• Writer: Roger Waters
• Producer: Pink Floyd
• Recorded: January-July 1975 at Abbey Road Studios in London, England
• Released: September 1975
• Players:
  David Gilmour — guitar
  Roger Waters — vocals, bass, synthesizer
  Rick Wright — keyboards
  Nick Mason — drums
• Album: Wish You Were Here (Columbia, 1975)
• “Welcome to the Machine” presents a dark, cynical view of the music industry, likening it to a soulless machine, similar to another song on the album Wish You Were Here, “Have a Cigar.”
• The song was inspired by Pink Floyd’s experience with Columbia Records, which lured it away from the EMI conglomerate after The Dark Side Of The Moon album. Columbia paid the band a then-unheard-of $1 million to sign.
• Pink Floyd’s members usually refer to this as “The Machine Song.”
• The song’s unique sound was created by a VCS3 synthesizer that Roger Waters favored.
• During the recording of Wish You Were Here, Syd Barrett — Pink Floyd’s founder, who was booted from the band in 1968 due to drug-induced emotional problems — showed up unannounced. The band hadn’t seen him in seven years, and they didn’t immediately recognize him. Ironically, the group was recording the song “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” which paid homage to Barrett.
• The recording of the album was also made more difficult by personal problems. Waters and drummer Nick Mason were both going through divorces at the time.
• Guitarist David Gilmour and keyboardist Rick Wright both say Wish You Were Here is their favorite Pink Floyd album.
• Wish You Were Here went to Number One on the album charts in both the U.S. and the U.K. It has sold more than five million copies since its release.
• Shortly after Pink Floyd finished recording the album, it headlined the Knebworth Festival in England, using quadraphonic sound and a replica of a Spitfire airplane that crashed into the stage during the show.

FAST FORWARD

• Pink Floyd was the subject of a nasty legal battle between its members in the late ’80s. After Waters announced that he quit the band in December 1985, Gilmour, Mason and Wright announced that they would carry on using the name. Waters sued the trio in an attempt to keep it from touring and recording as Pink Floyd, but was unsuccessful.
• The quartet did reunite for the London Live 8 concert in July of 2005.
• Pink Floyd last toured the world in 1994, in support of its album The Division Bell.
• Pink Floyd was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.
• Roger Waters and David Gilmour have recently both been touring, playing solo material and Pink Floyd classics..