Song of the Day 5/21: Pink Floyd, “Have a Cigar”

This one’s for El Somnambulo, who’s a bit miffed that guys who smoke expensive cigars will pay a lower tax rate than people who smoke El Ropos.

Contra Sigmund Freud, sometimes a cigar is not a cigar. For Roger Waters, it represented the greed of the music industry, which isn’t surprising, as almost everything represented the greed of the music industry to Roger Waters. Gilmour said the song’s most famous line was inspired by real life. “We did have people who would say to us ‘Which one’s Pink?’ and stuff like that. There were an awful lot of people who thought Pink Floyd was the name of the lead singer and that was Pink himself and the band. That’s how it all came about, it was quite genuine.”

This is one of only two Pink Floyd songs to feature a guest vocalist. Waters wasn’t happy with his go at it, and David Gilmour didn’t want to sing it because he wasn’t pissed off at the music industry. British folkie Roy Harper was recording at Abbey Road at the same time, and Gilmour had done some guitar work for him — “he was a mate,” Waters said — so Harper got the gig. Naturally, Gilmour loved Harper’s performance, while Waters criticized it years later as too broad and parodic — he would have preferred it sound “more vulnerable and less cynical.” Something being “too cynical for Roger Waters” sounds unlikely, but that’s what he said.