Wish You Were Here forms part of a concept album with the same title that focus on absence and disenchantment with the music industry. They chose this as the title track because it summed up the message. The first to suggest this as the album title, was Storm Thorgerson, the man who did their cover art.
The song is dedicated to Syd Barret, and was based on a poem that Roger Waters wrote about Syd Barrett’s fall from reality. It was said that Syd’s friends would lace his coffee with LSD, which eventually lead to his mental breakdown.
This was a rare case of the Pink Floyd primary songwriters Roger Waters and David Gilmour mutually collaborating on a song — they rarely wrote together. Gilmour had the opening riff written and was playing it in the studio at a fast pace when Roger Waters heard it and asked him to play it slower. The song built from there, with the pair writing the music for the chorus and verses together, and Waters adding the lyrics.
Waters felt they were not putting a full effort into the recording sessions and the song reflected the feeling of the band while they were recording the album.
The album contains images relating to the theme of absence. The cover image shows 2 men shaking hands, with one of them on fire. This represents a common slang term at the time “being burned”, meaning to be undercut in some way, usually by the system or oppressive industry. In all of the images, there is something missing, like the diver who does not make a splash.
When Wish you were here starts, it sounds like it is coming from an AM radio somewhere in the distance. The radio was recorded from David Gilmour’s car radio. He performed the intro on a twelve-string guitar, processed to sound like it was playing through a car AM radio, and then overdubbed a fuller-sounding acoustic guitar solo. This passage was mixed to sound as though the guitarist were sitting in a car, listening to the radio; it also contains a whine that slowly changes pitch—emulating the electro-magnetic interference from the engine of a car as it accelerates and decelerates. The master tape of the original recording includes an entire performance of pedal steel guitar, played by David Gilmour, that was not used in the final mix.
At the end, when the wind is blowing, you can hear the sound of a violin that was played by Stephane Grappelli, a Jazz musician who was recording in nearby studios. Pink Floyd asked him to guest on this when they found out he was there.
This is one of the few songs Roger Waters continued to play at his shows after leaving Pink Floyd that David Gilmour helped him write.
The song includes the line: “Can you tell a green field/From a cold steel rail?”, which is a reference to Syd Barrett’s solo song, “If It’s In You”, from The Madcap Laughs album (“Hold you tighter so close/Yes you are/Please hold on to the steel rail”).