What does Have a Cigar mean?

Pink Floyd: Have a Cigar Meaning

Album cover for Have a Cigar album cover

Song Released: 1975


Get "Have a Cigar" on MP3: Get MP3 from iTunes

Have a Cigar Lyrics

Come in here, dear boy, have a cigar.
You're gonna go far,you're gonna fly high,
You're never gonna die, you're gonna make it if you try;they're gonna love you.
Well I've always had a deep respect, and I mean that most sincerely.
The band is...

  1. 1TOP RATED

    #1 top rated interpretation:
    anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Oct 10th 2009 !⃝

    This song is pretty easy to understand. It's about a talent scout or something similar that tries to make a deal with the boys. He is telling them virtually everything a new artist would like to hear:
    "You're gonna go far,
    You're gonna fly high,
    You're never gonna die,
    You're gonna make it, if you try;
    They're gonna love you. "
    Even tough he really isn't interested in the band and doesn't understand their music :
    "Oh by the way, which one's Pink?"

    He tries to convince them by telling them about the money and the fame:
    "We're so happy we can hardly count.
    Everybody else is just green,
    Have you seen the chart?
    It's a hell of a start,
    It could be made into a monster
    If we all pull together as a team. "
    This really is a critic to the greediness and superficiality in main-stream music.
    "And did we tell you the name of the game, boy?
    We call it Riding the Gravy Train. "

  2. 2TOP RATED

    #2 top rated interpretation:
    icyhot10
    click a star to vote
    Jul 9th 2007 !⃝

    Riding the gravy train does not refer to doing what everyone else does. It refers to bringing the money which is all the record producer cared about. They did not care about the band, they cared about the 40% they were making off of the album and the tour and everything else Pink Floyd.

  3. 3TOP RATED

    #3 top rated interpretation:
    username
    click a star to vote
    Jul 10th 2005 !⃝

    Also on "Wish You Were Here," this song was written about Floyd's manager who at first blew smoke up their asses. "Come in here dear boy, have a cigar youre gona go far..." is the manager luring the band to his management.

    "The band is just fantastic that is really what I think... oh by the way which one's pink?" If the manager really thought that the band was so fantastic and had any familiarity with the band he'd know that none of them was pink. It's just the band name.

    "We call it riding the gravy traiiinnnnn...." is a term for "riding the wave" doing what everybody else is doing. That is something Floyd was VERY opposed to.

    Pink floyd was different. They were ahead of their time. They were writing songs about insanity, dreams and phsycadellia (heavy stuff) meanwhile bands like Wham! were writing songs called "Wake Me up Before you Go Go"

  4. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Oct 9th !⃝

    This album was written and published right after Pink Floyd had gotten really big. It's a strange-but-not-unexpected amalgam of criticisms of the music industry's predatory nature, their crazy expectations and their disinterested attitude.

    Have a cigar, kid.

  5. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Jun 21st 2017 !⃝

    It was a song about pop music.

  6. anonymous
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    Feb 9th 2016 !⃝

    The entire song is about the struggle between the band. Syd was a showman and always wanted to give a blow your mindividual show. He always thought of the acts as if they were a plau filled with psychedelic visuals and crazy sounds. After Syd "left" the band there was a conflict between David and Roger as to the direction in which the band should go. All producers and David believe to go main stream would bring in money. Roger wanted to keep the band in the same line Syd had started. Who is pink? is the question of who controls the decision. Who is the real pink floyd? Since David came into the band after it was created the answer is Roger Walters. He made 75 million dollars last year in royalties because he wrote most of the songs. The band split and I hope they come back. Roger and Syd ARE pink.
    Let's pray that David and Roger can all pull together as a team and they come to America for some final shows. I saw them in 94 and my parents saw them in 75. It was hands down the greatest show I ever saw. Thank you Syd and Roger for staying true to pink and giving me the mind blowing experience of my life!

  7. kooljohn176
    click a star to vote
    Nov 5th 2015 !⃝

    A helluva song that was in the making by PINK FLOYD, sung by a outsider to represent a Oligarch in the music industry temting the group if they sellout to them to ''Have a Cigar'' in that they will make immortal idols out of them as a team to create them as a monster money machine in the music business. Another meaning on the big picture, experiencing this song in America out of ''Wish you were here'' album years after the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King [may all r.i.p]. The transformation throughout this time with the many young Americans that were still being programmed by a false propaganda to compromise us against our principles to embrace the new world order machine type of mentality by spoiling and dividing us in the intellectual madness of materialism to anger and enlarge our egos to fight ourselves and the establishment controlled by Oligarch Zionists that wanted to control their agenda against us even thru the music industry to create little monsters to support a bigger Monster with many tenticles on a larger world scale. Back then and maybe even now some people say this is the polocies that are intangled with the ''state'' of Israel that John F Kennedy fought against and wanted to destabilize it's nuclear power use before it created a even bigger monster that got out of hand, unfourtantly he was assassinated because he did not want to sell out the American people to become another monster to ''have a cigar'' and to be controlled by them on the coming wavey gravy train for power and money. In today's time on the political big picture this song is revelant in trying to understand it not only on a personal level, but in relation to a leader like Vladimir Putin of Russia who has done for Russia and it's people what John F. Kennedy wanted to do for us in America and to say''no cigar'' to the temtations of the Oligarch ateist Zionists that were hard and cold as ice is to make a monster out of him to sell out his people, but he only soldout to ''JESUS CHRIST'' to pick up his old sword symbolicaly speaking for leadership to become a good honest leader for the whole world to live in peace with integrity and respect.

  8. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Mar 3rd 2013 !⃝

    I like this song a lot...great song. Heh The gravy train means money train...you know, gravy, money. They'll be riding a money train.......making a ton of money. It has zero to do with doing what everyone else's doing to fit-in or whatever you implied, sir, with all due respect.
    The song is however clearly about a manager they had...they're basically taking a shot at that person.

  9. anonymous
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    Dec 29th 2011 !⃝

    It's about the record industries and how asinine they can be.

  10. anonymous
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    Sep 18th 2011 !⃝

    To me, it's about the greed and mind-control that the music industry has. They said "NO! YOU CANT MAKE A SONG THATS OVER FOUR MINUTES!" but Floyd did it anyway. Plus, theyre manager was TERRIBLE! The greed part is how the music industry tell people to go along mainstream society so they can get more money and hopefully, be successful in their plan to control what people think is good and bad, which indeed goes into mind-control and self-indulgence. Like "Welcome To The Machine", the song is about the government, music and film industries, and maybe even you next door neighbor, telling you what to say, dream, think, and even do. But all together, I still love the song. Pink Floyd was so antigovernment I look up to it. Theyre my favrite band, too.

  11. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Aug 15th 2011 !⃝

    The singers nickname is pinkie so its plausible that he could ask which ones pink mr.username.

    This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
  12. anonymous
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    Apr 17th 2011 !⃝

    Song is about how the suits in the music industry feeding young bands BS and telling them what they want to hear in order to get them to sign a contract.

  13. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Apr 17th 2011 !⃝

    Song is about how the suits in the music industry feeding young bands BS and telling them what they want to hear in order to get them to sign a contract.

  14. anonymous
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    Jan 12th 2011 !⃝

    its about a youge man that has a second chance at his dream to rock again but this man is unheard and no one will talk about him cuse he is a what if case.the one they called pink

    This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
  15. Lairandir
    click a star to vote
    Dec 18th 2006 !⃝

    Your almost right on the money there Username. Nice. But I think George Micheals and that other dude didn't write 'Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go' Until about '84. This album came out in 1975, more of the era of 'Physical Graffiti' by Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull, Elton John, Steely Dan, and other bands of the sort. And sadly, KISS.

  16. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Sep 13th 2006 !⃝

    The person who asked "by the way, which one's pink?" was a record producer, not a manager.

    Riding the gravy train refers to the band having one hit and then riding that success. Floyd realized that the producer saw them as "money-makers" rather than a band.

    "shine on you crazy diamond" is about syd.

    Btw, if the previous interpretations have already been edited for grammar, spelling, and clarity, the editor should lose his job.

  17. cal0390
    click a star to vote
    Feb 23rd 2006 !⃝

    This song is supposed to be a humorous song about the indubitably look at rock and roll by Roger Waers.

  18. anonymous
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    Nov 1st 2005 !⃝

    It's referring to Syd Barrett like in all the other songs on this album.

    It's talking about how the pressures on Syd helped him to be driven to insanity and the stuff the others said.

    This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
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