FEATURE:
Speak to Me
Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon at Fifty
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ONE of the most important…
and acclaimed albums in music history, Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon turns fifty on 1st March. Released in the U.S. on that date, it was released in the U.K. on 16th March. The eighth studio album by the band, The Dark Side of the Moon was conceived as a concept album that would focus on the pressures faced by the band during their arduous lifestyle, and partly deal with the apparent mental health problems of former band member Syd Barrett (he departed the group in 1968). It is definitely one of the most atmospheric and best records ever released. I first heard it as a child, and it was like nothing else I had ever discovered. I am going to come to features and reviews for the mighty and ageless The Dark Side of the Moon. If you are a big fan of the band and the album, there is a fiftieth anniversary edition that you can pre-order:
“One of the most iconic and influential albums ever, Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side Of The Moon celebrates its 50th Anniversary.
The album was partly developed during live performances, and the band premiered an early version of the suite at London’s Rainbow Theatre several months before recording began. ‘The Dark Side Of The Moon’ is the eighth studio album by Pink Floyd, originally released in March 1973. The new material was recorded in 1972 and 1973 at EMI Studios (now Abbey Road Studios) in London. The iconic sleeve, which depicts a prism spectrum, was designed by Storm Thorgerson of Hipgnosis and drawn by George Hardie. ‘The Dark Side Of The Moon’ has sold over 50 million copies worldwide.
The new deluxe box set includes CD and gatefold vinyl of the newly remastered studio album and Blu-Ray + DVD audio featuring the original 5.1 mix and remastered stereo versions. The set also includes additional new Blu-ray disc of Atmos mix plus CD and LP of ‘The Dark Side Of The Moon - Live At Wembley Empire Pool, London, 1974”.
I want to go into a feature from Louder Sound that charts and documents the making of one of the finest albums ever. Still so remarkably evocative and moving to this day, I would urge people to read the entire article. By all accounts, an album as huge and almost as cinematic as The Dark Side of the Moon had quite a modest start:
“The album's story starts in a poky studio in west London in 1971, when the band embarked upon 12 days in a rehearsal room at Decca Studios in Broadhurst Gardens, West Hampstead, London. They were working on a suite of music under the title Eclipse – which would, in due course, evolve into Dark Side Of The Moon.
"It began in a little rehearsal room in London," said David Gilmour of the album's early days. "We had quite a few pieces of music, some of which were left over from previous things."
"I think we had already started improvising around some pieces at Broadhurst Gardens," confirms Roger Waters. "After I had written a couple of the lyrics for the songs, I suddenly thought, I know what would be good: to make a whole record about the different pressures that apply in modern life."
The album slowly began to take shape. By the time 1972 rolled around, rehearsals had moved to the Rolling Stones’ rehearsal facility; a disused Victorian warehouse at 47 Bermondsey Street, South London. A grand enough setting for a creative project which would eventually come to eclipse Floyd's previous output in terms of both its scale and ambition. "We started with the idea of what the album was going to be about: the stresses and strains on our lives," says Nick Mason.
"We were there for a little while, writing pieces of music and jamming," adds Gilmour. "It was a very dark room."
Two weeks later, Pink Floyd began a 16-date UK tour at The Dome, Brighton, which included the first live performance of Eclipse, now renamed Dark Side Of The Moon – A Piece For Assorted Lunatics. Naturally, the band decided their new material required an ambitious, demanding new stage set up to match. However, it was a move their technical teams weren't quite ready for yet. The performance was cut short midway through Money due to tech problems.
"In those days we didn’t understand how to separate power sufficiently between sound and lights," explains former Floyd roadie Mick Kluczynski. "It was the very first show any band had done with a lighting rig that was powerful enough to make a difference. So we had this wonderful situation where the fans were actually inside the auditorium, and we had [sound engineers] Bill Kelsey and Dave Martin at either side of the stage screaming at each other in front of the crowd, having an argument."
"A pulsating bass beat, pre-recorded, pounded around the hall’s speaker system. A voice declared Chapter five, verses 15 to 17 from the Book Of Athenians," wrote former NME journalist Tony Stewart at the time. "The organ built up; suddenly it soared, like a jumbo jet leaving Heathrow; the lights, just behind the equipment, rose like an elevator. Floyd were on stage playing a medium-paced piece… The Floyd inventiveness had returned, and it astounded the capacity house… The number broke down thirty minutes through."
Not to be deterred, Floyd continued on their tour well into February, playing Dark Side Of The Moon in a nascent stage of completion by this point. "The actual song, Eclipse, wasn’t performed live until Bristol Colston Hall, on February 5," says Waters. "I can remember one afternoon rolling up and saying: “I’ve written an ending.” Which was what’s now called Eclipse, or Dark Side. So that's when we started performing the piece called Eclipse. It probably did have Brain Damage, but it didn’t have ‘All that you touch, all that you see, all that you taste.’
"It was a hell of a good way to develop a record," says Mason. "You really get familiar with it; you learn the pieces you like and what you don’t like. And it’s quite interesting for the audience to hear a piece developed. If people saw it four times it would have been very different each time."
However, as February drew to a close, work on the recording of DSOTM was derailed by the obligation to record Obscured By Clouds, the soundtrack to the film La Vallée, followed by sporadic touring. The sessions eventually resumed at Abbey Road studios in May. Working titles for existing songs included Travel (eventually Breathe), Religion (The Great Gig In The Sky) and Lunatic (Brain Damage).
"Recording was lengthy but not fraught, not agonised over at all," says Mason of the sessions. "We were working really well as a band."
"I was definitely less dominant than I later became," agrees Waters. "We were pulling together pretty cohesively. Dave sang Breathe much better than I could have. His voice suited the song. I don’t remember any ego problems about who sang what at that point. There was a balance."
This balance, and the ease the band felt with one another, was reflected in the finished product. A harmonious record which flowed from beginning to end, it captured a rare snapshot of a band working at the peak of their creativity. Though it was a complex body of work, much of its success came from its deceptive lyrical simplicity. "Roger tried, definitely, in his lyrics, to make them very simple, straightforward, and easy to understand," says Gilmour. "Partly because people read things into other lyrics that weren’t there”.
On 1st March, there will be celebration of an album that has more than its fair share of classics songs. From Money to The Great Gig in the Sky, to Speak to Me and Brain Damage, it is a work of genius. Two years later, Pink Floyd would releasee an album that, perhaps, is even more revered and better-reviewed than The Dark Side of the Moon: the immense and wonderful Wish You Were Here. Albumism had this to say about the 1973 work of wonder:
“Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon is nothing short of a psychedelic eargasm to the nth degree. Some rock groups make history, others become a part of it. With The Dark Side of the Moon, they transcended the history books and came to reside among the stars, as well as in the hearts and minds of avid fans and listeners.
The Dark Side of the Moon encapsulates the early ‘70s; it's a mixture of mind-bending rhythms, lucid lyrics and probing vibes. It spawned a following unlike anything ever seen before for an album. While groups like The Beatles and Led Zeppelin had concertgoers mesmerized, Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon took on a mystique of its own.
Inspired by their preceding live performances and recordings, the album explores themes of greed, conflict, the passage of time, and mental illness. Original lead singer and guitarist Syd Barrett had started to suffer from the latter, which compelled his bandmates to remove him from the band and replace him with David Gilmour five years earlier in 1968, which greatly influenced bassist/vocalist Roger Waters’ songwriting on both The Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here (1975).
Upon its March 1, 1973 release, the album smashed all kinds of records, remaining on the charts for an unprecedented 741 weeks. Two singles were released from the album, "Money" and "Us and Them," with "Money" becoming their first legitimate hit single. The theme of money was prevalent in music throughout the end of the ‘60s and the early ‘70s, with The O'Jays’ "For the Love of Money" and The Beatles’ "You Never Give Me Your Money" hitting on the insidious quality of money. Regarding The Beatles, "Us and Them" definitely has a similar tone and notes to "Sun King" (from 1969’s Abbey Road), which also has a dreamy, kaleidoscope feel.
The ten tracks featured on The Dark Side of the Moon are cohesive, like the spokes of a wheel. This particular combination of songs is a musical ethos that has kept spinning in the audio universe, propelled by its brilliance. Opening track "Speak to Me" is really only complete when followed by "Breathe," and so it is with all of the tracks on the album. Individually they all have different tones and meanings. "The Great Gig in the Sky" is about coming to terms with the afterlife. It's a serious song, elevated by the song that proceeds it, "Time," which riffs on the passage of time.
On the 45th anniversary of this abiding classic, put your headphones on, relax and lift off. Better yet, go to a Pink Floyd laser light show with The Dark Side of the Moon as the soundtrack, and you’ll be transported to another world”.
There are a couple of reviews I want to come to before wrapping things up. Rolling Stone reviewed The Dark Side of the Moon when it came out in 1973. I can only imagine how stunning it must have been to hear the album from the first time. It still has this incredible pulls and sense of majesty that blows the mind wide open:
“ONE OF BRITAIN’S most successful and long lived avant-garde rock bands, Pink Floyd emerged relatively unsullied from the mire of mid-Sixties British psychedelic music as early experimenters with outer space concepts. Although that phase of the band’s development was of short duration, Pink Floyd have from that time been the pop scene’s preeminent techno-rockers: four musicians with a command of electronic instruments who wield an arsenal of sound effects with authority and finesse. While Pink Floyd’s albums were hardly hot tickets in the shops, they began to attract an enormous following through their US tours. They have more recently developed a musical style capable of sustaining their dazzling and potentially overwhelming sonic wizardry.
The Dark Side of the Moon is Pink Floyd’s ninth album and is a single extended piece rather than, a collection of songs. It seems to deal primarily with the fleetingness and depravity of human life, hardly the commonplace subject matter of rock. “Time” (“The time is gone the song is over”), “Money” (“Share it fairly but don’t take a slice of my pie”). And “Us And Them” (“Forward he cried from the rear”) might be viewed as the keys to understanding the meaning (if indeed there is any definite meaning) of The Dark Side of the Moon.
Even though this is a concept album, a number of the cuts can stand on their own. “Time” is a fine country-tinged rocker with a powerful guitar solo by David Gilmour and “Money” is broadly and satirically played with appropriately raunchy sax playing by Dick Parry, who also contributes a wonderfully-stated, breathy solo to “Us And Them.” The non-vocal “On The Run” is a standout with footsteps racing from side to side successfully eluding any number of odd malevolent rumbles and explosions only to be killed off by the clock’s ticking that leads into “Time.” Throughout the album the band lays down a solid framework which they embellish with synthesizers, sound effects and spoken voice tapes. The sound is lush and multi-layered while remaining clear and well-structured.
There are a few weak spots. David Gilmour’s vocals are sometimes weak and lackluster and “The Great Gig in the Sky” (which closes the first side) probably could have been shortened or dispensed with, but these are really minor quibbles. The Dark Side of the Moon is a fine album with a textural and conceptual richness that not only invites, but demands involvement. There is a certain grandeur here that exceeds mere musical melodramatics and is rarely attempted in rock. The Dark Side of the Moon has flash-the true flash that comes from the excellence of a superb performance”.
I will actually leave it there. I would encourage everyone to experience The Dark Side of the Moon in full ahead of its fiftieth anniversary on 1st March. Even if some argue Pink Floyd have released better albums, there are few as important and influential as The Dark Side of the Moon. Seek out the album, play it loud and let it take you away. There is no doubt that it is one of the greatest albums…
EVER released.