Alice Cooper and Rick Wakeman are among the performers on DECCA CLASSICS’ new symphonic version of Pink Floyd’s legendary album Wish You Were Here, released to mark its 40th anniversary. The London Orion Orchestra were joined by the guitarists Dave Fowler and Steve McElroy from The Australian Pink Floyd Show to record Wish You Were Here Symphonic, a project produced and masterminded by Pete Smith, working with the New Zealand conductor, Peter Scholes, who arranged the tracks and conducted the recording: the album was recorded, mixed and mastered at the world famous Abbey Road studios in London where the original Pink Floyd album was made.
David Gilmour, Pink Floyd’s lead guitarist and singer, considers Wish You Were Here his favourite Pink Floyd album and this new recording does justice to the depth of the music and its innovation by re-creating all seven tracks with an exhilarating symphonic sweep and scale.
In Peter Scholes’s view, the original concept album lends itself brilliantly to a dramatic orchestral treatment with its long instrumental introduction that segues into the first song, Shine On You Crazy Diamond, a tribute to Syd Barrett who had left Pink Floyd after suffering a mental breakdown. The music then morphs into Welcome to the Machine, a bleak critique of the music business telling of betrayal, corporate greed and alienation that ends by describing a party where nobody has any real feelings for anybody else. Scholes chose to end the new album with a rendition of Eclipse, the final track on Floyd’s earlier landmark hit, The Dark Side Of The Moon.
Wish You Were Here was the ninth studio album by Pink Floyd. When it was released in September 1975 it went 6 times platinum in the US alone and has since sold around 13 million copies worldwide. The band’s ground-breaking use of new studio techniques and innovative approaches has been reflected in Wish You Were Here Symphonic .
It was Pink Floyd, for example, who pioneered the idea of inviting well known musicians to make guest appearances on their albums. On Wish You Were Here, they included the highly influential folk rock singer Roy Harper on vocals. (Classical violinist, Yehudi Menuhin, and jazz violinist, Stéphane Grappelli, happened to be working together in another studio at Abbey Road as Pink Floyd toiled away next door and they were both invited to join the band in their studio. Grappelli agreed and his contribution can still be heard, although he is not credited on the album.)
This time around it is “The Godfather of Shock Rock”, Alice Cooper, who provides vocals. He broke off from a concert tour in the US and the recording of a major TV documentary to lay down his contributions to the album, and Rick Wakeman leapt at the chance to play keys.
Like many in the London Orion Orchestra, Wakeman is a graduate of the Royal College of Music in London and he is no stranger to playing on other peoples’ albums, having begun his career as a session musician. He played on David Bowie’s Hunky Dory, most famously creating the haunting piano line in Life on Mars. On this new recording Wakeman plays his beloved Steinway grand and brought his own Mini Moog synthesiser to the sessions. Other well-known musicians also offered help. Radiohead’s, Jonny Greenwood, loaned his Ondes Martenot to add an authenticity to the project.