Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here (Columbia, 1975)

Roiled by personal issues, recording engineers who were all thumbs and a record company that didn’t understand, [lastfm link_type="artist_info"]Pink Floyd[/lastfm] spent months in the studio creating Wish You Were Here. The result is one of their best-selling records.

It took Pink Floyd seven months to complete work on Wish You Were Here, recorded as a follow-up to Dark Side of the Moon (and, coincidentally, done in the same Abbey Road setting).

Beset with personal issues (members Roger Waters and Nick Mason were both going through divorces), recording issues (“Shine On You Crazy Diamond” had to be redone due to a multi-thumbed engineer) and record company issues (“Which one is Pink?”), the process was not an easy one.

But, it was fruitful, as the 5-track, 44-minute epic was highly acclaimed — not the least by David Gilmour, who considers it one of the band’s best — but also by record buyers. Overshadowed by Dark Side, which was monstrous, the album has still sold 6,000,000 copies since its release in September 1975.

What was hot forty years ago? Find out with more Best Sellers from the ’70s here…