Based on material Pink Floyd composed while performing in Europe, Wish You Were Here was recorded over numerous sessions throughout 1975 at EMI Studios in London.

The bulk of the album is taken up by "Shine On You Crazy Diamond", a nine-part tribute to the Pink Floyd co-founder Syd Barrett, who had left seven years earlier due to his deteriorating mental health.

It initially received mixed reviews; critics found its music uninspiring and inferior to Pink Floyd's previous work.

Mason said later that a critical NME review by Syd Barrett devotee Nick Kent may have had an influence in keeping the band together, as they returned to the studio in the first week of 1975.

[7] The album begins with a long instrumental preamble and segues into the lyrics for "Shine On You Crazy Diamond", a tribute to Syd Barrett, whose mental breakdown had forced him to leave the group seven years earlier.

[10] The lyrics of the next song, "Wish You Were Here", relate both to Barrett's condition and to the dichotomy of Waters' character, with greed and ambition battling with compassion and idealism.

[14] Humphries was therefore the natural choice to work on the band's new material, although, being a stranger to EMI's Abbey Road set-up, he encountered some early difficulties.

On one occasion, Humphries inadvertently spoiled the backing tracks for "Shine On", a piece that Waters and drummer Nick Mason had spent many hours perfecting, with echo.

[18] The group found it difficult at first to devise any new material, especially as the success of The Dark Side of the Moon had left all four physically and emotionally drained.

[19] Mason found the process of multi-track recording drawn-out and tedious,[20] while Gilmour was more interested in improving the band's existing material.

Gilmour was also becoming increasingly frustrated with Mason, whose failing marriage had brought on a general malaise and sense of apathy, both of which interfered with his drumming.

Mostly an instrumental 20-minute-plus piece similar to "Echoes", the opening four-note guitar phrase reminded Waters of the lingering ghost of former band-member Syd Barrett.

[23] "Welcome to the Machine" and "Have a Cigar" were attacks on the music business, their lyrics working with "Shine On" to provide a summary of the rise and fall of Barrett;[24] "Because I wanted to get as close as possible to what I felt ... that sort of indefinable, inevitable melancholy about the disappearance of Syd.

Barrett's appearance may have influenced the final version of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond"; a subtle refrain performed by Wright from "See Emily Play" is audible towards the end.

[26] Waters said later: "'Shine On' is not really about Syd—he's just a symbol for all the extremes of absence some people have to indulge in because it's the only way they can cope with how fucking sad it is, modern life, to withdraw completely.

"[29] As with The Dark Side of the Moon, the band used synthesizers such as the EMS VCS 3 (on "Welcome to the Machine"), but softened with Gilmour's acoustic guitar, and percussion from Mason.

Menuhin watched as Grappelli played on the song "Wish You Were Here"; however, the band later decided his contribution was unsuitable and Mason has erroneously stated that the piece was wiped.

[36] The opening bars of "Wish You Were Here" were recorded from Gilmour's car radio, with somebody turning the dial (the classical music heard is the finale of Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony).

His problems stemmed in part from the stresses placed upon his voice while recording the lead vocals of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond".

Roy Harper, performing at the same event, on discovering that his stage costume was missing, proceeded to destroy one of Pink Floyd's vans, injuring himself in the process.

As a pair of World War II Spitfire aircraft had been booked to fly over the crowd during their entrance, the band were not able to delay their set.

Storm Thorgerson had accompanied the band on their 1974 tour and had given serious thought to the meaning of the lyrics, eventually deciding that the songs were, in general, concerned with "unfulfilled presence", rather than Barrett's illness.

Thorgerson had noted that Roxy Music's Country Life was sold in an opaque green cellophane sleeve – censoring the cover image – and he copied the idea, concealing the artwork for Wish You Were Here in a black-coloured shrink-wrap (therefore making the album art "absent").

[43][44] The album's cover images were photographed by Aubrey "Po" Powell, Thorgerson's partner at the design studio Hipgnosis, and inspired by the idea that people tend to conceal their true feelings, for fear of "getting burned", and thus two businessmen were pictured shaking hands, one man on fire.

EMI was less concerned;[45][48] the band were reportedly extremely happy with the end product, and when presented with a pre-production mockup, they accepted it with a spontaneous round of applause.

Ben Edmunds wrote in Rolling Stone that the band's "lackadaisical demeanor" leaves the subject of Barrett "unrealised; they give such a matter-of-fact reading of the goddamn thing that they might as well be singing about Roger Waters's brother-in-law getting a parking ticket".

[68] Melody Maker's reviewer wrote: "From whichever direction one approaches Wish You Were Here, it still sounds unconvincing in its ponderous sincerity and displays a critical lack of imagination in all departments.

"[49] In The Village Voice, Robert Christgau wrote: "The music is not only simple and attractive, with the synthesizer used mostly for texture and the guitar breaks for comment, but it actually achieves some of the symphonic dignity (and cross-referencing) that The Dark Side of the Moon simulated so ponderously.

These hosannas were grounded on no more than the fact that it was simply the Floyd's follow-up to [The] Dark Side of the Moon, which represented, for many, the acme of the genre to date."

[nb 10] In the US, Columbia's CBS Mastersound label released a half-speed mastered audiophile LP in 1981,[nb 11] and in 1994 Sony Mastersound released a 24-carat gold-plated CD, remastered using Super Bit Mapping, with the original artwork from the LP in both longbox and jewel case forms, the latter with a cardboard slipcover.