Pink Floyd – Wish You Were Here(1975)

Biography
Pink Floyd were an English rock band formed in London. They were founded in 1965 by students Syd Barrett on guitar and lead vocals, Nick Mason on drums, Roger Waters on bass and vocals, and Richard Wright on keyboards and vocals. They gained popularity performing in London’s underground music scene during the late 1960s, and under Barrett’s leadership released two charting singles and a successful debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967). Guitarist and vocalist David Gilmour joined in December 1967; Barrett left in April 1968 due to deteriorating mental health. Waters became the band’s primary lyricist and conceptual leader, devising the concepts behind their albums The Dark Side of the Moon (1973), Wish You Were Here (1975), Animals (1977), The Wall (1979) and The Final Cut (1983). The Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall became two of the best-selling albums of all time. Following creative tensions, Wright left Pink Floyd in 1979, followed by Waters in 1985. Gilmour and Mason continued as Pink Floyd; Wright rejoined them as a session musician and, later, a band member. The three produced two more albums—A Momentary Lapse of Reason (1987) and The Division Bell (1994)—and toured through 1994. After nearly two decades of acrimony, Gilmour, Wright, and Mason reunited with Waters in 2005 to perform as Pink Floyd in London as part of the global awareness event Live 8; Gilmour and Waters later stated they had no plans to reunite as a band again. Barrett died in 2006, and Wright in 2008. The final Pink Floyd studio album, The Endless River (2014), was recorded without Waters and based largely on unreleased material. Pink Floyd were inducted into the American Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005. By 2013, the band had sold more than 250 million records worldwide, including 75 million certified units in the United States. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_Floyd

Album & Cover
Wish You Were Here is the ninth studio album by English rock band Pink Floyd. It was released on 12 September 1975 by Harvest Records in the United Kingdom and a day later by Columbia Records in the United States. Inspired by material the group composed while performing around Europe, Wish You Were Here was recorded during numerous recording sessions at Abbey Road Studios in London, England. Two of the album’s four songs criticise the music business, another expresses alienation and the multi-part track “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” is a tribute to Syd Barrett. Barrett’s mental breakdown had forced him to leave the group seven years earlier, prior to the release of the group’s second studio album A Saucerful of Secrets (on which he only appeared on three tracks). It was lead writer Roger Waters’ idea to split “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” into two parts that would bookend the album around three new compositions and to introduce a concept linking them all. The band had used a linking concept for their previous album, The Dark Side of the Moon, to great success. As with The Dark Side of the Moon, the band used studio effects and synthesizers and brought in guest singers to supply vocals on some tracks of the album. These singers were Roy Harper, who provided the lead vocals on “Have a Cigar”, and the Blackberries, who added backing vocals to “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wish_You_Were_Here

Designing the cover, Storm Thorgerson, working off of the lyrical themes of the record, wanted to explore images that depicted the longest-standing, tried and true ethos of rock and roll: sticking it to the man. The cover is filled with imagery that lambasts the soulless salesmen. On the front, there are two men in suits shaking hands, one of them on fire. Ronnie Rondell and Danny Rogers were the stunt men hired for the cover, and the high winds that day caused Rondell to lose his eyebrows and moustache. Considering it was the ’70s, it was probably a pretty great moustache, too. The back cover boasts a faceless salesman in the desert, his lack of ankles and wrists a not-so-subtle depiction of the “empty suit.” The entirety of the LP cover and inner fold suggests such emptiness and vacuity, explored on tracks like “Welcome to the Machine” and “Have a Cigar.” When it came time to release the album and ship it to record stores, Thorgerson only added to those themes by insisting that the entire LP should be encased in a black plastic sleeve, a move only ever perfected by Floyd . http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/music/a25231/pink-floyd-wish-you-were-here-cover/

Thorgerson says: “The theme for this album was absence. We couldn’t do a blank cover as The Beatles had already done it with ‘The White Album’ so we shrink-wrapped the LPs in black and opaque cellophane. Some fans cut the sleeve with a blade and slid the record out so have never seen the burning man cover.” Read more at http://www.nme.com/photos/pink-floyds-album-sleeves-explained/122047#/photo/2#TQfLZJmcKlqOtP4s.99