The Beloved Pink Floyd Album That Was “Torture” to Make (And Nearly Caused a Breakup)

By the time Pink Floyd had arrived at their ninth studio album release, the psychedelic rock pioneers had already experienced some of the highest highs and lowest lows they would encounter during their decades-long career. Released in September 1975, Wish You Were Here was the introspective, wistful follow-up to the band’s magnum opus, Dark Side of the Moon, from 1973. It would have been reasonable to assume the band was riding high on such a whopping commercial success. However, the opposite was true.

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The mainstream magnitude of Dark Side of the Moon seemed to send Pink Floyd into shock. The musicians’ personal lives were maturing. Creative visions were beginning to diverge from one another. Syd Barrett’s mental breakdown and subsequent departure were at the front of mind for the drifting bandmates. The band later described this tenuous period as “torture.”

“At the end of that year, everyone in the band approached the management individually and said they were thinking of quitting,” drummer Nick Mason later recalled. “It’s one of those things that one discovered much later. At the time, none of us had any idea the others felt the same. It was down to the pressure of following Dark Side…and Roger [Waters] being at the point where he was starting to think he could do it all on his own.”

‘Wish You Were Here’ Was a Lonely Album Made in a Lonely Way

Though not always the case, the logistics of making an album can reveal more about how the band felt toward one another than their actual words and actions. For most bands, recording an album is a deeply collaborative process in which everyone remains involved throughout. But Pink Floyd’s ninth studio album, Wish You Were Here, marked a change in this process. Instead of tracking together, the musicians often came in individually to work on overdubs and other finishing touches. When the band was together, their time was spent playing darts rather than making music.

Once Pink Floyd actually got around to digging deep into the album, it was an arduous process. Nick Mason later told The Guardian, “Wish You Were Here was harder work than almost any album we ever did. But at the end of the day, we came out with something that we’re still talking about today.” And indeed, he’s not the only former Pink Floyd member who felt that way. Both David Gilmour and Roger Waters, for all of their personal and artistic differences, have cited Wish You Were Here as the best in their catalogue.

“For me, Wish You Were Here is the most satisfying album,” Gilmour told Guitar World in 1993. “I mean, I’d rather listen to that than Dark Side of the Moon. Because I think we achieved a better balance of music and lyrics on Wish You Were Here.” Waters called the album the band’s “most complete.”

Interestingly, Richard Wright seemed to have the most positive memories out of anyone in the group, calling Wish You Were Here a “very enjoyable time…where we were really pulling together as a band. We had our disagreements, but it was still a nice creative process.”

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