photos by the newt
By Steve Newton
I don’t normally remember buying albums 50 years ago, but my purchase of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here is another story. I distinctly recall that it came in black plastic shrink-wrap, with a colourful round sticker in the corner depicting two mechanical hands engaged in a handshake.
When I got it home I threw out the black plastic and glued the sticker to the actual cover, the iconic Hipgnosis image of two men in business suits shaking hands, with the guy on the right in flames. Then I encased the whole thing in my own clear plastic sleeve, as I did with all my vinyl.
I also remember that it took me a while to get into the music on Wish You Were Here. It was quite different from the psychedelic rock featured on the band’s previous LP, the 10-track The Dark Side of the Moon. There were only four actual songs on Wish You Were Here–including the nine-part, 26-minute “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”–so you really had to pay attention. Eventually I grew to love all the dynamic twists and turns of the music, whether or not my teenaged self understood the lyrical concepts of greed, longing, and ambition.
Backstage at Vancouver’s Queen Elizabeth Theatre last night, after Brit Floyd had performed its 21-song set, I asked guitarist-vocalist and musical director Damian Darlington which Floyd tune he’d most enjoyed playing that evening, and wasn’t too surprised when he pinpointed Part VI of “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”. He got to deliver some scintillating lap-steel guitar during that portion of the song.
As many Floyd fans are aware, “SOYCD” was written as an homage to original Pink Floyd frontman Syd Barrett, multiple images of whom were flashed on the huge circular screen that was the focus of the band’s laser-packed light show. In recognition of the 50th anniversary of Wish You Were Here, the nine-piece band (including three female backing vocalists) played the album in its entirety, from start to finish, book-ended with choice tracks from Meddle (1971), Dark Side (’73), Animals (’77), The Wall (’79) The Final Cut (’83), A Momentary Lapse of Reason (’87), and The Division Bell (’94).
As someone who was fortunate enough to have seen Pink Floyd perform a couple of times–in 1987 and again in 1994–I can say that Brit Floyd does an outstanding job of recreating the legendary prog band’s music with the finest high-tech sound and lights available. The big difference is that, instead of a huge stadium, they’re doing it within the confines of a soft-seater.
Highlights of the show included a theatrical performance of The Wall‘s “Comfortably Numb”, in which bassist-vocalist Ian Cattell donned a white lab coat and used a syringe to administer “just a little pinprick” to an unconscious “patient” slumped in a chair while Darlington went to town on an extended and raunched up version of David Gilmour‘s iconic guitar solo.
Then there was the spectacular performance of singer Eva Avila on “The Great Gig in the Sky”, the soaring vocal tour-de-force originally performed by Clare Torry on Dark Side.
Backstage after the show Darlington made a point of mentioning that Avila was a Canadian, and that drummer Randy Cooke–who has toured and/or recorded with the likes of Ringo Starr, Mick Jagger, and Dave Stewart from Eurythmics, and did a masterful job of handling Nick Mason’s Floydian percussion duties last night–was from Canada as well.
Alright! Let’s hear it for those uber-talented Canucks!
To hear the full audio of my 2023 interview with Damian Darlington–and my interview with Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour as well–subscribe to my Patreon page, where you can eavesdrop on over 500 of my uncut, one-on-one conversations with musicians since 1982.