Pink Floyd - The Dark Side of the Moon

The Dark Side of the Moon has been out forty years now.  Much has been written and said about it in that time.  What could I write that hasn’t already been written?  I’m not sure but I’ll give it a try.  My own experience with this album started in the spring of 1981.  I was getting ready to graduate from high school when my brother showed up and gave me a $50 bill to buy whatever I wanted.  I bought four albums that day – two from The Doors [LA Woman and Morrison Hotel], and two from Pink Floyd [DSOTM and The Wall].  I have been hooked on both The Doors and Pink Floyd ever since. 

A couple of years later when I was a sophomore in college, I went to visit a female friend of mine.  She lived in an apartment off-campus, I was in the neighborhood and I dropped by.  When I walked in, there was one wall in the “dining room” that was a mural of the DSOTM album cover.  In the dining room was another girl named Carol.  I saw her and the mural at the same time.  I was kind of taken aback by the mural and when I asked who painted it, Carol said that she did it.  “Wow!” [I thought…someone who likes something I like!]  I never came back to the apartment, but I never forgot the girl who painted the mural.  Little did I know then that Carol and I were going to get married four years later.

I went through at least two vinyl copies and two CD copies of this album.  My theory for the reason this album spent over 14 years on the Billboard charts is because of people like me.  After one copy wears out, you go out and get another copy.  What is it about The Dark Side of the Moon that has made it so endearing to me?  Is it the quality of the recording?  Dark Side is one of the most clear, clean, crystalline, ethereal albums one could ever hope to hear.  I “test drive” stereos [both home and car stereos] with Dark Side. Is it the many voices you hear in the background?  The music?  The lyrics?  The singing?  The album cover?  The answer is “yes.”  On this album there was a fine balance between lyrics [Roger Waters] and musicality [David Gilmour and Rick Wright].  There wasn’t too much of one or the other.  For the first time on a Pink Floyd album you could hear female voices singing with the band [not on top of them like on Atom Heart Mother].  Dick Parry and his sax provided Pink Floyd with another lead instrument.  David Gilmour and Rick Wright sang exquisite harmonies.  Roger Waters wrote lyrics that are both thought-provoking and vivid in their ability to paint a picture without talking down to his audience. 

Roger Waters: “Dark Side of the Moon was an expression of political, philosophical and humanitarian empathy that was desperate to get out.” 

David Gilmour: “The ideas that Roger was exploring apply to every new generation. They still have very much the same relevance as they had.”

In 1971, Pink Floyd released Meddle.  Side One included short songs, but Side Two contained  Echoes, which Roger Waters dubbed “an epic sound poem.”  He also said that Echoes was his first expressions of empathy.  They found a direction and wanted more music like Echoes.  The Dark Side of the Moon began as a piece called Eclipse (A Piece for Assorted Lunatics).   The band toured extensively in 1972, and during this schedule they developed Eclipse.  This was back when groups would “road test” their material before they recorded it.  During breaks in touring they’d convene at Abbey Road to record what they refined on the road.  Nick Mason once said "the concept was originally about the pressures of modern life - travel, money and so on.  But then Roger turned it into a meditation on insanity."

The songs:

Speak To Me – "...I've always been mad , I know I've been mad, like most of us have. They have you explain why you're a madman even if you're not mad..." Machines, ticking clocks, ringing cash registers, a heartbeat, mad laughter, Clare Torry’s screaming, someone saying “I've been mad for fucking years—absolutely years” – all of this in 1:07.  As brief as it is, it serves as an overture for The Dark Side of the Moon.  Right away you know this isn’t going to be a typical rock album.

Breathe – “Don’t be afraid to care/Look around, choose your own ground…”  That’s one way of saying “relax, be yourself, don’t be afraid to speak out about the things of which you care, and choose your own path in life.”  Rick Wright said he came up with the chord sequence from Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue.  David Gilmour threw in some of his own chords as well.

On The Run – This was a guitar song before Pink Floyd discovered the VSC3 synthesizer.  It was called “The Travel Sequence” then.  This is Gilmour and Waters’ vision of what the future sounds like.  Footsteps -  running away from something, or someone.  Or perhaps it’s just the pressures of traveling, running through airports so one doesn’t miss a connection.  But at the end, a plane crash.  "Live for today, gone tomorrow, that's me ..." - Roger "The Hat" Manifold

Time – This is about wasted time, and time relentlessly marching forward.  At the beginning of your life you have all kinds of time to do the things you want, but toward the end of your life there just aren’t enough hours in the day.  Life is short so don’t waste it.   Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way…  That lyric from Roger Waters gives one keen insight into the English character.  I think it speaks to the “stiff upper lip” quality of the English – one may be going through some kind of personal trauma, but don’t you dare let anyone know about it.  On the inside there could be much anguish and turmoil, but outside there is the façade, the public mask that hides what’s happening inside.  This is the song where the female voices make their first appearance on the record.  When the vocals were mixed they sounded like they were put through some kind of oscillator, which [to me anyway] has the effect of making the voices sound like they were recorded underwater.  Time is also the last Pink Floyd song on which Rick Wright sings lead [he alternates verses with David Gilmour].  He wouldn’t sing lead again until Wearing the Inside Out [on 1994’s The Division Bell].

What does all of this mean?  To borrow a phrase, “time waits for no one…”

The Great Gig in the Sky – “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.”  The music is by Rick Wright.  Clare Torry’s vocal was completely improvised.  The band knew what they wanted – they wanted improvisation, and Rick Wright told her to “think about death, think about horror.”  She did her vocal very quickly but was embarrassed by her performance.  Rick Wright recalled that what she came up with was exactly what they were looking for, that they thought what she did was “wonderful.”  Since there are no lyrics, Clare Torry’s voice is another instrument, and a very effective one.   "I never said I was frightened of dying…"

Money – Quick – name another popular song that’s in 7/8 time!  I’d have to think about it for a bit, but right now it escapes me.  I don’t know how Alan Parsons managed it, but the cash registers are in sync with the beat of the music.  The message of the song is very simple – the guys in Pink Floyd like money, and lots of it.  Most of the song is in 7/8 time, but when it’s time for David Gilmour to solo, the band switches to 4/4 time and it’s time to rock.   I love it when a band can change time signatures [and back] in mid-song and make it look easy.

Us And Them – Rick Wright wrote the music for this one.  The only Pink Floyd song I like better than this one is Comfortably Numb.  When Michelangelo Antonioni made his film Zabriskie Point, Wright had a piece for him that was called The Violent Sequence.  Antonioni rejected the piece because it made him fell too sad.  This was something they had since 1969.  They didn’t use it for Atom Heart Mother, Meddle, or Obscured by Clouds, but they dug it up for Dark Side.  I don’t know why the kept it under wraps for so long, and I imagine they don’t either.  The track itself fades in with Rick Wright’s Hammond as Money fades out.

‘Forward!’ we cried from the rear and the front rank died/The generals sat and the lines on the map moved from side to side… Roger Waters is a lyrical genius here.  Here he congers a picture of generals who are so disconnected from the pain and suffering from those doing the actual fighting.  Those who are making those lines move back and forth are not human.  People who are putting up with things like trench foot, dysentery, typhus, cholera, interminable artillery barrages, poison gas and wholesale death in “going over the top” are an abstract concept to those who are “safely out of range” [a theme Waters would return to on his Amused to Death album].  Anytime I see a war movie like Paths to Glory or Joyeux Noel, where generals are depicted as being clueless to the conditions of the men they command, I am reminded of this lyric.

Any Colour You Like – A spacey, psychedelic jam.  Apparently one of the roadies had a saying about their guitars, something like "you can have it any colour you like." Gilmour admits to nicking his guitar sound here from Cream’s Badge, that swirling Leslie sound that later became identified with George Harrison.  It’s a nice bridge between Us And Them and Brain Damage.

Brain Damage – Gilmour’s guitar riff throughout the song reminds me of The Beatles’ Dear Prudence.  Roger Waters finally gets a lead vocal at the end of DSOTM with this and Eclipse.  Inspired by Syd Barrett perhaps? The bit about “when the band you’re in start playing different tunes” just screams Syd, because that really happened.  Roger Waters once said he had a vision of a piece of grass somewhere in Cambridge, the kind of place where “they” tell you to “keep off the grass.”  The lunatic ignores the sign and enjoys the grass, even though “they” try to “keep the loonies on the path.” 

Eclipse – Life, as seen by Roger Waters –

All that you touch
And all that you see
All that you taste
All you feel
And all that your love
And all that you hate
All you distrust
All you save
And all that you give
And all that you deal
And all that you buy, beg, borrow or steal
And all your create
And all you destroy
And all that you do
And all that you say
And all that you eat
And everyone you meet
And all that you slight
And everyone you fight
And 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.

There is no dark side of the moon really.  Matter of fact, it’s all dark.

Tidbits:

The voices – Roger Waters’ idea.  He had questions on cards that he would ask people, like their own roadies, the doorman at Abbey Road, or other musicians who happened to be there recording an album [in this case, Paul McCartney & Wings Red Rose Speedway]. The questions:

Are you afraid of dying?

"I'm not afraid of dying, anytime will do. I don't mind. Why should I be afraid of dying? There's no reason for it. You've gotta go sometime." - Gerry O'Driscoll, doorman at Abbey Road

"I never said I was afraid of dying" - Puddie Watts, wife of Pink Floyd road manager Peter Watts (father of actress Naomi Watts)

"Live for today, gone tomorrow, that's me." – Roger “The Hat” Manifold, Pink Floyd roadie

Do you think you're going mad?

"I've always been mad. I know I've been mad, like the most of us are. Very hard to explain why you're mad, even if you're not mad" - Gerry O'Driscoll

"I've been mad for fucking years, absolutely years, been over the edge for yonks, been working with bands so long, I think crikey." - Chris Adamson, Pink Floyd roadie

When was the last time you were violent, and were you in the right?

"I was in the right! Yes, absolutely in the right." - Chris Adamson

"I certainly was in the right." - Gerry O'Driscoll

"I was definitely in the right. That geezer was cruising for a bruising." - Puddie Watts

"I was just telling him, he couldn't get into number two. He was asking why he wasn't coming up on freely, after I was yelling and screaming and telling him why he wasn't coming up on freely. It came as a heavy blow, but we sorted the matter out." - Chris Adamson, Pink Floyd roadie

"I don't know, I was really drunk at the time!" – Henry McCullough [Wings guitarist]

"I mean, they're not gonna kill ya, so if you give 'em a quick short, sharp, shock, they won't do it again. Dig it? I mean he got off lightly, 'cause I would've given him a thrashing, I only hit him once. It was only a difference of opinion, but really, I mean good manners don't cost nothing do they, eh?" – Roger “The Hat” Manifold

The cover – designed by Storm Thorgerson, who died a couple of weeks ago.  He had simple instructions, especially from Rick Wright – make it simple, make it bold.  Storm came up with seven different cover designs, but each band member picked the Prism immediately.

The clocks – Alan Parsons is responsible for all the clocks at the beginning of Time.  He was making a recording for EMI to promote the “new” sound of quadraphonic, and he recorded all of these clocks in a clock shop.

The Dark Side of the Moon is an ageless masterpiece.  It doesn’t sound the least bit dated.  It’s one of my Desert Island Discs.

Pink Floyd: Wish You Were Here/Animals

With Wish You Were Here, Pink Floyd faced the unenviable task of following-up the massively-successful The Dark Side of the Moon. The band were at a creative dead end. They had achieved all the success they had ever wanted, but the question became "now what?" They settled on two themes- the long-since departed Syd Barrett, and the music business. Shine On You Crazy Diamond is a nine-part song written by Roger Waters, David Gilmour and Richard Wright. It's about Syd Barrett. It was originally intended to take up an entire side like Echoes [Meddle] and Atom Heart Mother [Atom Heart Mother], but the band opted to split the song after the fifth part and insert three songs - Welcome to the Machine, Have a Cigar, and Wish You Were Here. Welcome to the Machine centers on a young musician who is signed to a record deal by a record executive, who had been "provided with toys" and "scouting for boys" for the record company. Once signed, the musician is told by the record company what to sing [it's all right we told you what to dream...], so "welcome to the machine" [the "Machine" being the music business]. Have a Cigar picks up the sleazy record company theme with the question Oh by the way, which one's Pink? The cluelesss record company executive then tells the band they're "fantastic," they've got to get another album out because they owe it to their fans and the record execs are having a hard time counting all their money. Things are going very well [everybody else is just green, have you seen the chart, it's a helluva start, it could be made into a monster if we all pull together as a team...]. Roy Harper does the vocals on Have a Cigar. He was in an adjoining Abbey Road studio recording his HQ album while Pink Floyd were doing Wish You Were Here. Roger Waters was having a hard time getting the vocals right, so the rest of the band suggested Roy Harper sing it. The song Wish You Were Here is another tribute to Syd Barrett. In my opinion it's one of the finest songs Pink Floyd ever did. It is the perfect combination of David Gilmour's music with Roger Waters' lyrics. The album closes with the remainder of Shine On You Crazy Diamond. It closes the album on what David Gilmour called a "funeral march."

I can summarize Animals as Orwell's Animal Farm set to music. Roger Waters breaks the human race in his Orwellian world into three kinds of people - Dogs, Sheep and Pigs. Dogs traces it's roots back to 1974, when it performed in concert with songs that became the album Wish You Were Here as You Gotta Be Crazy. That reference appears in the very first line of the song - You’ve gotta be crazy, you gotta have a real need./You gotta sleep on your toes, and when you’re on the street,/you gotta be able to pick out the easy meat with your eyes closed./And then moving in silently, down wind and out of sight,/You gotta strike when the moment is right without thinking. Dogs are depicted as the sort of people who will stab one in the back to get what they want. Dogs are cutthroats, opportunistic, but to survive in the capitalist Britain of the 1970s are "told what to do by the man" [who in this case are the Pigs], and are beaten into conformity of British society, "broken by trained personnel" and finally "dragged down by the stone." Pigs are at the top of the economic heap, those who think they're so morally superior they can tell the Dogs and the Sheep what they can and can't do. In Pigs [Three Different Ones] Roger refers to Mary Whitehouse, a British morals crusader [also immortalized in Deep Purple's Mary Long] as a "fucked-up old hag." There is another kind of "Pig" who is the greedy capitalist lording over the proletariat who are the mindless Sheep who do what they are told. Sheep began as Raving and Drooling, another song that traces its origins to the pre-Wish You Were Here days. The Sheep are "harmlessly passing the time in the grassland, clueless animals that have no idea about the "sudden unease in the air." But things aren't what they seem. The clue lies in a parody of Psalm 23:

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want He makes me down to lie Through pastures green He leadeth me the silent waters by. With bright knives He releaseth my soul. He maketh me to hang on hooks in high places. He converteth me to lamb cutlets, For lo, He hath great power, and great hunger. When cometh the day we lowly ones, Through quiet reflection, and great dedication Master the art of Karate, Lo, we shall rise up, And then we'll make the bugger's eyes water.

The Sheep rise up and slaughter the Dogs [Have you heard the news? The Dogs are dead...]

I have always considered both Wish You Were Here and Animals as being two sides of the same coin. The songs came from the same period, and to there ears they sound very similar. Not only do they sound like they were recorded at the same time and place, there's a bitterness to all the lyrics that suggest to me that once Roger Waters got on a roll, he couldn't stop. Here's how I've got things sequenced: Pigs on the Wing Part I/Have a Cigar/Wish You Were Here/Welcome to the Machine/Sheep/Shine On You Crazy Diamond Parts I-VII (from the Echoes "Best of" CD)/Dogs/Pigs [Three Different Ones]/Pigs on the Wing Part II.

Related link: http://elviejoloco-tonysrants.blogspot.com/2008/09/rick-wright-rip.html

David Gilmour: About Face

This second album from David Gilmour, the guitarist and singer from Pink Floyd, came out in March 1984. At that time, the last I had heard from Gilmour was on Pink Floyd’s The Final Cut from 1983. While I liked The Final Cut then [and still do] I felt there was something missing, and that “something” was David Gilmour. For that final album with Roger Waters, Gilmour was just the guitar player. He didn’t have any of his own songs on the album, he sang only one song [Not Now John], and he did not receive any production credit as he had on the Floyd’s previous album, 1979’s The Wall. Where The Wall saw loads of input from Gilmour, The Final Cut had none. The Final Cut was seen by many [including me] as Pink Floyd’s swan song. So when About Face came out I was keen to hear what David Gilmour had been up to since The Wall. I remember back in the day that Rolling Stone magazine [and Kurt Loder in particular] had given About Face a three-star [out of five] rating. Loder grudgingly gave a positive review. But shortly after About Face’s release [a month], Roger Waters put out his own album, The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking. Where Loder’s review of About Face was somewhat positive, his review of The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking was downright scathing. Loder stated that when comparing the two Floyd solo albums to each other, it was perfectly clear to him who had the patent on Pink Floyd’s sound. Loder’s verdict on that question: Gilmour. He even stated that About Face gained more luster in comparison with “this turkey.”

Every Pink Floyd album between The Dark Side of the Moon and The Final Cut is based [in some cases loosely, in others explicitly] on some sort of concept or theme. About Face is not like that. It is simply a collection of songs. Some of the music on About Face is very Floydian. These songs would include Murder [a song addressed to John Lennon’s killer], You Know I’m Right [Gilmour’s open letter to Roger Waters], Near the End [another open letter to Waters], and the ballad Out of the Blue, where Gilmour voices his concerns about nuclear war. Each of these songs has what many songs from The Final Cut do not have – melody. Murder starts with an acoustic guitar which reminds me of Norwegian Wood [This Bird Has Flown], has a wonderful fretless bass solo from Pino Palladino, and finishes with some fierce electric guitar at the end. Near the End is similar in structure to Murder, but instead of having a “big guitar” finish, Near the End ends with a double-tracked acoustic guitar solo that morphs into a single electric guitar solo. You Know I’m Right has a simple electric guitar introduction, a big orchestral sound, and then a minute-and-a-half of somewhat atonal guitar soloing at the end. The instrumental Let’s Get Metaphysical is an orchestral piece with Gilmour soloing over the top. It serves as an introduction to Near the End and would also seem at home on a Floyd album.

The rest of About Face is a different kettle of fish. Until We Sleep, which leads off the album, has vocal harmonies that sound like they came from The Byrds, humongous Fender Stratocaster tones, and a massive synthesizer sound courtesy of Deep Purple’s Jon Lord. The second side of the album [back when there was such a thing] begins with the headbanging All Lovers Are Deranged, co-written by Gilmour and Pete Townshend. When asked about this song, David Gilmour said he fancied a bit of headbanging before he got too old for it. The ballad Love on the Air is another tune co-written with Pete Townshend. In 1985 Pete Townshend played two shows for charity at the Brixton Academy under his own name [rather than as a member of The Who]. David Gilmour served as lead guitarist for the band [he had played on Pete’s White City album then currently out], and during his solo spot he played Love on the Air. Blue Light is David Gilmour trying to be funky (?!?), complete with a horn section. This song is more of a curiosity than something that should be taken seriously, but I like it anyway because it’s so “out of character” for him. Cruise is another acoustic-driven song that has a reggae (?!?) breakdown in the middle. It’s the one song on About Face that makes me hit the “skip” button on the CD player every time.

David Gilmour has often said that he finds it easier to express himself musically rather than lyrically. About Face shows David Gilmour to be an average lyricist, especially when compared to an outstanding lyricist like Roger Waters or Pete Townshend. That being said, it’s better than anything I could ever attempt. The appeal of About Face lies in the music contained therein. David Gilmour is an outstanding musician with a keen melodic sense. He's also my most favorite guitar player. In places it sounds a lot like Pink Floyd. Though he is a very fluid soloist, he demonstrates that he can play piledriving riffs if the song requires it. About Face is Gilmour at the crossroads between The Wall and A Momentary Lapse of Reason. It is essential for any Pink Floyd fan who does not think that Pink Floyd began and ended with Roger Waters.