{"id":256346,"date":"2025-10-28T09:48:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T09:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/256346\/"},"modified":"2025-10-28T09:48:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T09:48:08","slug":"simon-you-crazy-diamond-armitage-poem-marks-50-years-of-pink-floyds-wish-you-were-here-pink-floyd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/256346\/","title":{"rendered":"Simon, you crazy diamond: Armitage poem marks 50 years of Pink Floyd\u2019s Wish You Were Here | Pink Floyd"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was derided by some critics as self-indulgent and \u201cgimmicky<\/a>\u201d when it was released in 1975 but has since been marked a perfect 10 and inspired exhibitions<\/a> and postage stamps<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now to mark the 50th anniversary of Pink Floyd\u2019s album Wish You Were Here, the poet laureate, Simon Armitage<\/a>, has written an epic poem about the record, the band and their \u201cprofound\u201d impact on him titled Dear Pink Floyd.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can hear this record coming towards you from a distance. It feels like something huge and important is approaching, and it\u2019s going to envelop you,\u201d he told the Guardian. \u201cIt\u2019s astonishing to think that it\u2019s half a century old.\u201d<\/p>\n

The poet and ardent Pink Floyd<\/a> fan was approached by the group to write a new piece about the record and has produced a sprawling piece with no punctuation that reads like a mix between a fan letter and the ramblings of a religious devotee.<\/p>\n

Armitage, who was 12 when the record was released, describes it as a \u201ctime capsule treasure chest message in a bottle tied to a life buoy thrown on a life raft from a ghost ship\u201d, while imagining the band playing in the hanging gardens of Babylon and in the Mariana trench.<\/p>\n

Simon Armitage reading the poem. Photograph: Sony Music Entertainment<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a chance to do something a little bit different,\u201d he said. \u201cI just thought it might drag me off in a different direction. And I felt quite in tune with the record and the atmosphere and the anniversary.\u201d<\/p>\n

The album followed on from the progressive rock and invention of the band\u2019s Dark Side of the Moon<\/a>. It only has five tracks, with the middle three songs \u2013 Welcome to the Machine, Have a Cigar and the title track \u2013 sandwiched between the band\u2019s epic multipart song in honour of departed member Syd Barrett, Shine On You Crazy Diamond.<\/p>\n

The initial critical response to the album was mixed<\/a>. Rolling Stone singled out Gilmour\u2019s long solos for criticism, with Ben Edmunds accusing him of being \u201cjust another competent guitarist who thinks with his fingers instead of his head<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n

But Wish You Were Here proved popular on release, going to No1<\/a>, while bootleggers sold a reported 25,000 copies of a live recording when the band played it in Stafford.<\/p>\n

It has since become a critical darling, with Pitchfork scoring it a perfect 10 and declaring that it \u201cmarked a new kind of creative breakthrough for a rock band in the 70s<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n

Armitage says that growing up in West Yorkshire as punk was taking hold, Pink Floyd had to be a private indulgence, and the album\u2019s reputation for being a \u201cheadphone record\u201d \u2013 ideal for solo bedroom listening sessions \u2013 made that easier.<\/p>\n

skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n

Get our weekly pop culture email, free in your inbox every Friday<\/p>\n

Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n

\u201cI started listening to it when you weren\u2019t really allowed to like it,\u201d he said. \u201cI might have been wearing Doc Martens and a Buzzcocks T-shirt, but I was listening to this as well, privately, secretly.\u201d<\/p>\n

While a lot of the poem is fantastical there are some real-life insights, including the claim Armitage saw people wearing Pink Floyd merch in an Arctic rescue hut and in the deepest reaches of the Amazon.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a lot of things in the piece that are made up and imagined, but that\u2019s definitely real,\u201d he said. \u201cI made some radio programmes way, way up the Amazon with some Caboclo River Indians. One of them had a Pink Floyd hoodie on and another one had a Paul Smith T-shirt.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 50th anniversary of what is arguably the group\u2019s masterpiece will thrust them into the limelight, although they\u2019ve already been in the charts in 2025.<\/p>\n

The band\u2019s 1972 live record, Pink Floyd at Pompeii \u2013 MCMLXXII, made its way to the top of the album charts earlier this year, becoming their seventh No1 album<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was derided by some critics as self-indulgent and \u201cgimmicky\u201d when it was released in 1975 but has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":256347,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,216],"class_list":{"0":"post-256346","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}