Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd album) still sounds unconvincing in its ponderous sincerity and displays a critical lack of imagination in all departments." However, Robert Christgau wrote in "The Village Voice": "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." He later wrote: "My favorite Pink Floyd album has always been "Wish You Were Here", and you know why? It has soul, that's why – it's Roger Waters's lament for Syd, not my
Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd album) his place, but declined, and eventually colleague and friend Roy Harper was asked to stand in. Harper was recording his own album in another of Abbey Road's studios, and Gilmour had already performed some guitar licks for him. Waters later regretted the decision, believing he should have performed the song. The Blackberries recorded backing vocals for "Shine On You Crazy Diamond". The band played much of "Wish You Were Here" on 5 July 1975 at the Knebworth music festival. Roy Harper, performing at the same event, on discovering that his stage costume was missing, proceeded to destroy one of Pink