Pink Floyd- Wish You Were Here- Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Nick Mason

“YOU try following up Dark Side of the Moon.  Go on, just try it!” playfully admonishes Pink Floyd guitarist/singer David Gilmour.”We’ve been trying to do it ever since,” laughs drummer Nick Mason. Yet not only is that follow up album Wish You Were Here their confessed favorite of all that they did, this postcard from the edge of Pink Floyd founder Syd Barrett’s madness holds up exceedingly well because of classics “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”,”Have a Cigar”,”Welcome to the Machine”, and the title ode.   There’s a common misconception that the fracturing of Pink Floyd occurred at some time after their worldwide blockbuster The Wall  album and movie. However, this week’s classic rock interview with  Waters, Gilmour,  Mason, and the late Richard “Rick” Wright clearly reveals that Waters has a completely different recollection than the other three of the 1975  recording sessions for Wish You Were Here, with Waters declaring to me pithily, “That album should have been called ‘Wish WE Were Here’, because we weren’t, really. Already the rot had set in…” Regardless of the conflicting perceptions by the participants, Rolling Stone magazine ranks Wish You Were Here at #211 on their Top 500 Albums of All Time, with readers to Britain’s Q magazine voting it even higher at#34 all time. Even prior to the reissue and box set in 2011, Pink Floyd’s ninth album had sold in excess of 13,000,000 copies. David Gilmour and Nick Mason are my guests, Roger Waters makes a cameo, and we include archive comments from the late keyboard player Richard Wright to round out the definitive classic rock interview regarding Wish You Were Here. –Redbeard