The evolution of Pink Floyd tends to feel like talking about three separate bands. Although many casual fans might know tracks like ‘Money’ or ‘Wish You Were Here’, the power struggles between David Gilmour and Roger Waters throughout their prime led to the group having different sonic identities whenever they went into the studio.
The duo stand as the pillars of the group, but the foundations were laid long before. There was always one other leader of Pink Floyd, and Gilmour felt that one of the best songs the band ever made came from honouring Syd Barrett.
If Barrett had been able to keep himself together, chances are Gilmour would have been out of a job. After diving headfirst into the psychedelic scene, Barrett became the leader of Pink Floyd in their early years, making songs that flirted with the sounds of space rock and fanciful tales that felt ripped straight out of Alice in Wonderland.
That kind of process might have worked in the midst of The Summer of Love, but Barrett’s genius did come at a cost. For all of the years that he had spent using psychedelics, Barrett had begun to lose himself, eventually cracking mentally halfway through the band’s touring for their first album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.
As the band tried to make the best of what they had, Gilmour was brought in to shadow Barrett’s parts, ultimately taking over for him halfway through A Saucerful of Secrets. No matter how hard they held out hope, Barrett’s problems were beyond anything they could do, eventually leading to them “forgetting” to pick him up for a gig and continuing on with Gilmour.
While the next few years would see the band fumbling in the dark, trying desperately to get something to stick, Meddle was the first time they landed on a new sound with the song ‘Echoes’. Beginning the theme of empathy that would become a touchstone of future Floyd projects, Waters would continue writing about the human condition on The Dark Side of the Moon, building a premise that anyone who has ever breathed air could relate to.
Once the band hit the big time in 1973, though, there was still lingering guilt over the one band member who never got to see the fruits of their success. Channelling their pent-up emotion and cynicism with the record industry, Wish You Were Here was meant to be a touching tribute to their fallen bandmate, with ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’ being the main centrepiece for the record.
Broken up into two separate parts, the entire song feels like the band trying to communicate with their old friend through music, even including a little interpolation of the song ‘See Emily Play’ towards the end of the second movement. Compared to the different tones they got on every record, the four notes of the main theme practically feel like the band found Barrett’s ghost in between jamming.
When Uncutnamed the song the best Floyd had to offer, Gilmour said it captured the essence of what they were, saying, “It’s the purest Floyd song, the peak of that particular stage in our development…The ideas were all so good that we wanted room for them to breathe, which is why the complete version is about 26 minutes long, and needed to be split in two as it didn’t fit on one side of an LP”.
Even though ‘Wish You Were Here’ gets most of the praise for being one of the best encapsulations of what Floyd could do, ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’ is a better look at who they were as people as well as musicians. After all of the huge leaps forward they had taken since Barrett’s departure, he was still among the greatest losses they had ever had.
Perhaps working as a fable for the pitfalls of fame, ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’ sees Waters discuss his friend Syd Barrett in the most touching way he ever achieved on record.
The album itself is a tribute to Barrett, but this song, in particular, brings the story of Barrett to the fore. A nine-part epic, it not only looked at the band’s past but offered a vision of their future: Roger Waters commanding searing songs and creating gigantic musical landscapes.
