On This Day in 1975, Pink Floyd Released Their Troubled Chart-Topping Album That Almost Never Was

Two years after they released Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd released their long-awaited follow-up, Wish You Were Here, proving that the dead end the band felt it was racing toward gave way to more road after all. Between the intense pressure to recreate the commercial success of Dark Side and the personal tribulations and endeavors each band member was busying himself with, it seemed like the album might never come to be.

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Fortunately for Wish You Were Here fans everywhere, Pink Floyd was able to achieve the seemingly impossible by learning to let go of their more hair-brained ideas and go back to basics.

Wishing They Were Anywhere but Here

In the months that followed Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd set out to create what only a psychedelic rock band riding sky-high on their first major commercial breakthrough could dream up: an album composed entirely of household instruments. (Think: rubber bands, aerosol spray, Saran wrap.) Unsurprisingly, the album didn’t get very far. To say the band had little motivation to do anything else was an understatement.

Each band member was busy with other things, from major changes in their personal lives, like divorce, to the pursuit of other creative projects. When they would reconvene at Abbey Road Studios, the atmosphere was often tense.

After Pink Floyd decided to scrap tracks like “Carrot Crunching” and “Papa Was A Rolling Floyd”, they switched gears to rehearsing instead of recording. “We started playing together and writing in the way we’d written a lot of things before,” bassist Roger Waters later recalled, per Classic Rock. “‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’ was written in exactly the same way, with odd little musical ideas coming out of various people. The first one, the main phrase, came from Dave [Gilmour]. The first loud guitar phrase you can hear on the album was the starting point.”

The nine-part composition, “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”, was undoubtedly a strong starting point for Wish You Were Here. But the band still struggled to complete the rest of the album. Eventually, Pink Floyd had to have a sit-down at Abbey Road to try to figure out the source of their discontent. “We all sat round and unburdened ourselves a lot, and I took notes on what everybody was saying,” Waters said. “It was a meeting about what wasn’t happening and why.”

Pink Floyd Finally Releases Their ‘Dark Side’ Follow-up

Despite what the rehearsal and recording sessions might have suggested to the band at the time, Wish You Were Here finally came to be on September 12, 1975. Initial reception was a bit lukewarm, thanks in no small part to the intense anticipation that was swirling around the follow-up to Dark Side of the Moon. Although it took a while for the public to appreciate the album fully, critics soon began recognizing Wish You Were Here for the incredible record that it was. Even the band would have agreed.

Richard Wright, David Gilmour, and Roger Waters have all listed Wish You Were Here among their top Pink Floyd albums. Their opinions reflected the public’s. Wish You Were Here peaked at No. 1 in the U.S., U.K., Italy, New Zealand, Australia, Spain, Denmark, and Finland.

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