Have a Cigar
1975 song by British band Pink Floyd
"Have a Cigar" is the third track on Pink Floyd's 1975 album Wish You Were Here. It follows "Welcome to the Machine" and on the original LP opened side two. In some markets, the song was issued as a single.
English folk-rock singer Roy Harper provided lead vocals on the song. It is one of the only three Pink Floyd recordings with a guest singer on lead vocals, the others being "The Great Gig in the Sky" (1973) with Clare Torry and "Hey Hey Rise Up" (2022) with Andriy Khlyvnyuk.
The song, written by Waters, is his critique of the rampant greed and cynicism so prevalent in the management of rock groups of that era.
Composition and recording
The song's music and lyrics were written by Roger Waters in critique of hypocrisy and greed within the music business. Waters has frequently implied it to be a follow-up to "Money" with the lyrics representing the demands of a record executive after the runaway success of The Dark Side of the Moon.
The song is more straightforwardly rock-oriented than the rest of the album, and is the only one on the album that starts abruptly (the other four either fade in or segue from the previous song). It begins with a churning riff played on electric guitar and bass and is filled out with additional guitar, electric piano and synthesizer parts to create a rock texture.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Have a Cigar” is 1975 song by British band Pink Floyd. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Have, Cigar and song, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “1975 song by British band Pink Floyd” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q838317. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1975, 1973 and 2022.
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This entry incorporates text from “Have a Cigar” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.