New Wax Wednesday

Where have you been? It’s all right, we know where you’ve been. Naturally, many of you already know that I’ve just borrowed some key lyrics from “Welcome to the Machine” to segue into the news that Pink Floyd have just announced a 50th anniversary edition of Wish You Were Here — the album from whence that song comes from — will be released in expanded 3LP and deluxe box set editions on December 12, 2025, on Pink Floyd Records/Sony Music.

The 50th anniversary edition of Wish You Were Here (a.k.a. WYWH50) features six previously unreleased alternate versions and demos that will supplement the core album itself, which was originally released on September 12, 1975, on Columbia here in the U.S., and Harvest across the Pond.

WYWH50 will arrive in multiple formats, including the aforementioned 3LP edition (seen above) and a deluxe 4LP/2CD/1BD box set (seen at the very top of this post), along with separate/comparable 2CD, 1BD, and digital editions. More on the digital-oriented options in just a bit, but let’s focus on the vinyl goodies first. The 3LP edition includes the original, remastered WYWH album plus nine studio bonus tracks — six of them previously unreleased, as noted above, and three other choice cuts that were previously available on the 2011 EMI-released Immersion box set and Experience 2CD set, respectively. To date, the latter three tracks — namely, “Wine Glasses,” “Have a Cigar (Alternate Version),” and “Wish You Were Here (Featuring Stéphane Grappelli)” have only appeared together on digitally oriented formats.

Meanwhile, the bigger deluxe box set adds a fourth, clear vinyl LP dubbed Live at Wembley 1974 featuring a nice pair of -intended tracks culled from that show, as well as a replica Japanese 7in single of “Have a Cigar” b/w “Welcome to the Machine,” a hardcover book including unseen photographs, a comic book tour program, and Knebworth concert poster. (The deluxe box also includes all the aforementioned audio on 2CDs, plus a Blu-ray with a new Atmos mix of WYWH by James Guthrie.)

To get ahead of the release curve, and in conjunction with the core WYWH album having been released 50 years ago this month (on September 12, 1975, to be more precise), the mighty Floyd also just posted the previously unheard early demo of “Welcome to the Machine” that was originally titled “The Machine Song.” That version, officially titled “The Machine Song (Demo #2, Revisited),” is a tad shorter in length than the epic original Side 2 opener it soon enough evolved into — and you can check it out now for yourself via the official YouTube clip below.

Among the other studio rarities to be released on WYWH50 LPs 2&3 include “The Machine Song (Roger’s Demo),” the first home demo of the song that bassist/vocalist Roger Waters originally brought to the band; a previously unheard instrumental mix of the track “Wish You Were Here” showcasing guitarist/vocalist David Gilmour’s pedal-steel guitar prowess; and, for the first time, a complete “Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Pts. 1-9)” that joins together the two halves of the song that were split across each side of the original LP, as newly mixed in stereo by James Guthrie.

The SRP for the Wish You Were Here 50th anniversary 3LP edition is a fairly respectable $69.99, and you can preorder it here from Music Direct, and/or via the MD link graphic that appears later in this post, just ahead of the tracklisting section.

For my fellow Pink Floyd completists out there, MD also offers the mondo deluxe box set for $249.99 and the standalone BD for $26.99, both of which you can preorder here. If you want to go even further than that, the band’s official site store offers some exclusive, limited collectors editions that include related WYWH50 ephemera at PinkFloyd.com.

What else is in the mondo box set that you can’t get on the official vinyl, you ask? The BD features the new, above-noted WYWH Dolby Atmos mix by James Guthrie, as well as his 2011 5.1 mix from the Immersionkiller job remixing the band’s May 2, 2025-released Pink Floyd at Pompeii – MCMLXXII 2LP edition in stereo, as well as in Atmos on the companion BD. The WYWH50 BD also includes three concert screen films from Floyd’s 1975 tour, plus a Storm Thorgerson short film (video content that was also part of that long out-of-print 2011 Immersion box set).

As for the other vital WYWH50 technical stats, while we haven’t been given any of the vinyl pressing-specific details as of yet, it certainly seems likely that, akin to the 2023 50th anniversary editions of the band’s seminal March 1973 album The Dark Side of the Moon, were pressed at Record Industry in The Netherlands — but, that said, we will certainly update that distinction if we are given different confirming information. (You can read about those historic TDSOTM50 2023 releases here and here on AP, which I posted in January and August 2023, respectively).

Like many of you, I of course have multiple versions of Wish You Were Here on vinyl, so I happily welcome a new-to-2025 edition to add into my playback mix for the requisite comparison/contrast. For the record, I have a) my well-played and officially shelf-restricted 1975 Columbia LP (PC 33453); b) the cool-for-what-it-is 1976 Quad Australian-import CBS LP (SQP 234651; partially seen above); c) a much-better-sounding half-speed-mastered 1982 CBS Mastersound LP (HC 33453); and d) the 180g 2011 remastered edition on Harvest, still ensconced in its black plastic outer sleeve — in addition to, on the digital side of things, various CD incantations, that Immersion box set, and the 2011 Analogue Productions/EMI SACD among them.

When I sat down with Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason in New York City on November 3, 2014, he told me he was more than pleased that “Wish You Were Here (Featuring Stéphane Grappelli)” had initially been unearthed for the Immersion box set series. “It’s one of those gems, isn’t it? I thought we had lost that one — that we’d run out of space and recorded over it,” he admitted. “To find that one really pleased me. It’s amazing.” (He’s not wrong!)

Interestingly, Mason (seen below in a period photo by JD Mahn, courtesy Sony Music Entertainment) also confirmed with me that legendary violinist/conductor Yehudi Menuhin was also present at those original WYWH title-track recordings sessions, but he declined to participate. “It would have been terrific if he had played on that song, but he wasn’t comfortable,” Mason clarified. “He was one of the greatest violinists of the 20th century, but of course his classical training knocked out the ability to improvise. There are a few violinists who have done it, though. It can be done, but it takes a particular mindset to be able to do that, and Yehudi was old school. In my view, he would have loved to have done something but he couldn’t do it, where Stéphane was able to.” We can only wonder about what Menuhin, who passed away in 1999, may have done with that track — but rest assured, what maestro Grappelli did with it is beyond fascinating, and well worth hearing on vinyl, finally. (Grappelli passed away in 1997.)

I’m going to add one other interesting WYWH-related observation from Mason here, courtesy another interview we did together in New York on November 16, 2016, in relation to how Pink Floyd made sure certain thematic counterparts would appear across various albums that were often released years apart. “Sometimes, some of the things we do don’t necessarily knit together at all — they were two threads that run parallel with each other,” he told me. “And then maybe somewhere further on, you might hear something on Wish You Were Here where you’ll go, ‘Ahh, that’s an element from this into that.’” (Feel free to seek out the aural connections between a certain, epic 23-minute full-side track on November 1971’s Meddle, and some of its more-than-likely intended/related sonic elements on WYWH.)

Some more Wish You Were Here info/data now as per the official press release, along with the requisite MM editorial notes/additions. WYWH was Pink Floyd’s first album to reach the top of the charts on both sides of the Atlantic, in turn becoming the band’s fastest-selling album. While the aforementioned The Dark Side of the Moon had catapulted Pink Floyd from being a hugely successful breakout British band into one of the biggest rock groups on the planet, Wish You Were Here, the band’s ninth studio LP, was their powerful response to their newfound global fame.

WYWH boasts only five tracks, two of them comprising the split-side, multi-part eulogy to original Floyd guitarist/vocalist Syd Barrett, “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” in addition to the chillingly prescient and hypnotic “Welcome to the Machine,” the music industry-scathing screed “Have a Cigar” — with its immortal line, “Oh by the way, which one’s Pink?” that was in fact not sung by either Waters or Gilmour, but rather by British folk legend Roy Harper — and the ever-affecting, acoustically tinged title track, “Wish You Were Here.”

The album’s themes of absence, isolation, and transience, along with its commentary on the insincerity of the music business, are all embodied in the iconic, shall we say, fiery album artwork, which is seen in its absolutely clean version above. The visual puns developed by the band’s longtime design tandem of Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey “Po” Powell at Hipgnosis remain instantly recognizable visual statements today. (Sadly, Ronnie Rondell Jr., the stuntman who can be seen engulfed in flames on the right side of the handshake on the cover shot, passed away at age 88 just a month ago on August 12, 2025, while Thorgerson passed at age 69 in 2013.)

Remembering that time, the still-with-us Powell said the following in a press statement, which I’ll quote word-for-word here to wrap things up. “In the 1970s, album covers were equally as important as the music, because the cover helped to sell the record,” Po observed. “Record stores would carry 10,000 different images in album sleeves, so what we were doing had to look different and stand out amongst the crowd. I remember turning around to Storm and saying, ‘How are we going to set a man on fire?’ — because there was no digital way of doing it in those days. He said, ‘Po, you're just going to have to do it for real.’ That was it.”

Continued Po, “One has to remember that Pink Floyd were the only band on EMI and Capitol Records who had the rights to the creative — in terms of album cover — besides The Beatles. That's why we were allowed to do what we wanted. It was brilliant. Just the same way that Pink Floyd were a very inventive band at the time, so were Hipgnosis. We were determined to keep that abstract, enigmatic image alive and hence, we were able to do that for Pink Floyd.”

Welcome to the Unstoppable Pink Floyd Machine, everyone. Set your click-controls to the heart of preordering your copy/copies of WYWH50 now.

Author bio: Mike Mettler is the editor of Analog Planet in addition to being the music editor of our sister site Sound & Vision, and he’s also a contributing music editor to one of our other sister sites, Stereophile, in addition to being the regular Vinyl Icons column scribe for Hi-Fi News. Plus, he’s quite partial to vintage 1967 Mustang fastbacks, but that’s yet another story for a different time and place.

PINK FLOYD
WISH YOU WERE HERE – 50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION
3LP (Pink Floyd/Sony Music)

LP1, Side A
1. Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Pts. 1-5)
2. Welcome To The Machine

LP1, Side B
1. Have A Cigar
2. Wish You Were Here
3. Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Pts. 6-9)

LP2, Side C
1. Wine Glasses †
2. Have A Cigar (Alternate Version) †
3. Wish You Were Here (Featuring Stéphane Grappelli) †

LP2, Side D
1. Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Early Instrumental Version, Rough Mix) *
2. The Machine Song (Roger’s Demo) *

LP3, Side E
1. The Machine Song (Demo #2, Revisited) *
2. Wish You Were Here (Take 1) *
3. Wish You Were Here (Pedal Steel Instrumental Mix) *

LP3, Side F
1. Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Pts. 1-9, New Stereo Mix) *

* never before officially released
† Previously released physically on the 2011 WYWH Immersion box set and Experience 2CD edition

DELUXE WYWH50 BOX SET – VINYL EXCLUSIVES
(Note: LPs 1-3 have the same content as the above 3LP set)

LP4 – Live At Wembley 1974

LP4, Side G
1. Shine On You Crazy Diamond

LP4, Side H
1. You’ve Got To Be Crazy

Japanese Replica 7in Single
Side A: Have A Cigar (Edit)
Side B: Welcome To The Machine