Video Classics: 'Wish You Were Here'

To honor WNEW's legendary Firecracker 500, every day we are highlighting the music that populated the 1991 and 1996 lists, with classic videos, live performances and little-known facts about the songs and how they came to be...

One of the advantages of being the guitarist for a major rock band is that you can be just messing around in the studio with a guitar riff you invented and one of your bandmates will come up to you and say something like 'We should turn that into the title track of our next album.' Such was the benefit David Gilmour of Pink Floyd enjoyed when a riff he'd come up with while just playing around at home caught the attention of Roger Waters, who appropriated it for the song Wish You Were Here (from the 1975 album of the same name).

Waters had been working on the album for some time, with many of the songs referring to former band member Syd Barrett's breakdown. Wish You Were Here talks about Waters' feelings of alienation from society and other people (a continuing theme in much of his work that would become a major motif of his 1979 rock opera The Wall).

While it comes in at a Top-50 #41 on the 1991 Firecracker 500 and #22 on the 1996 list, the song did not chart when it was initially recorded for the simple fact that it was never released as a single. Only in 1995, when a live version from the band's album P*U*L*S*E was issued did Wish You Were Here see release on its own. To date, it is the last single released by the band.

The video below is taken from the Live 8 concert of 2005, where the band enjoyed a one-show (and much-heralded) reunion. For the album version of the song, check out after the jump. The odd audio quality near the beginning is intentional, as Gilmour wanted the song to sound like someone playing their guitar along to a song on an old AM radio.

Have memories of this song or the Firecracker 500? Add your thoughts to the comments below or take a look at Video Classics past...