Watch David Gilmour, David Crosby and Graham Nash take on a classic Pink Floyd song
Of all the beautiful tracks of Pink Floyd, perhaps ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’ is their most iconic. The song is split into nine wonderful parts and was composed by David Gilmour, Roger Waters and Richard Wright. The tune, quite famously, appeared on Pink Floyd’s effortlessly brilliant 1975 concept album Wish You Were Here.
The legendary tune is just one of many that had been written in tribute to the band’s former singer Syd Barrett, who had left the band in 1968 owing to a sharp decline in his mental health. The remaining members of the band would always feel an empty, haunting presence in their practice room, which is why so many of their songs were dedicated to the “crazy diamond”.
Gilmour would soon replace his childhood friend, Barrett, in the Pink Floyd lineup and brought to the group his fantastic guitar tone and melodies that primarily revolved around bent notes played in the minor pentatonic scale with a generous amount of reverb.
Talking of his unique guitar tone in a 2015 interview, Gilmour said, “It’s a gift, I suppose. It’s something that just arrives naturally at this point. I think there’s some kind of strange peculiarity or my lack of coordination between hands that gives it something rather off and thus distinct.” Despite the evident humility in Gilmour here, we simply can’t imagine anyone but Gilmour providing the guitar sounds to the prog-rock legends.
During a day of recording, Syd Barrett turned up at the studio unexpectedly, with a startingly appearance of a completely shaved head and eyebrows. His appearance had changed so drastically that the band did not recognise him at first. Barrett was extremely withdrawn and sat in the corner of the mixing room, which eventually brought Roger Waters to tears.
Richard Wright would later reveal: “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, 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 recognise 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.”
When Richard Wright joined Gilmour to play the song at the Royal Albert Hall in 2006 – coincidentally, just months before Barrett would die – he also brought out folk rock legends David Crosby and Graham Nash to join in the live rendition of the tune.
Check out the video of the performance below.
