Wish You Were Somewhere Else

In the end, we all wish that everybody we loved could be here, but that’s just not how things are.

Did “Shine on” ever shine and why am I dredging up this old and worn out material? I don’t know, other than that I’ve hit an age where having some of my random thoughts placed into order and catching them in a bucket seems important. Household objects on a shelf in a row. Photographs set on a timeline. I know this imagery isn’t really helping, but it’s the best I’ve got.

I could write about things that are deeper and more meaningful, but I’m not so well connected. Not this time anyway. There are a lot of songs about Syd Barrett out there. Some well intentioned, some cashing in, some just “influenced by”, and so on. Rock music loves the disturbed and the dead. They’re the subjects that won’t kick back or complain as their myths and legends fade, grow or mutate.

The most famous song about Syd is, of course, “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” from Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd. This album directly followed The Dark Side of the Moon and, as you’d imagine, audience expectations were high and unrealistic. A tough challenge for any band. There’s over two years between the albums. A long time in rock music. For the title and main theme, they took on the subject of their own recent evolution from Syd’s influence. A thing that many bands have done with lost or missing creators. Write about what you know, I guess. Common experiences.

The multi-layered piece is meant to be an undead eulogy for Syd Barrett, a man who was still alive at the time but not present (apart from the “incident”). It wants to be tender. It wants to be noble. But wanting isn’t the same as being. What it delivers has a brutal feel and a distance about it, like a cold monument built from the polished stone of prog rock. The man it honours was, at his pop peak, all quicksilver and slippery nerve. A madcap laughing but heading down the drain. I can’t really listen to his post Floyd solo efforts these days. Crazy; unkindly, yes. Diamond; not so sure.

The lyrics are blunt and weak. “Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun.” It sounds grand. It sounds important. But it doesn’t say much. There are awkward religious overtones. The phrases drift by in big, cloudy symbols leading to black holes, steel breezes, diamonds in the sky. They gesture towards tragedy without ever cutting in closer to the bone. Barrett once was sharp, strange, playful. Dangerous and destructive. His early work with Pink Floyd had bite and colour. Here, he’s reduced to a fallen star. It’s neat. It’s tidy. It’s not a good fit.

Musically, the song sprawls over the album, divided into pretentious parts like a medical textbook. Long stretches of synth-heavy atmosphere. Slow builds that promise revelation but can’t quite deliver it. David Gilmour’s guitar lines, always silky smooth and controlled, as we’ve come to expect. Roger Waters using the solemn weight of his writing, but the weight never provides emotional heat. The iconic four-note motif is strong the first time. With multiple listenings, it can feel like an idea stretched thin. There is craft here. There is polish. What’s missing is connection.

There is also an uncomfortable sense that the band projects misplaced guilt and nostalgia onto Barrett rather than engaging honestly with who he was. The tone is reverential but distant, as though the subject has already been turned into some tragic symbol. Hard now to remember the person. He was a writer of naive pop songs that glinted. They darted into off-kilter observation. He was whimsy and melody and nerve. This song turns him into a statue.

For an artist as idiosyncratic and defiantly unconventional as Syd Barrett, whose early work burned bright before falling into disarray, this stately, slow burning lament feels misaligned with his spirit. I wonder if he might have recoiled at such a ponderous, self serious monument. Did he have the capacity to listen from his dark corner?

Mental health problems are not easy for family and friends to deal with. All the love, effort and time taken to try to “help” are often thrown back and rejected. Feelings and loyalty are stretched to their limit if the condition spirals, as Syd’s clearly did. It’s not some glorious thing. Ultimately the shining part becomes a faded history and the dull reality is of a struggle to just exist without pain. Nothing fills the hollow centre. These are things that are hard to describe and harder to sing about.

In the end, “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” feels well meant but incomplete. You could argue it had to be done rather than ignore the story, but as it reaches for the myth, it misses the man. Treating Barrett like a victim when he was a restless talent who thrived on surprise. I can respect the intention. I can admire the sound. But now I don’t feel it. Maybe that’s why it doesn’t so much fail as simply miss the mark. It’s an album I’d choose to avoid listening to. In the end, we all wish that everybody we loved could be here, but that’s just not how things are.