Hear Lost Recording of Pink Floyd Playing with Jazz Violinist Stéphane Grappelli on “Wish You Were Here”

Those of you deeply into both jazz vio­lin and pro­gres­sive rock no doubt jumped right on the play but­ton above. Quite a few more will lis­ten — so expe­ri­ence has taught me — pure­ly out of inter­est in any­thing and every­thing Pink Floyd has done. But on the lev­el of music his­to­ry, the track above, a ver­sion of the cere­bral Eng­lish rock band’s Pink Floy­d’s well-known 1975 song “With You Were Here” promi­nent­ly fea­tur­ing a solo from the French “Grand­fa­ther of Jazz Vio­lin­ists” Stéphane Grap­pel­li, should fas­ci­nate just about any­one. It speaks to the par­tic­u­lar kind of high-pro­file musi­cal exper­i­men­tal­ism that thrived in that era, at least in some quar­ters — or, rather, in some stu­dios. In this case, the Grap­pel­li and the Floyd boys found them­selves record­ing in adja­cent ones. Why would the lat­ter invite the for­mer, already an elder states­man of jazz and a col­lab­o­ra­tor with the likes of Djan­go Rein­hardt, to sit in on a ses­sion? (Watch Djan­go and Grap­pel­li play togeth­er in the 1938 film, Jazz Hot here.) Well… why not? They need­ed some­thing impres­sive to fol­low Dark Side of the Moon, after all.

Still, for all the rich­ness of the result you hear here and all the fan-hours spent lis­ten­ing to Pink Floy­d’s Wish You Were Here album in the 35 years after it came out, the pub­lic nev­er got to hear Grap­pel­li’s play­ing fore­ground­ed until Immer­sion reis­sued it three years ago. This long-lost but redis­cov­ered mix of the title track marks, to the mind of Pink Floyd found­ing mem­ber Nick Mason, a marked improve­ment over the ver­sion on the orig­i­nal album. “I think that was the jew­el in that par­tic­u­lar crown,” he said to Son­ic Real­i­ty. “It was some­thing that I assumed had been lost for­ev­er. I thought we’d record­ed over it. [ … ] I can’t imag­ine why we didn’t use it at the time.” In the one they did use at the time, what remains of Grap­pel­li’s play­ing came out so inaudi­ble that the album’s cred­its did­n’t even name the vio­lin­ist. I’d like to chalk up anoth­er point for the cul­tur­al revi­sion made pos­si­ble by our tech­no­log­i­cal age, but alas, I doubt any sort of redis­cov­ery will break true Floyd acolytes of their adher­ence to the canon.

via Some­thing Else Reviews

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Sings Shakespeare’s Son­net 18

Watch Doc­u­men­taries on the Mak­ing of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here

Dark Side of the Rain­bow: Pink Floyd Meets The Wiz­ard of Oz in One of the Ear­li­est Mash-Ups

Watch Pink Floyd Play Live in the Ruins of Pom­peii (1972)

Jazz ‘Hot’: The Rare 1938 Short Film With Jazz Leg­end Djan­go Rein­hardt

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.