Understanding Have A Cigar

Come in here, dear boy, have a cigar! You're gonna go far.

What do you do when you've spent your entire life working toward a single goal, and then you accomplish it beyond your wildest dreams? That was the conundrum faced by Pink Floyd after the release of Dark Side Of The Moon, and while each member had their own response, the overall answer seemed to be "mourn the loss of a purpose". They'd done it, and they weren't happy, so the band, led by their famously cantankerous bassist Roger Waters, decided to look inward. They didn't like what they saw, but as artists, they knew how to handle that sort of darkness: You turn it into more art. Wish You Were Here wasn't a passion project, it was a project of necessity, ground out of the band by a music industry that demanded a follow-up to keep the money flowing, and at the heart of the album, Waters struck back, laying bare all his sharpest critiques of the business that had destroyed his soul.

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[tone]

Some additional thoughts/corrections:

1) It's maybe not entirely correct to the story to say that Cigar Man's goal is to get the band to _sign_ with him, given that much of the dialogue, especially in the second verse, seems to be from a later point where they're already working with him and he's trying to get them to do more work ("You've gotta get an album out, you owe it to the people") that will ultimately make him money, but I went with the simpler version because the details aren't that important and it's a reasonable read of the first verse at least.

2) A thing I probably should've gotten into that I never got around to in the script is just how many instruments Richard Wright is playing here. He's credited on five different keyboard instruments, all layered together. I couldn't find real stems for that so I wasn't able to spread them out and demonstrate all the different sounds, but all those layers of pads contribute a lot to the dense, oppressive atmosphere of the song, especially during the big riff sections.

3) In retrospect it might've been more demonstrative to notate both vocal parts in the harmonized demo, but I always try to avoid notating multi-note things wherever possible because the sharpie makes it hard to read, and I didn't really need to discuss any of the specific notes or anything.

4) I should note that the version of the story of Roy Harper's treatment by the band comes from Harper's own accounts, and since nothing was ever written down it's hard to say for sure if he's embellishing, but it's a story he's told multiple places and it seems to fit and I couldn't find any evidence of the band refuting it, so I think it's safe enough to say it probably happened at least roughly like that. I did try to keep the story much more generalized than Harper's retellings though, to account for any discrepancy between that and the truth.

[rmdodsonbills]

It's hard to imagine a better demonstration of the fight between art and commerce than to have the discussion of "the needs of the artist... subsumed by the needs of the industry" interrupted by a toilet paper commercial.

[isomeme]

That filter sweep followed by a compressed tinny sound exactly replicates the effect of blowing out the woofer on a ~1970 home speaker. I think it was designed to provoke a jolt of fear and 4th-wall-breaking in listeners, especially first-time listeners hearing it on their own stereos. That's certainly how it worked (and works) for me.

[mrswb]

I've always found it odd that arguably their best radio song is the most scathing indictment of the music industry.

[QuietDarkness]

I’m as simple as they come, I see a 12 tone video about Pink Floyd, I click immediately. A band that I came to love through the influence of my father and the pure enjoyment of their work.

[Mayblesh]

“…Something that doesn’t work” *draws a Tesla logo* has me rolling lol

[Fantumh]

Thematically it makes the most sense to have someone from outside the band sing Have a Cigar.

[martincox]

2:32 “Pink Floyd’s meddling”. I saw what you did there—well played!

[hegemonycricket]

Its rather funky...one of my favorite things about the song.

[usagi]

@20:35 Yeah, if it was almost any other guitarist, I'd agree with the "it's difficult to nail pitch on a string bend..." but this is Gilmour we're talking about, who has a consistent/solid history of pitch-nailing bended notes (even of the step-and-a-half variety). The guy is just masterful in his purpose & execution. I definitely agree that this was an intentional "wail of anguish" note.

[nashwinston]

That little opening riff always gets me to mime flicking out the cigar into my hands, lighting it and leaning back into my chair to pose as some sleazy record exec.

[Packbat]

9:22 I think you could make a case that great art comes, not from pain, but from honesty. I'm sure there's a million exceptions, but it sounds like they were creating something real here.

[bob-rogers]

Cool episode.

I think a lot of what made Pink Floyd special was the way Gilmore grafted blues guitar onto British psychedelic rock.

Thanks for the staff paper. I just bought some for my wife, who writes out a lot of violin parts for herself--on really poor quality staff paper.

[edh]

I've always thought this song is really fascinating on the Wish You Were Here album because it plays immediately following Welcome to the Machine, which has a much more directly cynical and sinister tone to it, whereas this one feels almost jokish, like they're making fun of the whole thing and how stupid it all is. Think about "By the way, which one's Pink?" The line makes fun of an actual question they got from a record label, and mocks the need to create a rockstar. Meanwhile Welcome to the Machine has the singer cynically describe a troubled youth being molded into a marketable figure. The contrast between the two I always find really interesting.

[davidlewis]

Outstanding. I immediately grabbed the best ear-goggles I have, and set aside all shenanigans in order to watch and listen very closely. Your snarkiness shows itself, only occasionally, in your sketches and they delight me deeply!

[lucasgraeff]

The raw live versions of this track are truly powerful and show how angry they were at the time

[MartijnHover]

Roy Harper has done some interesting songs himself. He's probably not that well known in America, but he was a big figure in the Britsh folk scene of the 60s and 70s. I'd recommend his album "Stormcock". He was also close with Jimmy Page, who contributed to several of his records.

[beenaplumber]

Gilmour has always been the most precise stringbender I've known. He's also a blues guitarist. I think that high almost-D late in the solo is really just the blue note - the flatted 7th of the root, only a little flatter (microtonal). I don't think he was struggling to hit anything. I think he found what he wanted. He often bent notes way up there.

[Paranoidisagreatsong]

You should look into some of their early psychadelic stuff, interstellar overdrive, flaming, bike, paintbox

[pablothecatlord]

I love the polyphonic quote, polyphonic explains pink floyds background and music so well