Pink Floyd followed up The Dark Side of the Moon with a less spacey album, Wish You Were Here. Taking on concepts of alienation and industry plights, the album wasn’t as well received as the band’s prior work upon its release. In hindsight though, Wish You Were Here has gone down as one of the most impressive rock albums of all time.
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[RELATED: Behind the Song: Pink Floyd, “Wish You Were Here”]
The album cover is just as iconic as the work within. Simple yet affecting, the cover was conceptualized by Hipgnosis graphic designer Storm Thorgerson. But what prompted the idea? Find out below.
Behind the Album Cover
The creative team at Hipgnosis used the album as a jumping-off point for the cover’s concept.
“We discuss what the music feels like to us,” Co-founder Storm Thorgerson said in his book Mind Over Matter: The Images of Pink Floyd (obtained by Floydianslip.com). “Or the intention of the lyrics. Or what the album may really be about, even if the Floyd haven’t said it, or don’t yet know it.”
After careful consideration, they surmised that Wish You Were Here was about “absence.”
The two businessmen featured on the cover were inspired by a song from the record, “Have a Cigar.” The song was a slight at industry heads that the band felt had lost sight of the big picture in favor of making a quick buck.
With the two men shaking on an empty deal along with the flames representing the feeling of being “burned” by others, the cover art sees the absence motif well accounted for.
The stuntmen (Ronnie Rondell and Danny Rogers) were shot by photographer Aubrey “Po” Powell at the Warner Bros. studios lot in Los Angeles. As it was the mid-’70s, the creatives shied away from special effects and instead opted to cover one stuntman in a fire-proof suit and set him ablaze.
Though it proved to be a relatively safe endeavor, the fire did singe Rondell’s mustache for a moment, promptly ending the shoot.
“The flames were blown back and ignited his real mustache for an instant,” Thorgerson recalled. “A close shave, one might say.”
To further drive home the feeling of absence, Thorgerson encased the album in a black shrink wrap that obscured the art until the buyer unwrapped it.
Legacy of the Album
Wish You Were Here has become one of the most highly regarded rock albums of all time. It has earned spots on several lists compiling the best of the best in the genre.
“[Wish You Were Here is] an album I can listen to for pleasure, and there aren’t many Floyd albums that I can,” keyboardist Richard Wright once said.
David Gilmour added, “The end result of all that, whatever it was, definitely has left me an album I can live with very very happily. I like it very much.”
The album has since been certified six times Platinum in the U.S., certified Gold in the U.K, and has sold an estimated 13 million copies worldwide.
Wish You Were Here Cover Art by Aubrey “Po” Powell
