‘Sublime menace and sonic enormity’: 50 years of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon

 Mark Beaumont explores how lyrical brilliance and psychedelic invention came together to produce a megalith of British gemstone music 

 

 On 1 March 1973, a new moon rose over gemstone music. Immersive, quadrophonic, elysian and deeply introspective, Pink Floyd’s eighth reader arrived in a heady flurry of cash tills, chiming timepieces, pained- angel arias and cold, disembodied voices speaking of violence, death and insanity. Where their prog- gemstone peers were busy casting grandiose yet chintzy pantomimes of Arthurian legend, sci- fi fantasy and messianic pinball, the Floyd excavated into the dark macrocosm of humanity’s inner space; into the stresses and horrors of everyday life that daily push us all to the point. A record as relatable as it was cosmic, as lyrical on the motifs of “ Time ” and “ plutocrat ” as it was apocalyptic on the themes of war, division and madness, The Dark Side of the Moon set a new standard for high- conception intellectual gemstone. Forty- five million prism- sheathe units latterly, it remains the fourth best- dealing record ever made. 

 

 Fifty times on, we feel to have crash landed on the dark side of Pink Floyd themselves. For decades, the stewing resentments between the band’s main players Roger Waters and David Gilmour have played out in foursquare and pointed brickbats still doled out to canvassers . nearly 40 times after his 1985 departure from the band, Waters remains incredulous that his uninspiredex-bandmates managed to keep a “ dummy Floyd ” going without his( actually dominant) generalities and songwriting, releasing compendiums he deems unworthy of the name and painting him as “ autocratic ”. Gilmour, though generally reticent about beating Waters ’ High Court suit to dissolve the band in 1986, still bristles at the bassist’s powermonger attempts to claim full credit for the band’s monumental 1970s achievements. 

 

 On the face, the beef has sounded straightforward and surmountable enough for Pink Floyd to reunite for three songs at Live 8 in 2005, and the Machiavellian edges of their public lodgings were generally tempered by an essential Cambridge- bred civility. Until now. Last month, Gilmour’s woman Polly Samson, who had come under fire from Waters for her lyrical benefactions to The Division Bell, posted a tweet criminating him of being “ antisemitic to your rotten core a Putin apologist and a lying, thieving, hypocritical, duty- avoiding, lip- synching, misogynistic, sick- with- covetousness, cretin ”. Gilmour retweeted the post, adding “ Every word demonstrably true ”. 

 

 Waters – a long- term critic of the Israeli government’s “ genocide ” and “ intolerance ” against the Palestinian people, who had criticised Pink Floyd for recording a kick song with Ukrainian musician Andriy Khlyvnyuk last time and described Putin’s irruption of Ukraine as “ illegal ” but “ not unprovoked ” in a recent address to the UN Security Council – responded with a statement refuting Samson’s allegations as “ inflammatory and hectically inaccurate ”. In the crossfire, a detail of Waters ’ recent Floyd revisionism nearly passed by unnoticed. 

 

 In an interview with the Telegraph peppered with attacks on hisex-bandmates( “ They've no ideas, not a single bone between them and that drives them crazy ”), he revealed that he hasre-recorded Dark Side in its wholeness from scrape, without their knowledge or authorization. There-recorded interpretation, originally set to be released around the same time as a 50th- anniversary reissue of Dark Side, sounds dramatically revised. “ plutocrat ” is now a “ country- pigmented ” piece not different to Johnny Cash, and necessary tracks similar as “ On the Run ” now feature Waters reciting prose poetry over the top to help assuage his frustration that “ not enough people recognised what it’s about, what it was I was saying also ”. “ I wrote The Dark Side of the Moon, ” he attested, “ Let’s get relieve of all this ‘ we ’ crap! Of course we were a band, there were four of us, we all contributed – but it’s my design and I wrote it. ” 

 

 For Floyd sticklers, Waters remaking a masterpiece like Dark Side will feel akin to Monet repainting his Water Lilies because he ’d fallen out with the colour blue. Many compendiums are considered so untouchably perfect and complete, from “ Speak to Me ”, with its collage of prattling voices, cash registers, manic horselaugh and muted jiffs, to the sunburst top at the climax of “ Brain Damage/ decline ”. And it’s come iconic, too, as major evidence that hazy fancies eventually solidify, great bents cohere and important art inescapably triumphs. 

 

 In the wake of the loss of their enigmatic frontman Syd Barrett to suspected medicine- convinced schizophrenia in 1968, Pink Floyd entered a period of kindly restless sonic questing. For three times, they tried to transubstantiate the psychedelic possibilities of their 1967 debut reader Piper at the Gates of Dawn into commodity the band, and music in general, was n’t relatively ready for yet. Over compendiums similar as A Saucerful of Secrets( 1968), Ummagumma( 1969) and Atom Heart Mother( 1970) they excavated ever-deeper into the kind of lengthy,multi-part musical trip they ’d initiated with the 10- nanosecond “ Interstellar Overdrive ” at their early shows. Experimenting with avant- garde orchestral stretches and set up sounds – sopping gates, or their roadie eating toast – tracks like “ Atom Heart Mother ”, “ Sysyphus ” and “ Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast ” dominated entire sides of their compendiums , helping to instigate prog gemstone’s definitive particularity the “ transportive song- cycle ”. 

 

 similar weirdness earned them a devoted cult following of sharpened hippies sitting on the bottom of their chamber gigs in astral studies. But their intentions in long- form sonic odyssey only really came together when the comforting and dramatic “ Echoes ” took up side two of 1971’s Meddle reader. Adopting imagery from 19th- century Romantic minstrel Samuel Taylor Coleridge and John Lennon’s “ Across the Universe ” and erecting from a series of quiet sonar tangs into a important homage to mortal connection, “ Echoes ” was a stint de force of mustering dynamics and a 23- nanosecond eureka moment. Tiring of playing their established material and realising that their moment of witchcraft was eventually upon them, Pink Floyd coming imaged an entire reader- length suite of music united by a single theme. 

 

 According to Waters, the conception for The Dark Side of the Moon – originally named Eclipse A Piece for Assorted fools, since the Dark Side title was formerly being used for a Medicine Head reader – was in place ahead much of the music or lyrics were written. At a 1971 meeting in the kitchen of drummer Nick Mason’s Camden home, Waters proposed that, for their forthcoming stint, they write and perform an entire reader grounded on what he ’d describe as “ the pressures and prepossessions that divert us from our eventuality for positive action ”. Gilmour would summarise it as “ the pressures of ultramodern living that conspire to shoot some people insane ”. 

 

 The strains of being an frequently- homesick touring gemstone band sniggering enviously at the “ hi- dedication first- class travelling set ” were n’t far from their minds, nor the fate of Syd Barrett. It was a memory of their former songster trespassing on a seaside field in Cambridge which would inspire Waters to pen the line “ the lunatic is on the lawn ” for “ Brain Damage ”, and Syd’s posterior internal decline that inspired the song’s woefulanti-hero. A character whose “ levee breaks open numerous times too soon ”, whose “ head explodes with dark forebodings ” and who eventually finds themselves cut off from their own enclosed world. “ And if the band you ’re in thresholds playing different melodies, ” Waters would sing, “ I ’ll see you on the dark side of the moon ”. 

 

 That iconic title expression, Waters latterly explained, was his attempt to reach out to his flounderinglisteners.However, ” he latterly explained, “ that you feel crazy ’cause you suppose everything is crazy, “ If you feel that you ’re the only one. ” By jamming relentlessly in stint practices and working up moping or rejected material from what Waters called “ the rubbish library ” – necessary compositions by keyboardist Rick Wright called “ The Violent Sequence ”, “ Religious Theme ” and “ The Travel Section ” – the Floyd erected a rough yet gliding frame for the piece, grounded around rudimentary performances of “ Breathe ”, “ The Great Gig in the Sky ”, “ On the Run ” and “ Us and Them ”. To this, Waters added funk- invested theater exfoliate demonstrations of consumerist lampoon “ plutocrat ” and snare- life- while- you- can edict “ Time ”, and the constructive decline design evolved further on stint. Cult at the reader’s foremost UK performances in January and February 1972 set up the band scuffling with the specialized challenges of their pioneering new quadrophonic sound system and smothering “ The Great Gig in the Sky ” with recordings of Malcolm Muggeridge harangues and spoken- word readings from St Paul’s missive to the Ephesians. After a day off in Bristol, still, Waters arrived at the following night’s show with an entire, brilliantly apocalyptic new song called “ decline ”, declaring, “ Then tads, I ’ve written the ending. ” 

 

 The Dark Side of the Moon, as it was ultimately named when Medicine Head’s reader sank without trace, was premiered to an awestruck press at London’s Rainbow Theatre on 17 February. “ The ambition of the Floyd’s cultural invention is now vast, ” wrote The Sunday Times. Honing and expanding the work over the ensuing months, Floyd arrived at Abbey Road with the reader nearly complete and ready to record, bar some crucial atmospheric additions echoing The Beatles ’ use of Abbey Road as one big experimental laboratory of sound. 

 

 A Synthi A synthesizer was fired up to add obsessive electronic instigation to “ On the Run ” and “ Time ”. The cash register noises on “ plutocrat ” were erected together from Abbey Road sound- goods records, recordings of Waters throwing coins into his woman ’s artificial food mixer and the sound of the band dropping bags of cash onto the plant bottom from six bases over. The waterfall of chiming timepieces was firstly recorded timer by piece in an antique timepiece shop by mastermind Alan Parsons to showcase the goods of quadrophonic sound, and pocketed by the Floyd to open “ Time ”. A group of backing vocalizers – Doris Troy, Lesley Duncan, Liza Strike and Barry St John – arrived to add philosophy largesse to tracks including “ Brain Damage ” and “ Us and Them ”, noting the veritably reticent and unforthcoming nature of a band making an reader apparently espousing mortal connection and empathy. “ They were n’t veritably friendly, ” Duncan would recall, “ they were cold, rather clinical The most we got was ‘ that ’ll do ’. ” 

 

 To meat out the reader’s theme, Waters began canvassing people – roadies, masterminds, anyone he could snare around the plant – using a fixed set of question cards “ When was the last time you were violent? ” “ Were you in the right? ” “ Are you alarmed of dying? ” “ Do you suppose you ’re going frenetic? ” Recording bodies’s Red Rose Speedway in the coming- door plant, Paul McCartney took part, although his answers were supposed too performative and humorous to include – “ too clever, too guarded, ” Gilmour said, “ he did n’t want to give anything down. ” bodies guitarist Henry McCullough, still, did contribute the line “ I do n’t know, I was really drunk at the time ”. 

 

 Dispersed amongst the cosmic spaciousness of the record, the interviews came a kind of internal harangue of the reader, the voices in the head of the reader that sounded to drift out from the dark side of the moon itself. The manic horselaugh of road director Peter Watts, father of film actor Naomi. The road rage altercation described by roadie Roger “ The chapeau ” Manifold. And Abbey Road gatekeeper Gerry O’Driscoll delivering the reader’s most calmly philosophical sentiments “ I'm not alarmed of dying. Any time will do, I do n’t mind ”, “ I ’ve always been frenetic like utmost of us have ” and “ there is no dark side in the moon, really. As a matter of fact it’s all dark ”.