Pink Floyd Announce Plans For Massive ‘Wish You Were Here’ 50 Box Set

Fifty years ago to the day, Pink Floyd released Wish You Were Here. To celebrate the anniversary of the landmark album, Sony has announced plans for a new box set entitled Wish You Were Here 50 that will be available as three vinyl records, two compact discs, or a Deluxe Box Set. It will also be released digitally.

The package will contain a new Dolby Atmos Mix of the album, nine studio rarities, and 16 songs recorded at the Los Angeles Sports Arena on April 26, 1975. There is also a hardcover book packed with unseen photographs, a comic book tour programme, and a Knebworth concert poster. For a preview, check out “The Machine Song (Demo #2, Revisited).” It’s an early version of “Welcome To The Machine.”

Other rarities on the set include a new stereo mix of all nine segments of “Shine On Your Crazy Diamond” fused together, an alternate version of “Have a Cigar,” a rendition of “Wish You Were Here” featuring jazz violin great Stéphane Grappelli,” and another take on “Wish You Were Here” with David Gilmour on pedal steel guitar.

The L.A. Sports Arena show was recorded by famed bootlegger Mike “The Mic” Millard. Throughout the Seventies, he used a phony wheelchair to sneak a Nakamichi 550 tape recorder into concerts around Los Angeles. When the lights dimmed, he’d connect the recorder to microphones attached to his hat. Using this method, he captured pristine recordings of shows by Genesis, Rush, Led Zeppelin, Eric Clapton, Yes, and many other giants of the era.

Many of those bands recorded their own concerts using more sophisticated equipment than anything Millard could sneak into arenas, but Pink Floyd made no such efforts.

“The problem was we just hit a period where everyone was paranoid about bootleggers and we didn’t tape shows,” Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason told Rolling Stone in 2018. “It’s great we did the Pink Floyd at Pompeii thing, but I’m sorry we never filmed and recorded a Dark Side, Animals, or Wish You Were Here show, really … [From the Animals period], there’s certainly nothing really good, just sort of monitor mixes and so on. We really should have done the whole thing, filmed and recorded it properly.”

Earlier this month, David Gilmour elaborated on the issue in an interview with Rolling Stone. “There are many, many mixing desk tapes which would, in the Seventies, have been done to cassette,” he said. “And later on in the Eighties and Nineties were done to DAT, but they are just straight off the mixing desk. But we did record most shows just sound-wise, and God knows where all those tapes are. I guess they are now in the hands of Sony [since they recently purchased the Pink Floyd catalog]. So, you have to persuade them to have a look.”

It seems like they did just that and concluded that Millard created a better tape than any mixing desk cassette in the vault. The audio has been restored and remastered by Steven Wilson. (May the record state that back in 2021, we encouraged Pink Floyd to release this exact L.A. Forum recording by Millard. Sadly, Millard didn’t live to see the day when his tape was included on an official Floyd release. He died in 1994.)

The complete track listing for Wish You Were Here 50:

DIGITAL

“DISC 1” – Original album

“DISC 2” – Bonus tracks

“DISC 3” – Live bootleg

2CD

“DISC 1”

“DISC 2”

3LP

Side A

Side B

Side C

Side D

Side E

Side F

Blu-Ray

Wish You Were Here original 5-track album

Bonus Audio Material (stereo)

Live Bootleg (stereo)

Videos (concert Screen Films)

• Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Part I)

• Shine On You Crazy Diamond

• Welcome To The Machine

• Storm Thorgerson Short Film, 2000

Produced & Directed by Storm Thorgerson

DELUXE BOX SET

Including all 2CD, 3LP (on exclusive clear vinyl) and Blu-Ray formats listed below, plus:

A fourth clear vinyl LP titled: “LP4” – Live At Wembley 1974

Side G

Side H

Japanese Replica 7” Single:

Have A Cigar (edit) b/w Welcome To The Machine

Hardcover book with unseen photographs

Comic Book Tour Programme

Knebworth Poster

* never before officially released