Why 'Welcome to the Machine' Was Skipped on Pink Floyd's 1975 Tour

Pink Floyd’s 1975 tour in support of Wish You Were Here famously featured a medley where ‘Have a Cigar’ segued directly into ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts VI–IX)’. That transition was a live highlight, but one album track was conspicuously absent from the setlist: ‘Welcome to the Machine’. The song’s densely layered synthesizers, tape loops, and processed vocals made it nearly impossible to replicate on stage with the era’s technology — the band simply couldn’t pull it off without backing tapes or additional keyboards that weren’t part of their 1975 rig.

Instead, the tour leaned into the material that could breathe in a concert setting: ‘Shine On’ was played in full across the nights, and ‘Have a Cigar’ worked as a raw, guitar-driven piece. There’s no record of ‘Welcome to the Machine’ ever being attempted live during that run. It wasn’t until later tours (notably the 1987–89 Momentary Lapse of Reason shows) that Pink Floyd attempted it, and even then they relied heavily on sequencers and backing tracks. For the 1975 tour, the studio complexity was a real barrier — not a creative decision, but a technical limitation of the pre-digital stage.