On. The band then tried having each member record sounds onto the same tape without hearing the others. Mason said the writing was more a case of Waters bringing in something ready to go, and this is the first Pink Floyd album without a Mason co-writing credit. By April 1975 the band was back on the road, playing Shine On and Have a Cigar alongside early versions of Raving and Drooling and You've Got to Be Crazy, which became Sheep and Dogs on Animals. Formal recording took six months.

Barrett and reception

Barrett visited the studio during the final mix in June 1975. The album debuted at number 3 in Britain before rising to number one, and reached number one on the Billboard 200. It went 3 times Platinum in the UK and 7 times in the US. Melody Maker found it unconvincing in its ponderous sincerity, while Christgau later said it has soul. Waters called it, alongside Dark Side, the band's most complete album. Rolling Stone placed it 264th in 2020. The 2025 anniversary edition includes a single continuous nine-part mix of Shine On by James Guthrie.

The cover came from Hipgnosis, whose Aubrey Powell said the burning handshake began when George Hardie remarked that people get burned in industry deals all the time. The stuntman Ronnie Rondell Jr was set alight for real, and it took 15 takes. The red scarf on the package was, Powell said, a nod to Barrett's mental state, and the black shrink-wrap was meant to underline the theme of absence.