Pink Floyd – Wish You Were Here – Lyrics about nostalgia for a time when it meant something.

I always felt this was a song that harked back to Syd again.

We get trapped in careers. We sell our time and souls to our jobs, to earn a living, and in so doing we give up that time of innocence, timelessness and beauty that is youth.

Back in the sixties there was an idealism that seemed to be building momentum. The establishment were being by-passed. It wasn’t all about money and power. But then you get sucked in.

Pink Floyd had been a huge Underground band at the forefront of innovation in the psychedelic sixties. Now they were in the turgid seventies. Out of nowhere they had the most enormous success with the wonderful Dark Side of the Moon. Wish You Were Here was the follow-up. The pressure was on and there was a disillusionment with the whole business. What used to be fun was now hard work. What used to have meaning and purpose was now process. What used to be music was in danger of becoming product.

One minute we were fighting a war against the establishment to create a better world and the next we were sucked into the machine. It was a trap. We were all in our cages. We were going round and round in the same world as before looking out from our limited perspective at the world outside and like goldfish we quickly forget what it was all about.

Wish You Were Here

So, so you think you can tell
Heaven from Hell,
Blue sky’s 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.
And how we found
The same old fears.
Wish you were here.