Wish You Were Here' was recorded as a middle finger to the music business.

Pretty much. The entire album is a meditation on absence and exploitation — and the recording process made that explicit.

After Dark Side of the Moon made them absurdly rich, the record label wanted a quick follow-up. The band dragged their feet, built a custom mixing desk, and spent months tinkering. The song “Have a Cigar” is a direct parody of the clueless execs they were dealing with — the lyric “Oh, by the way, which one’s Pink?” is lifted from a real conversation.

Then there’s the Syd Barrett connection. He showed up at Abbey Road while they were mixing the album — bald, heavier, unrecognizable. They played him “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” and he had no idea it was about him. That moment crystallized everything the album was saying about the music industry: it consumes people, chews them up, and leaves them empty. The recording itself became part of the story.

This is the sound of a band that had everything and hated what it took to get it.