#55 Pink Floyd, 'The Dark Side of the Moon' (1973)
Previously #43
My favourite Pink Floyd album, and one of my all-time favourites in general, ‘The Dark Side Of The Moon’ is a concept record dealing with conflict, greed, time, death, money and most of all mental illness. Its success launched the band into mega-stardom, making them one of the greatest of all time thanks to its innovation. Split into two suites, each side of the record is a continuous piece of music, with each song reflecting a different stage of life. On ‘Speak To Me,’ the suite begins with the sound of a heartbeat and vocals very much buried in the mix that say “I've been mad for fucking years, absolutely years/Been over the edge for yonks/Been working me buns off for bands.” I’ll admit, after years of listening to this album, I had no idea that there was anything coherent being said. The song represents the beginning of life but also the overarching theme of this record; madness. ‘Breathe (In The Air)’ gives us one simple message: “Don’t be afraid to care,” before going into ‘On The Run,’ an innovation in recording, and perhaps a pioneering track of electronic music. It comprises 4 notes on a synthesizer sped up, backwards guitar and high hats to create white noise. Once again, buried vocals proclaim “Live for today, gone tomorrow. That's me *Laughs*.” It’s a song about travel and Rick Wright’s anxiety about it (notably dying in a plane crash). ‘Time’ is about missing opportunities, life passing one by without notice; “You are young and life is long, and there is time to kill today/And then one day you find ten years have got behind you/No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.” The extended guitar solo then takes us into a reprise of ‘Breathe’ before easing us into one of the most stunning tracks of all-time; the mostly instrumental ‘The Great Gig In The Sky,’ Rick Wright’s magnum opus aided by the vocals of Clare Torry. The only sensical words on the song were uttered by a janitor at Abbey Road Studios, Gerry O’Driscoll; “And I am not frightened of dying. Any time will do, I don't mind. Why should I be frightened of dying? There's no reason for it – you've got to go sometime.”
Side Two opens with the lead single, ‘Money,’ which became the band’s most commercially successful track; a song about greed and consumerism. Ironically, this album and that song would make the band richer beyond their wildest dreams. ‘Us and Them,’ the second single, is clearly about mental health; us vs them. The depressed feeling isolated. Into another instrumenta, ‘Pick Any Colour You Like,’ before one of my favourite Floyd tracks, ‘Brain Damage,’ from where the record takes its title. “The lunatic is in my head” along with the mad laughter is unnerving but is everything ‘The Dark Side Of The Moon’ has been building towards. Culminating in ‘Eclipse,’ it feels like the end of a Broadway musical, the end of a crazy journey; “And everything under the sun is in tune/But the sun is eclipsed by the moon.” It always leaves me breathless. The record remained in the US charts for 736 weeks, between 1973 and 1988. It hit the top spot in the US, but not in the UK, making it the biggest selling UK album to never reached #1. It has sold a staggering 45 million copies worldwide, making it the fourth best-selling album of all time. Not that I’ve tried this myself, but apparently when played in sync with ‘The Wizard Of Oz,’ the movie and music match up perfectly. The pioneering engineer, Alan Parsons, went on to front the successful Alan Parsons Project with the hits ‘Eye In The Sky’ and the Chicago Bulls theme, ‘Sirius.’
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