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I guess we’ll never know, though in these days, I’m guessing that someone somewhere has resequenced Wish You Were Here on a playlist so that it leads off with the full “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” which I guess would go a little something like this. It also didn’t hurt than the meat of the “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” sandwich were three of the greatest songs they ever wrote - “Welcome to The Machine,” “Have a Cigar” and fucking “Wish You Were Here” - and perhaps waiting a whole album side to get to them might have somehow diluted their combined impact.

While “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” is powerful to have stood as a single song - and indeed, that’s how I’m writing about it - in terms of Wish You Were Here as an album, breaking it up into the beginning and ending of the record united it both musically and thematically in a way that was both moving and powerful. And it pretty much was from the very start, despite the fact I was getting into it at exactly the same time I was getting into the Who, the Rolling Stones and punk rock.Īnd much of that is attributed to “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” which was slightly too long to be an album side on its own, so they bookended Wish You Were Here with it, opening with “Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts I-V)” - Roman numerals adding extra heft, I guess - and closing with “Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts VI-IX).” Which is this: not only is Wish You Were Here my favorite Pink Floyd album, my favorite Prog album and one of my favorite albums of the 1970s it’s practically a desert island disc, to boot.

I don’t really remember why - or exactly when - I chose to purchase Wish You Were Here as my first Pink Floyd album, though I’m guessing it was during the second half of 1978 or early 1979, and possibly at the behest of one prog-loving friends, at whose house I first heard it.