'Wish You Were Here' by Pink Floyd (1975)
It was a hot summer day, the fifth of June, when Sid Barrett strolled into Abbey Road studios, hair and eyebrows completely shaven, overweight, clutching a plastic bag, a specter, once captain of a band which, since the release of their previous album, 'The Dark Side of the Moon', was the biggest album in the world. It took a while for them to recognize him.
The irony is that he showed up the day they were working on the final mix for the song 'Shine On You Crazy Diamond', a direct tribute to him. He sat down for a while and had a conversation with the band, but when they played him the song, he showed no signs that he understood the relevance of the song. He showed up at David Gilmour's wedding later on that day, and then disappeared. None of them would ever see the man again.
After he left, Roger Waters broke down and wept.
I just watched a part of a documentary/TV series called 'Lords of the Revolution', it was about Timothy Leary. Turn on, tune in, drop out. Turn off your mind, relax and float down stream.
He's either cited as a hero and philosopher or a foolish, dangerous man who brought a whole generation to it's knees with six words. I think he's a little bit of both. He opened up doors to the consciousness and more so than any other single person, ignited the Sixties.
LSD destroyed people. It also saved people. There are plenty of stories out there about it's effects. The story of Daniel Johnston is a chilling tale about what LSD can do to someone who is already mentally unbalanced. Then there is the story of Sid Barrett, somebody who lost complete touch with the world, because of LSD.
It's a testament to Sid's effect on his band mates that for a lot of their career, they looked back and talked about him. Some of their best songs have to do with insanity, a subject they became obsessed with after Sid left.
However, I wonder how much of a loss Sid Barrett actually was. All of the bands best work is done after he left, with the possible exception of 'Jugband Blues' in my mind. If Sid Barrett didn't go crazy, Roger Waters wouldn't have led the band, and he wouldn't have taken the band in the direction that it did. And without him leaving, there wouldn't be a David Gilmour, who, despite not being in what people would call 'a guitar band', produced some of the best solos in Rock history. And without him leaving, the band would lose some of their most memorable songs, and the majority of this album wouldn't exist.
But who knows, maybe if Sid stayed on board, a Lennon-McCartney relationship would have spawned with him and Waters that would have produced even greater songs. You can spend all day contemplating the 'what if's' in history.
You could argue that acid did more damage than good. Actually, I truly believe that to be the case. If acid never came into prominence, the psychedelic movement may not have existed, but that's really the only genre to suffer. The drug of choice in Andy Warhol's Factory was speed, not LSD. Bob Dylan did his best work hopped up on speed.
Pink Floyd make a great album here, with just five songs, the shortest being 5 minutes and 8 seconds. They just don't cover insanity and their fallen band mate, however, they cover consumerism and the rising tide of conformity. 'Welcome to the Machine' seems to be a product of them just finishing
1984. It's a dark and foreboding song, but somehow still catchy. Perhaps the best song on the album is 'Have a Cigar', without a doubt the funkiest song Floyd has ever done, perhaps the best hook Floyd has ever done,('We call it Riding the Gravy Train!), and interestingly enough the only Pink Floyd song with the vocals done by someone not in the band.
It must have been a hell of a thing to follow the monumental album of the decade, and Floyd did a hell of a job, and in my mind, made a superior album.