The Meaning Of Wish You Were Here’s Album Cover

THE MEANING OF ‘WISH YOU WERE HERE’S ALBUM COVER

In this article I want to explain the meaning behind the surreal cover for Pink Floyd’s 1975 concept album ‘Wish You Were Here’. The album covers of this rock group are particularly interesting. Whereas most album covers feature photo shoots of the band members themselves, Pink Floyd rarely took that approach (to my knowledge they have appeared on only three album covers, and in one of those their image is so small you might not notice them at all). Instead their album covers have tended to be surreal imagery, including two massive steel heads (‘The Division Bell’) an inflatable pig soaring amidst the four chimneys of Battersea Power Station (‘Animals’) and a prism splitting a beam of light into its rainbow colours (‘Dark Side Of The Moon’). These images are not just there to catch the eye but oftentimes are intended to convey the concept around which the whole work is based. This is particularly true, I think, of ‘Wish You Were Here’.

Before explaining the meaning behind this cover, it’s worth pointing out something interesting to do with the albums that preceded it. To my mind, Pink Floyd is a group whose history is reflected in the works they put out. If you know about the band and how they evolved, it makes perfect sense that these albums should have appeared in the order they did.

Let’s start, sensibly enough, with the very first Pink Floyd Album, which was called ‘The Piper At the Gates Of Dawn’ (it’s named after a chapter in the Wind In The Willows). This is perhaps one of the most original collection of songs to be found. It’s a delightfully surreal trip through English folklore and fairytales. Most of the songs were written by the founder member of Pink Floyd, Roger ‘Syd’ Barrett. It was recorded in 1967 at Abbey Road while the Beatles were next door laying down tracks for Sgt Pepper, and there’s definitely an LSD-influenced feel to the songs. For a time that hallucinogenic drug was seen as the key to unlocking the mind’s potential rather than as a ticket to oblivion and it does seem as though it aided Barrett’s extraordinary creative potential, at least for this album.

Unfortunately the drugs did end up having a detrimental impact on his mind, to the extent that Barrett went crazy. He became impossible to work with and so the rest of Pink Floyd had to take the decision to carry on without this key member. In the second Album (‘A Saucer Full Of Secrets’) Barrett has only one song attributed to him, and it is both fitting and sad to note how it sounds like it was composed by somebody losing their mind.

With Syd Barrett gone the next few albums have a highly experimental feel to them. This gives the impression of a band that has lost its major creative force and is kind of directionless, just playing around with ideas in an attempt to ‘find themselves’. As we have seen, they really had lost the major creative force of the band so it’s hardly surprising that the next few albums reflect that fact. The experimentalism evolves into epic pieces that take up the whole of one side of an LP (those LPs being ‘Atom Heart Mother’ and ‘Meddle’) and from there we come to the kind of album for which Pink Floyd are particularly famous: The Concept Albums of ‘Dark Side Of the Moon’, ‘Wish You Were Here’, ‘Animals’, and (perhaps the ultimate concept album) ‘The Wall’. These are not just a collection of tunes but songs centred around a particular theme. Which brings me, at last, to the album cover for ‘Wish You Were Here’.

There are two important things to know about Pink Floyd if you want to ‘get’ this cover. We have mentioned the first of these already, which is that their founder member and original creative force suffered a nervous breakdown due to his drug habit and had to be kicked out of the band. Despite having been ejected from the group back in the late 60s, the memory of Syd had always haunted the band and his presence can be felt in lyrics like ‘If the band you’re in starts playing different tunes/ I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon’ (from the track ‘Brain Damage’ from ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’).

Speaking of which, this brings me to the other thing it is important to know, which is that ‘Wish You Were Here’ is the album that followed the Floyd’s most popular album in terms of sales: Dark Side Of The Moon. They really hit the jackpot with that album, which is one of the biggest-selling albums of all time. This must have put quite a bit of pressure on the band to come up with similar goods for next album.

Remember how I said Floyd’s albums reflect their personal history? Well, Wish You were Here is mostly concerned with the pressures of working in the music industry. The tracks ‘Welcome To The Machine’ and ‘Have A cigar’ both portray the thrills and anxieties of becoming a music ‘product’, churning out endless hits for the voracious appetites of music executives ( they feature lyrics like ‘what did you dream? It’s alright, we told you what dream’ and ‘did we tell you the name of the game, boy? We call it riding the gravy train’). The other tracks ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’ (which was intended to be another epic taking up a whole side but ended up being split so it opens and closes the album with the other tracks in between) and ‘Wish You Were Here’, both of which are tributes to Barrett.

‘Wish You Were Here’ is not only about the pressures of success in the music industry but also about ‘absence’. Psygnosis, the company run by Storm Thorgerson that designed almost all of Pink Floyd’s covers (all of them apart from ‘The Wall’ and ‘The Final Cut’) sought an image that conveyed ‘absence’ and decided to use an image that represented a meaningless human interaction. They decided that a ‘handshake’ best represented this, as they thought it was something people often did almost automatically as part of social etiquette. The album features other images, the majority of which also convey the core concept of ‘absence’. There is an image of a person diving into a pool with the splash and ripples absent. And there is an image of a ‘man in a suit’, only the man’s body, facial features and limbs are invisible and it’s just an empty business suit. Probably that’s not just a commentary on absence but also of the faceless suits that ran the music industry at that time. In other words, that image is a reflection of both themes.

The handshake represents the theme of music industry pressure as well, of course, (many a deal is agreed with a handshake) but there is something added to the image that not only gives it that ‘Pink Floyd’ touch of surrealism but also emphasises the theme of greed in the music industry at that time. One of the men who is shaking hands is on fire. I believe the model was literally set on fire while the photo shoot was underway (with all necessary precautions, obviously) rather than this being an effect added in post-production. ‘Getting burned’ is a euphemism in the music industry for being suckered by a bad deal.

So there we have it: The meaning behind ‘Wish You Were Here’s album cover, depicting a man on fire engaged in a handshake with somebody, an image that represents the themes of absence and the price of success in the music industry.

Thanks to Psygnosis for the images.