Wish You Were Here

Pink Floyd returned to the studio in the first week of 1975.Alan Parsons had declined the band's offer to continue working with them (instead becoming successful in his own right with The Alan Parsons Project), and so the band turned to Brian Humphries, with whom they had already worked on More. The group initially found it difficult to devise any new material, especially as the success of Dark Side of the Moon had left all four physically and emotionally drained. Richard Wright later described these early sessions as "falling within a difficult period", and Waters found them "torturous". Gilmour was more interested in improving the band's existing material, and Mason's marriage was failing, bringing on in him a general malaise and sense of apathy, which interfered with his drumming.
It was a very difficult period I have to say. All your childhood dreams had been sort of realised and we had the biggest selling records in the world and all the things you got into it for. The girls and the money and the fame and all that stuff it was all … everything had sort of come our way and you had to reassess what you were in it for thereafter, and it was a pretty confusing and sort of empty time for a while …
—David Gilmour

After several weeks, however, Waters began to visualise another concept. During 1974, they had sketched out three new compositions, and had performed them at a series of concerts in Europe. These new compositions became the starting point for a new album, whose opening four note guitar phrase, composed entirely by accident by Gilmour, reminded Waters of the lingering ghost of former band-member Syd Barrett. The songs also contained barely-veiled attacks on the music business, and provided an apt summary of the rise and fall of their former bandmate; "Because I wanted to get as close as possible to what I felt … that sort of indefinable, inevitable melancholy about the disappearance of Syd." "Raving and Drooling" and "Gotta Be Crazy" had no place in the new concept, and were set aside.

While the band were working on the album, Barrett made an impromptu visit to the studio, during which, Thorgerson recalled, he "sat round and talked for a bit but he wasn't really there." He had changed in appearance, and the band did not initially realise it was him. Waters was reportedly deeply upset by the experience. Barrett eventually left without saying goodbye, and none of the band members ever saw him again.

Storm Thorgerson concealed the album artwork with a dark-coloured shrink-wrap. Inside, the cover image was inspired by the idea that people tend to conceal their true feelings, for fear of "getting burned", and thus two businessmen were pictured shaking hands, one man on fire. Much of Wish You Were Here was premièred on 5 July 1975 at an open-air music festival at Knebworth, before being released in September that year. It reached number one in Britain and the US, along with positive reviews; Robert Christgau wrote: "… the music is not only simple and attractive, with the synthesiser used mostly for texture and the guitar breaks for comment, but it actually achieves some of the symphonic dignity (and cross-referencing) that The Dark Side of the Moon simulated so ponderously."