Pink Floyd Wish You Were Here

Wish You Were Here

Pink Floyd first banded together in 1965 with Roger Barrett as the “creative force” behind the band (Barnes). However, drug and alcohol abuse led to his mental breakdown. His unreliability led to the band’s search for a new lead singer. The album cover and the song are both a metaphor for the band’s experiences with Barrett. Pink Floyd’s 1975 album cover of Wish You Were Here portrays artistic elements of light, destruction, and unique placement. They reflect the band’s skeptical feelings about the music industry, and the universal issue of man vs. self and the pain of longing.
The two designers of the artwork, Aubrey Powell and Storm Thorgerson met with the band to generate ideas and create a cover that would have a stronger connection with the band while showing the contrasting elements of
art. Thorgerson and Powell incorporate in their work a motif that provided a “nice sense of contradiction of an impossible co-existence” (Hardie, Thorgerson). This contradiction makes their work more thought provoking about hardships in life as well as the co-existence of corruption and ingenuity. On the cover, two middle-aged men in suits are shaking hands, however the one on the right is on fire. They are in an empty lot behind dull colored buildings. The two men look as if they could be the same person, meeting each other at different points in their lives. One is at an earlier, more content point in life, while the other is at a rougher, more damaged stage. The man on fire has darker features, is hunched over, and wounded. You can no longer see his face or what he looks like anymore because of the damage caused by the fire. The man on the left looks cleaner, more identifiable, with a confident posture. He’s staring at the burning man as if he’s staring at the damaged, corrupted version of himself. Society has changed this man to a point where he is unrecognizable, synonymous with the line in the song, “Do you think you can tell?” The album cover is also illustrative for another song on the album - Shine On You Crazy Diamond. The lyrics “Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun” describe Barrett when he first started in the band and had tremendous musical talent. This youth is portrayed in the man in the picture that is intact and confident. He represents the earlier stages of life that can be full of naivety and beauty; before being corrupted by the stress and greed he found in the music industry.
In contrast to Shine On You Crazy Diamond, the song Wish You Were Here talks about exchanging the misfortunes of life for their more favorable counterparts. The lyrics, “Did you exchange hot air for a cool breeze?” describes the idea of exchanging difficult times in life for the easy way out. This relates to Barrett’s road to drug abuse as an escape from the pressure of his musical responsibilities. This “exchange” explained in the song is also depicted in the cover as the two men shake hands portraying a trade or deal.
The cover further reflects the song in that it translates the feelings of the loss of companionship into the physical representation. It’s in this “understanding” of one’s position in life that he is able to greet this damaged version of himself. This is how he sees who he’s become well enough to “wish” he could be how he was before. In this longing man is able to see how corrupted life – in this case, life in the music industry - can be. In an interview for The Story of Wish You Were Here: The Documentary, lead guitarist and Syd’s close friend, Roger Waters said he wrote the song to “encourage [himself] not to accept a lead role in a cage.” Waters wrote these lyrics to show his admiration for Barrett’s talent, however he didn’t want to make the mistakes that Barrett had made. The miracle of the band’s collaboration in the beginning, and the contradictory tragedy that follows are what the band was thinking about when writing both the song and creating the album cover.
Wish You Were Here’s album cover used artistic elements to show the pain that the band felt for the loss of an integral part of the band, Syd Barrett. Shine On You Crazy Diamond is a continuation of Syd Barrett’s remembrance. The lyrics describe “sadness for loss of a friend”. Gilmour noted, the first few notes of Wish You Were Here essentially “evoked in Roger a [feeling for a] song about Syd and his absence” (Edginton). This song sparked the creation of the album and the idea to use this album to pay their homage to Syd. This substantiates the burning man as not only a man who experiences loss and corruption, but as a close friend that has affected the band in both positive and negative ways.
The cover artists, Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell carefully articulated the objects and coloring in the picture to represent the band’s message. Their album artwork including Wish You Were Here and Dark Side of the Moon usually consists of contrasting ideas and feelings that outline a message communicated by the musicians. Thorgerson and Powell worked with Pink Floyd to create this album cover in 1975, six years after dropping Barrett from the band. Powell took the photo with a man literally burning on fire while wearing an asbestos suit and wig. He used a real burning man to symbolize Syd not only because the computer graphics were nonexistent, but also because this realistic picture adds to the depth of the idea of pain and self-destruction. Aubrey Powell had the idea of a man on fire as a metaphor for “being burned in business”. This was a perfect fit for Pink Floyd’s situation as they had lost Syd Barrett to the pressure of working in the music industry.
Powell and Thorgerson purposely chose the Warner Brothers film lot in California because of the bland exterior that reflects light into the alleyway (Hardie).
The cover’s simplicity in coloring and placement adds to the artwork in that the dull pastel background colors contrast with the harsh black figures in the foreground. This draws the eyes towards the center and makes the observer focus on the similarities between the two men. In addition to the burning man’s darker complexion, his side of the street is dressed with shadows cast by the buildings. This adds to the darkness in the man’s presence and further conveys the idea that this light the man on the left once had can easily disappear with poor decisions. These poor decisions would only come back to greet him long after the fire had taken its toll. Syd Barrett’s mental imbalance created an inability to handle the pressures of leading a band to success in the music business. Barrett’s partying and drug abuse only made the matter worse and ultimately consumed this once successful musician. These contradictions show the impossible co-existence of tremendous talent, stardom, and
self-destruction.
Pink Floyd’s album cover Wish You Were Here sends multiple messages about the long-term impact of one man’s destructive decisions, reflection of his worth, and longing for the unity and friendship the band once enjoyed. Using contrasting elements of light, placement and color, these metaphorical messages in the artwork make Wish You Were Here unforgettable.

Works Cited

Barnes, Peter. "Pink Floyd | The Official Site." Pink Floyd | The Official Site. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Nov. 2012. .

Hardie, George, and Storm Thorgerson. An ABC of the Work of Hipgnosis "walk Away René" Limpsfield: Paper Tiger, 1978. Print.

"Mp3Lyrics.com." Lyrics Copyright. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Nov. 2012. .

The Story of Wish You Were Here: Documentary of the Classic 1975 Pink Floyd Album. Dir. John Edgington. Perf. Joe Boyd, David Gilmour, Roger Waters, Venetta Fields, Aubrey Powell. Eagle Vision, 2012. DVD.

Thorgerson, Storm. "Storm Thorgerson." Storm Thorgerson. Bluish, n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2012. .