“Threatened by shadows at night, And exposed in the light, Shine on you crazy diamond!” refers to the way in which the darker machinations in Barrett’s mind, the “shadows at night” shielded him from the public eye, the exposure to light, which overwhelmed him. The following lines, “You cried for the moon, Shine on you crazy diamond!” are a reference to the band’s previous album The Dark Side of the Moon and its lyrics about Barrett and talk of how Barrett’s life had peaked too soon. Barrett used drugs in order to try to unlock the meaning and its mysteries but was not ready to see them, causing him to go insane. The lyric “You reached for the secret too soon” refers to the true meaning of life and the mysteries which lay behind it. The lines “Come on you target for faraway laugher, Come on you stranger, you legend, you martyr, and shine!” is a reference to the way in which Barrett was ousted from the band in favour of David Gilmour due to his worsening drug use and mental problems rendering him ineffective as a band member. The next line, “Blown on the steel breeze” alludes to the sound made by Barrett’s guitar strings. The following line, “You were caught on the crossfire of childhood and stardom”, refers to the way in which Barrett was never able to fully engage the transition from underground sensation to mainstream success and the pressure and implications that came with it. Lyrically, Shine On You Crazy Diamond looks at the life of Syd Barrett, considering the way the artist was before demons such as LSD, fame and mental illness took hold in lines such as “Remember when you were young, You shone like the sun, Shine on you crazy diamond!” before contrasting it with lyrics detailing the effect of these demons in lines such as “Now there’s a look in your eyes, Like black holes in the sky, Shine on you crazy diamond!” The latter lines state the way in which Barrett’s bandmates described him after he had succumbed to mental illness. Instead, Shine On You Crazy Diamond was split into two sections and bookends Wish You Were Here, with the other tracks on the album also being tributes to Barrett and telling of the situation which the band found themselves in. He subsequently slipped away during celebrations for Gilmour’s wedding to Ginger Hasenbein, which had taken place earlier that day. When asked what he thought of Wish You Were Here, Barrett said it sounded “a bit old”. According to Richard Wright in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine in 2004, when the song Wish You Were Here was played, “He stood up and said, ‘Right, when do I put my guitar on? And of course, he didn’t have a guitar with him. Somebody asked to play the suite, followed by Barrett saying a second playback wasn’t needed when they had just heard it. Upon finally recognising him, Roger Waters was reduced to tears. Because of his drastically changed appearance, the band did not recognise him for some time. The recording session for the song is infamous due to the appearance of Barrett wandering into the studio complete with shaved head and eyebrows and having put on a lot of weight since the band had seen him last some years earlier. The mad genius of Syd Barrett first addressed by Pink Floyd on Brain Damage from The Dark Side of the Moon in 1973 was further celebrated on Shine On You Crazy Diamond from the 1975 album Wish You Were Here. – David Gilmour, interview with Musician Magazine, December 1982. It’s just a sad, sad thing, a very nice and talented person who’s just disintegrated”. He’s got uncontrollable things in him that he can’t deal with and people think it’s a marvelous, wonderful, romantic thing. It’s sad that these people think he’s such a wonderful subject, that he’s a living legend when, in fact, there is this poor sad man who can’t deal with life or himself.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |