(Credits: Anton Corbjin)
Wed 26 November 2025 18:01, UK
Pink Floyd were always awash with fractures and cracks, but to paraphrase Leonard Cohen, that also seemed to be exactly what let the light in. Tension gave birth to the exultancy that made them unique masters, but the strained recording of one classic began to hint that the cracked majesty was beginning to fall apart.
“I love singing,” David Gilmour once proclaimed. “I have spent as much of my life trying to improve my singing as I have practising guitar.” In fact, one of the reasons behind Pink Floyd’s unceremonious split was because, in drummer Nick Mason’s view, “Roger doesn’t really respect David. He feels that writing is everything and that guitar playing and singing are something that, I won’t say anyone can do, but that everything should be judged on the writing rather than the playing.”
Obviously, that’s somewhat of a problem when Gilmour takes great pride in his vocals, with the Cambridge chanter always aiming to channel the sincerity of his heroes like the aforementioned Leonard Cohen, the rough-shod sharpness of Bob Dylan, the grace of “true great original Nina Simone, and the earthiness of Lead Belly.
This issue even began to manifest way back when the band were seemingly in their pomp, too. While they were writing Wish You Were Here, Waters’ weaving lyrics were becoming increasingly verbose, creating problems for Gilmour, who preferred for his vocals to be enunciated and measured.
He wanted to capture the directness of someone like Dylan, hoping to cut through the wail of this psychedelic sound, but things were falling out of his range. He was tripping over the beats in the bars and growing frustrated in the process.
A young David Gilmour on stage with Pink Floyd. (Credit: Alamy)
So, when it came time to cut ‘Have a Cigar’, and Waters’ voice was already spent from recording ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’ earlier that day, Gilmour flat out refused to offer up what he felt would be a subpar performance if he got behind the microphone for the song. So, Roy Harper had to be drafted in to pave over the impasse.
In some ways, this was indicative of the strange situation that Pink Floyd found themselves in. A rational mind might reasonably ask, ‘Why did they have to record the two tracks on the same day?’ But while the group might have been making solid commercial progress at the time, terrible business dealings also meant that they were under strain in the studio, and things had to be done on the fly.
These business failures are all too often overlooked when considering the strained relationships of the band. In truth, money is usually mentioned in the capacity of the anti-capitalist song of the same name when it comes to the Floyd, but they were all understandably foaming that they had arduously toured and toiled for so long and frittered it away on failing manic ventures like a children’s shoe factory, a computer game, and a car hire business.
So, angered and exhausted, Gilmour gave up on the track, and arguably started to edge away from the band at that moment, too. Fortunately, the folk singing Harper had been recording in the same building. As he was mulling around, he just so happened to hear the commotion surrounding ‘Have a Cigar’ and inquired if they needed assistance.
“Roger had a go at singing it, and one or two people were unkind about his singing. One or two people then asked me to have a go at it. I did, but I wasn’t comfortable,” Gilmour recalls. He later pulled his takes and refused to do any others.
However, he clarifies: “I had nothing against the lyrics. Maybe the range and intensity wasn’t right for my voice. I can distinctly remember Roy leaning on the wall outside Abbey Road, while we were nattering away and (growls) ‘Go on, lemme have a go, lemme have a go.’ We all went, ‘Shut up Roy’.”
But Harper was a close friend of Gilmour’s, so they hardly called security either. This bickering continued for some time, with Harper hovering around still. “Eventually we said, ‘Go on then, Roy, have your bloody go’,” Gilmour told Mojo. “Most of us enjoyed his version, though I don’t think Roger ever liked it.”
Whether he liked it or not was rather moot at this stage because it was clear that Gilmour wasn’t going to sing it, Waters himself couldn’t, and time was against them. In fact, this is a marvel that lingers behind many classic albums: happenstance always has a huge hand to play.
We might think of classic records as masterpieces that have been sweated over endlessly, but more often than not, deadlines, debacles and quirks of destiny played their part. Wish You Were Here just happened to be one of the lucky ones.
Related Topics