Pink Floyd succeeded like few other rock bands of their era. But they always viewed that success with a heaping helping of skepticism, and they never hesitated to call out the music industry itself and those within it. Those attitudes come to the fore in striking fashion on “Welcome to the Machine.”
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What was it that inspired this song? How did it fit into the Wish You Were Here, the masterpiece Floyd album where it appeared? And what exactly is the meaning behind it? Here are all the details on one of this incredible band’s most iconic works.
Making a Wish
Pink Floyd achieved a monumental triumph with Dark Side of the Moon in 1973, an album that propelled them from cult band to rock heroes. That transformation unsettled the members of the band, and they all dealt with a sense of “Where do we go from here?” As it turned out, they found that the way forward required a look back.
Wish You Were Here, the 1975 followup to Dark Side, dealt in large part with the shadow cast by Syd Barrett, the band’s creative mastermind at its outset. Barrett famously burnt out due to a combination of mental problems and drug use, and the remaining members of the band chose to fire him when he could no longer contribute in a meaningful way.
Roger Waters, the chief lyricist for Floyd, let his feelings of guilt and regret about how the Barrett situation played out rise to the surface on several songs on Wish You Were Here. But he also took aim at some of the rock-star trappings that might lead even a previously healthy mind to the brink of a breakdown. “Welcome to the Machine” plays into that notion.
Building the Machine
“Welcome to the Machine” stands out as one of Pink Floyd’s most ambitious pieces of music. It’s not really a rock music track at all, in that there’s no real bass or even typical drums. The rhythm comes mostly from the throb of a synthesizer, which keyboardist Rick Wright embellishes with wild squalls of sound. David Gilmour adds some acoustic guitar, strummed in stately fashion. Nick Mason includes some timpani to heighten the drama.
As they so often did, Pink Floyd delivered some sound effects to drive home the meaning. Note the opening door at the beginning of the song to let the impressionable kid into the machine, and how it shuts at the end, locking him inside this nightmare. The sound of laughter from a party breaks out toward the end of the song as well. In an interview with Melody Maker in 1977, Waters explained this idea:
“That was put there because of the complete emptiness inherent in that way of behaving – celebrations, gatherings of people who drink and talk together. To me that epitomizes the lack of contact and real feelings behind people.”
What is “Welcome to the Machine” About?
Roger Waters wrote “Welcome to the Machine” as a kind of ironic greeting given by some sort of bigwig to an impressionable young musician. This youngster enters world for which he is woefully unprepared, and the symbolic machine has the potential to grind him up. There’s a Big Brother aspect to these overlords, as evidenced by how they seem to know everything about this kid before he tells them: It’s all right we know where you’ve been.
His career trajectory resembles countless others who have reached this point: You bought a guitar to punish your Ma/ You didn’t like school and you know you’re nobody’s fool. In the second verse, the ominous narrator suggests that his free will has been compromised: It’s all right we told you what to dream. That’s when it’s revealed that this kid once idolized another guitarist hero, one who has likely been swallowed up by the machine as well. Hence, the salutation of “Welcome to the Machine,” sung by Gilmour as if it’s a warning, acts as confirmation that the cycle of artists being ground down by the industry is being perpetrated yet again.
“Welcome to the Machine,” sound-wise, comes as close to sci-fi as any Pink Floyd track. But lyrically, it describes an all-too-human verity wherein a beautiful dreamer gets corrupted and used by those looking to monetize those dreams.
(Photo by Jo Hale/Getty Images)
