It’s not often that one of the best-known songs by a classic group features a vocalist who wasn’t even in the band. But that’s the case for sure with Pink Floyd when it comes to their song “Have A Cigar”.
For different reasons, no one in the band could sing the bitter takedown of the music industry’s callous treatment of artists. As such, the band farmed it out to a friend, who proceeded to give the song the vocal treatment it needed.
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A Simple ‘Wish’
Pink Floyd hit such ridiculous heights with The Dark Side Of The Moon that it seemed to the band that there was nowhere to go but down. They struggled to come up with ideas to follow up on that massive record. Their desperation was evident in the fact that they briefly considered an album where musical instruments would be replaced by household objects.
Roger Waters noticed that the band, himself included, no longer seemed present in the music-making process, instead simply going through the motions. Their vacant stares reminded him of Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd’s first leader, who flamed out from the group with mental issues.
That realization sparked inspiration in Waters. He created a song cycle that combined his memories of Barrett with his own feelings of alienation, all while sprinkling in some material about the soulless behavior of record companies. The album would be titled Wish You Were Here upon its 1975 release.
“Cigar” Talk
Waters framed “Have A Cigar”, one of the bite-sized, radio-friendly moments of the album, as a pitch from a record-company schmoozer to an up-and-coming rock star. Unctuous flattery is betrayed when the exec makes a mistake that Floyd had actually experienced. “Oh, by the way, which one’s Pink?” he asks.
When it came time to track the song, however, none of the band members could step up and do it. Waters had been dealing with the painstaking process of recording the suite “Shine On Your Crazy Diamond”, which hadn’t done any favors to his vocal cords. Guitarist David Gilmour, meanwhile, didn’t like the tone of the lyrics, as he wasn’t generally one to bemoan his life as a musician.
There’s no indication that keyboardist Rick Wright was even considered. Instead, Pink Floyd went outside the band, albeit to someone they knew quite well. Roy Harper shared management with Floyd and was recording in another Abbey Road studio while the band was making Wish You Were Here. They asked him to sing “Have A Cigar”.
The Help of Harper
Harper never quite made the mainstream in the United States, although he enjoyed a little bit of notoriety in Great Britain as a psych-folk singer-songwriter. You might recognize the name from Led Zeppelin’s tribute to him, “Hats Off To (Roy) Harper”. He gladly accepted when Floyd asked if he’d fill in on vocals for “Have A Cigar”.
It’s hard to imagine that anyone would have pulled off a vocal performance as memorable on the song. Gilmour, Waters, and Wright were more workmanlike as singers. Harper went for the gusto, adding flourishes left and right that took the song to another level.
In later years, Roger Waters regretted the decision to let Harper have the gig, explaining that it no longer seemed like the band. But considering the narrator of “Have A Cigar” is outside the band and trying to woo it with false promises, Harper’s appearance seems perfectly apropos to us.
(Photo by Michael Putland/Getty Images)