Mark Megahan
It’s hard to believe that half a century has ticked by since the ultimate rock music icon recording, “The Dark Side of the Moon,” was released in 1973. It was as if all of the musical planets aligned to inspire Pink Floyd in the birth and delivery of a culture bending epic masterpiece to mankind. Even back in the day, it wasn’t as much of an “album” as an experience.
No dark side of the moon, really
There is no dark side of the moon, really. As a matter of fact, it’s all dark. You have to listen close to hear that quip at the very end of the final track. And listen close we did. With headphones, which at the time were a fairly new experience. Stereo itself remained more of an “experiment” than a technology.
When Roger Waters made the first footsteps walk through your head, it wasn’t just the hippies who went crazy for it. “Speak to Me” spoke to everyone. Just “Breathe,” the cover suggests. Soon, new stereo units were “On the Run” out the door with a complementary copy. Stereos were selling as well as the record because of the totally novel stereo sound effects. That’s an announcement from the Ostend Hoverport on the loudspeaker, by the way.
Back in the mists of ancient time, records were made of vinyl and extraordinarily prone to scratching. Even dust affects playback. This author’s digital quality version of Dark Side of the Moon is pumping out of a pair of JBL’s on the desktop right now.
At least in my dotage, I can cope with those alarm clocks at the beginning of “Time” and not have a coronary. It’s a whole lot different when you aren’t expecting them. Roger made a big point of “wake up, you’re going to be dead soon,” with that. “The time is gone, the song is over, thought I’d something more to say…” Followed by Claire Torre moaning out a symphonic quality mortal orgasm on her way to the “Great Gig in the Sky,” before you had to flip it over. That was always a drag and something we don’t miss in the digital age.
You can thank Alan Parsons for the highly polished wall of well engineered sound. He was the producer and teaming him with Pink Floyd helped Roger Waters craft a sound to go with the concept as it clawed it’s way out his his brain in the recording studio.
He still doesn’t think they got Dark Side of the Moon right and this October, he’ll be releasing another version which he thinks is a whole lot closer. Once again, the rabid perfectionist isn’t sure if he nailed it. Meanwhile, all the fans say you don’t need to mess with success, even if it isn’t “perfect.” It sure made a whole bunch of “Money” and instead of a Leer Jet, Roger can buy himself a 747-8.
An iconic cover to match
In the early days of FM radio, all the tracks they spun came from disks with covers just as important as the music. Hipgnosis designed most of Pink Floyd’s and all of them are attention grabbing. As almost everyone knows by now, The Dark Side of the Moon features the faint white outline of a prism, on a flat black background.
A single ray of light passes through the prism breaking into it’s component colors. In the days of CD’s and digital copies, nobody thinks about the inside cover art. This one carried the rainbow band from the front across the spread out cover with the central green band pulsing in a heartbeat pattern, to match the music. Also included were full lyrics and credits. No other photography detracts from the simplicity.
After it went into production, it eventually became the “Bible” of LP records. Just as the Bible is the world’s best selling book, Dark Side of the Moon is the world’s best selling record, hands down. It spent an outrageous 14 years on Billboard’s Top 200 album chart. As “Us and Them,” portrays, it’s all about the human condition. Which is why “Any Colour You Like” soothingly morphs like a drug induced stupor into the paranoia and mental breakdown of “Brain Damage.” That reflects the band’s original founding member, Syd Barrett.
Looking back on it from half a century in the future, it’s clear to see that at the same time Pink Floyd reached the pinnacle of their career, America was reaching a turning point in culture. Things were a whole lot different in 1973 than they are now. It’s going to be interesting to see how the new updated version fares when it’s released to an entirely new generation in an entirely different cultural framework.
Roger may be “Pink” but he’s not “Pink Floyd.” The band was named for blues musicians Pink Anderson and Floyd Council. Pink Floyd as a band has been gone for good since they released “The Final Cut.” The last line of that album on the track “Two Suns in the Sunset” is “we were all equal in the end.” That was literary allusion to the setting suns of Roger Waters and legendary guitarist David Gilmore, parting ways once and for all.
David and the others kept the Pink Floyd name and toured for a while but it was clear that it was nothing but “dehydrated Floyd.” At the same time, Roger may be an artistic genius but he doesn’t even really play the bass guitar he gets credited with. Those days are gone and the context which it all mattered in is gone as well. That’s why “all that is now and all that is gone and all that’s to come and everything under the sun is in tune. But the sun is ‘eclipsed‘ by the moon.”
