#14 - Have A Cigar from Wish You Were Here (1975)
Appeared On: 22 ballots (out of 33 . . . 66.7%)
Total Points: 318 points (out of 825 possible points . . . 38.5%)
Top Rankers: @Desert_Power,
@BroncoFreak_2K3,
@Grace Under Pressure,
@Dan Lambskin,
@BassNBrew
Highest Rankings: 1, 4, 4, 5, 5
Original Version,
Alternate Version,
Work In Progress,
Los Angeles - 1975,
Oakland - 1977,
RW & Paul Carrack - 1987,
RW In Studio,
RW - Pittsburgh - 2022
Live Performances: PF: 84,
RW: 284
Covers: Foo Fighters & Brian May,
Rosebud,
Primus,
Onetwo,
John Foxx,
Gov't Mule,
Cinema Face,
James LaBrie,
Hände Frei,
Jimmy Winchell,
Bobby Kimball,
IRA,
Year Of The Cobra,
Mondo Naif,
Corey Taylor,
FIDLAR & Dr. Dre
The song's lead vocals were performed by Roy Harper. Waters intended to sing but strained his voice while recording
SOYCD. Harper was recording an album in a neighboring studio. After learning of the band's dilemma, Harper offered to sing lead. RW later said that he hoped the others would refuse the suggestion. He was surprised when they immediately accepted. Harper claims he requested a lifetime ticket to the nearby Lord's Cricket Ground as payment. He felt insulted when he was sent a one-time check instead (which he says was never cashed).
RW: "I wanted to write something to do with succumbing to the pressures of life and rock in particular... we'd just come off an American tour. The line 'By the way, which one's Pink?' came from real experience. We always look at it as a joke, but it used to be a fairly common line that got asked to us by interviewers and joe-publics. They really used to ask that."
On Roy Harper doing the lead vocal: "A lot of people think I can't sing, including me a bit. I'm very unclear about what singing is. I know I find it hard to pitch, and I know the sound of my voice isn't very good in purely aesthetic terms, and Roy was recording his own album at the time, he's a mate, and we thought he could probably do a job on it. I sort of expected them to say 'No, you do it, Roger' but they didn't, they said 'Great idea!' I now wish that I had done it... just one or two little things that I'd have done a bit differently."
DG: "We did have people who would say to us "Which one's Pink?" and stuff like that. There were an awful lot of people who thought Pink Floyd was the name of the lead singer and that was Pink himself and the band. That's how it all came about, it was quite genuine. Roger had a go at singing it and one or two people were unkind about his singing. They then asked me to have a go at it. I did, but I wasn't comfortable. 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 eventually we said, 'Go on then, Roy, have your bloody go.' Most of us enjoyed his version, though I don't think Roger ever liked it."
Waters has since said he dislikes Harper's version, saying he would have liked it to emerge "more vulnerable and less cynical", adding that Harper's version was too parodic while Gilmour loved Harper's vocal delivery and called it the "perfect version".
Vulture Ranking (out of 165 songs): 49
UCR Ranking (out of 167 songs): 17
Louder Ranking (out of 50 songs): 13
WMGK Ranking (out of 40 songs): 11
Ranker Ranking (out of 132 songs): 17
Billboard Ranking (out of 50 songs): 20
Vulture Ranking (49 out of 165 songs): A bruising commentary on the music business. I love how the amiable funk laid down by the band is overwhelmed by the (impressive) electronic washes of sound in the intro, just as our lonely artiste is swamped by the industry. The soundscape here in its own way is as brutal as that of Welcome to the Machine. And it’s funny all the way through; choose your own favorite line. (Mine is “We’re so happy we can hardly count.”) DG’s fantastic and the chorus is epic, and the outro to WYWH is one of the most touching pieces of studio manipulation of the era. Docked 20 notches because the band, worldwide superstars on the heels of what would become the second-largest-selling album of all time, stiffed Harper, who wasn’t rich, on payment. (Harper himself never cashed in on the track either; it’s not on any of his live albums.) And docked another 20 for the irony.
UCR Ranking (17 out of 167 songs): RW has said he regretted the decision to ask Roy Harper to sing lead on this classic, because he played the lines for laughs instead of sniveling commentary. But for a band that lacked for humor after Syd left (with the exception of Waters’ dark sarcasm), Cigar is an oasis of fun in a sea of seriousness. While RW’s bass and DG's telephone cord guitar tangle themselves into a funk-rock mass of sinew, Harper interprets his record executive as a buffoon, a clueless cartoon of avarice and empty encouragement. Roy’s performance doesn’t make the caricature any less deplorable, but it’s more entertaining as a send-up, rather than hearing yet another rock band get bitter about the villains in the industry.
Louder Ranking (13 out of 50 songs): When the time came to record Have A Cigar, Waters’s singing was showing its limitations.
Roy Harper was drafted to sing. “Roy was recording in the studio anyway,” recalled RW, “I can’t remember who suggested it, maybe I did, probably hoping everybody would go: ‘Oh no, Rog, you do it’. But they didn’t. They all went: ‘Oh yeah, that’s a good idea.’ He did it, and everybody went: ‘Oh, terrific!’ So that was that.” It was an instantly regrettable decision, and although Waters reluctantly conceded a credit on the album, there was certainly no question of payment. RW said Harper must get paid for his efforts. Roy said: ‘Just get me a life season ticket to Lord’s.’ He kept prompting RW, but it never came. About 10 years later, Roy wrote RW and decided that, due to the success of WYWH, £10,000 would be adequate. And heard nothing at all.” Have A Cigar is Waters’s cynical take on the music industry, and contains the immortal line: ‘Oh by the way, which one’s Pink?’ “We did have people who would say to us: “Which one’s Pink”’ and stuff like that,” Gilmour recalled. “There were an awful lot of people who thought Pin Floyd was the name of the lead singer, and that was Pink himself and the band. That’s how it all came about. It was quite genuine.” In many respects Waters was biting the very hand that was feeding him.
WMGK Ranking (11 out of 40 songs): Featuring guest vocals by British folk-rock singer Roy Harper, it’s kind of a sequel to Money. It’s an obvious critique of the greed in the music industry in the ‘70s: in Pink Floyd’s case, their record company was trying to “ride the gravy train” that started with the huge success of DSOTM. Years later, Waters quit the band and toured as a solo act, and played much smaller venues, he sold a t-shirt that read, “Which one’s Pink?”
Billboard Ranking (20 out of 50 songs): The definitive mid-tempo PF lurch, sleazy quasi-funk that sets the perfect stage for the surfeit of empty promises and self-skewering ignorance offered by the song’s music-exec narrator, portrayed with delectable vulgarity by guest singer Roy Harper. And no matter how many times you’ve heard it, nothing ever really prepares you for that shocking
whoosh near song’s end that sonically transports the band - in the middle of one of Gilmour’s all-time closing shreds - into a tinny FM radio, leaving them seemingly trapped inside the dial, as they no doubt felt they were by that point in the mid-’70s.
