Pink Floyd Lyrics, Themes & Meanings: Wish You Were Here (Wish You Were Here)

Wish You Were Here 5:15
(written by Waters, Gilmour)

Lyrics:
So, so you think you can tell
Heaven from Hell
Blue skies from pain
Can you tell a green field
From a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?

And did they get you to trade
Your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange
A walk on part in the war
For a lead role in a cage?

How I wish
How I wish you were here
We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl
Year after year
Running over the same old ground
What have we found?
The same old fears
Wish you were here

Roger Waters: "The music comes first and the lyrics are added, or music and lyrics come together. Only once have the lyrics been written down first — Wish You Were Here. But this is unusual; it hasn't happened before. Just lyrics on a piece of paper, several couplets and pairs of words. That was kind of shelved, then came Have a Cigar." [Miles]

Stéphane Grappelli played on the album. Roger comments: "He was downstairs when we were doing Wish You Were Here. Dave had made the suggestion that there ought to be a country fiddle at the end of it, or we might try it out, and Stéphane Grappelli was downstairs in number one studio making an album with Yehudi Menuhin. There was an Australian guy looking after Grappelli who we'd met on a tour so we thought we'd get Grappelli to do it. So they wheeled him up after much bartering about his fee – him being an old pro he tried to turn us over, and he did to a certain extant. But it was wonderful to have him come in and play a bit. You can hear him if you listen very, very, very hard right at the end of Wish You Were Here, you can hear a violin come in after all the wind stuff starts – just! We decided not to give him a credit, 'cause we thought it might be a bit of an insult. He got his £300, though." [Miles]

This author, at least, certainly couldn't hear the violin no matter how hard he listened.

Roger: "In a way it's a schizophrenic song. It's directed at my other half, if you like, the battling elements within myself. There's the bit that's concerned with other people, the bit that one applauds in oneself, then there's the grasping avaricious, selfish little kid who wants to get his hands on the sweets and have them all. The song slips in and out of both personae, so the bit that always wants to win is feeling upset and plaintively saying to the other side, wish you were here." [Dallas 112]

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