Shine On You Crazy Diamond - Recording

Recording

According to David Gilmour and Nick Mason on the Wish You Were Here episode of In the Studio with Redbeard, Pink Floyd recorded a satisfactory take of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond", but because of a new mixing console which was installed at Abbey Road Studios, it needed to be re-recorded because excessive 'bleed' from other instruments could be heard on the drum tracks.

We originally did the backing track over the course of several days, but we came to the conclusion that it just wasn't good enough. So we did it again in one day flat and got it a lot better. Unfortunately nobody understood the desk properly and when we played it back we found that someone had switched the echo returns from monitors to tracks one and two. That affected the tom-toms and guitars and keyboards which were playing along at the time. There was no way of saving it, so we just had to do it yet again. —David Gilmour, An Interview with David Gilmour by Gary Cooper With the invention of 16-track and 2-inch tape there was the belief for quite a while that there would be something wrong with editing tape that big. Consequently whenever we played these pieces, they had to be played from beginning to end. Particularly for Roger and myself being the rhythm section, which would be laid down first, this was a fairly tough business because the whole thing had to be sort of right. —Nick Mason, In the Studio with Redbeard

On part 3, a piano part seems to have been added "live" to the final mix, making it absent from multitracks masters. That part was re-recorded by Richard Wright during the multi-channel mix used for the album Immersion Edition and the SACD release.

In another incident, Syd Barrett (heavyset, with a completely shaved head and eyebrows) wandered into the studio while the band was recording Wish You Were Here, although Mason has since stated that he is not entirely certain whether "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" was the particular song being recorded when Barrett was in the studio. Because of his drastically changed appearance, the band could not recognize him for some time.

When they eventually recognized Barrett, Roger Waters was so distressed he was reduced to tears. Someone asked to play the song again and Barrett said a second playback wasn't needed when they'd just heard it. Apparently, when "Wish You Were Here" was played, "He stood up and said, 'Right, when do I put my guitar on?'" Wright recalled. "And of course, he didn't have a guitar with him. And we said, 'Sorry, Syd, the guitar's all done.'"

Roger was there, and he was sitting at the desk, and I came in and I saw this guy sitting behind him--huge, bald, fat guy. I thought, "He looks a bit...strange..." Anyway, so I sat down with Roger at the desk and we worked for about ten minutes, and this guy kept on getting up and brushing his teeth and then sitting--doing really weird things, but keeping quiet. And I said to Roger, "Who is he?" and Roger said "I don't know." and I said "Well, I assumed he was a friend of yours," and he said "No, I don't know who he is." Anyway, it took me a long time, and then suddenly I realized it was Syd, after maybe 45 minutes. He came in as we were doing the vocals for Shine On You Crazy Diamond, which was basically about Syd. He just, for some incredible reason he picked the very day that we were doing a song which was about him. And we hadn't seen him, I don't think, for two years before. That's what's so incredibly...weird about this guy. And a bit disturbing, as well, I mean, particularly when you see a guy, that you don't, you couldn't recognize him. And then, for him to pick the very day we want to start putting vocals on, which is a song about him. Very strange. —Richard Wright

When asked what he thought of Wish You Were Here, Barrett said it sounded a "bit old". He subsequently slipped away during celebrations for Gilmour's wedding to Ginger Hasenbein, which had taken place earlier that day. Gilmour confirmed this story, although he could not recall which song they were working on when Barrett showed up. (One of the photographs in Mason's book Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd appears to have been taken that day (page 211); it is captioned: Syd Barrett at Abbey Road Studios, 5 June 1975).

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