Sphinx's Music Blog - Pink Floyd: Dark Side of the Moon

Hey everyone, thanks for taking the time to read my blog today. Today I explored the super-colossal hit album, Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd. Released on March 1, 1973, this album is only one of nine in history to pass over 40 million claimed copies sold (it sits at #4 all time at 45 million). This album absolutely came out of nowhere. Pink Floyd had a relatively successful debut album in 1967, but future albums proved to not connect to many rock fans, especially those in the United States. The band had changed their sound many times leading up to Dark Side, starting as a psychedelic group under Syd Barrett, their leader at the time. But after extensive drug use, Barrett was forced out of the group, and the band then shifted to a more avant-garde art rock style, sometimes having songs last longer than 10 minutes, and some taking up an entire side of a record (like the albums Atom Heart Mother and Echoes). 

From Left to Right: Richard Wright (Keyboards/Synthesizers), Roger Waters (Bass/Songwriter/Vocals), Nick Mason (Drums), David Gilmour (Guitar/Vocals)

For Dark Side, their 8th album, they went for a concept album that takes on many different themes. These themes discuss time, war, conflict, mental illness, greed, polarization, and others you can interpret from it. And it’s these themes that make me love this album. It’s an album every time I listen to it I just get sucked in. The album moves fast due to how each song transitions into the next, and I’m always left contemplating and pondering what it is the band has conveyed through these ten or so songs.

The first time I heard this album was in my parent’s garage back in high school (I swear I wasn’t high). My dad had the album, and that cover always peaked my interest, in its simplicity of just being the light refraction going through a prism. No artist title was on it, no title for the album either. I would later find out that that would be a famous calling card for the band, but at the time it left me curious. I remember when I finally listened to the album how immersed I was with the record (for those reasons I stated before). It became something I couldn’t put down and I immediately grew a love for Pink Floyd and started exploring their other albums. 

What I also find interesting about this album is that it is definitely of its time in terms of how it is set up as a package. There is no way this album would be able to be created today and be this successful. In the era of digital downloads, and being able to easily pick and choose songs you want, casual listeners wouldn’t have understood what was going on, and would have passed up on it. The art of creating an album, specifically one that is conceptual, is for the most part dead and gone. 

When it comes to the music, Pink Floyd became masters of the studio with this album, having the torch passed on to them from The Beatles and all their innovations they came up with at Abbey Road Studios, which is where this album was also created. The band explores all parts of the sonic palette, starting with the simplified sound of the bass drum sounding like a heartbeat to start and end the album. We also hear the use of voice and casual conversations dispersed throughout the album, as well as sound clips of clocks, tearing paper, coins and cash registers. In addition we see a monumental rise in the use of synthesizers, as sounds never heard at the time ring through your speakers, sounds that are still relevant in today’s music. It’s all of this, plus their work with tape loops, reverb, rototoms, multi-tracking and quadraphonic sound that makes this a masterpiece in sound engineering.  

These are rototoms

The album’s first couple tracks immediately hit the listener with various examples this new sound I just discussed, as Speak to Me/Breathe starts with that bass drum, heartbeat sound. After various other sound effects, casual talk about madness and how we’re all mad/crazy in our own unique way, we get a female scream followed by a jazzy lounge feel when the band comes in. David Gilmour’s steel guitar sounds almost remind me of sounds from a wild west movie, but it sets an outer space feel also, maybe you can think of it as being a space cowboy. The lyrics for Breathe tell us about time and the life you live: you go in and out each day feeling sets of emotions, you work, doing the same ole thing, day in day out. Eventually you’ll die. Is this how life is supposed to be?  

On the Run is an instrumental that always reminds me of traveling at the airport, chasing down your flight. Sounds remind me of something from Star Trek or getting ready to ride Millennium Force at Cedar Point. The song uses the stereo channels so beautifully, creating a doppler-like effect. Ends with a crash that makes us think: is it a plane? Has the stress and pressure of high speed travel gotten the better of us?. Still running and footsteps to nearly close out the track. Then the clocks start clicking...

RING!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The deafening sound of alarm as time’s up. Time - a truly great masterpiece. The metronome sound literally used as well to provide the time and tempo of the track is a great addition to the song. Gilmour’s big hits on the guitar ring out in a great solo by him. But it’s the lyrics here that stick with me like few other songs I’ve ever listened to. It hits too close to home for me. “And then one day you find, ten years have got behind you, no one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun” - every time those lyrics get to me. Like, where the hell has the time gone? What am I doing with my life? The right thing? Have I been wasting it? Roger Waters claims his lyrics are about not preparing for life, but being right in the middle of it. By the end of the track, we transition right into a reprise of Breathe with some new lyrics about the comfort we have in our homes and in our faith - even if it may be misguided.

Great Gig in the Sky finishes side one, and that piano comes in provided by Richard Wright. Once again setting a jazzy setting, and it’s an absolutely gorgeous piece to start of the song. Gerry O’Driscoll, who was the doorman for Abbey Road Studios, starts talking in the background - “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 gotta go sometime.” I wish I could feel the same way. But then we get out of nowhere 4 minutes of female session vocalist Clare Torry just screaming and wailing in such an angry vocal sound, while Nick Mason is very methodical on his drum fills, not overpowering the vocal. Richard Wright is just playing the organ like it's a trip to church awaiting that great gig in the sky. It’s so powerful, and all of it was totally improvised. In 2004, Torry actually sued Pink Floyd for not having her named a co-author of the track, as she was paid the session-fee of £30 for her contribution at the time of the recording. Things ended up being settled out of court for an undisclosed amount. 

Side two begins with Money - the rawest, most perfected blues track by any rock band in my opinion. The cash register money sounds great. The unique guitar riff is great. The angry sax solo by Dick Parry at the instrumental break is awesome, he has just as much emotion Clare Torry had from the previous song, and he plays the mood perfectly. The 7/4 time signature switches to a 4/4 after the sax solo in which Gilmour then goes to town in possibly his greatest guitar solo ever. There’s a reason this song is a classic rock radio staple. In the middle of his solo it minimizes to just a simple bass line and light drumming (Gilmour described it as going dry by taking all guitar effects off too). It’s hard to fully articulate this solo, but it is absolutely one of the greatest ever performed in rock and roll, and makes Gilmour a guitar god for eternity. The song became the first big hit for Pink Floyd in the States. 

We transition into some more casual vocals and then we get Us and Them - starting with some pretty organ chords from Wright. Very jazzy lounge feel again, with some great piano solo by Wright in the middle of the track. Dick Parry is still around for another sax solo too. The theme of the track is great and thought provoking too. Political. Us vs Them. War. Poverty. The polarization of people socially, economically. Things that Roger Waters will soon focus all his artistic efforts on, which helps in all honesty in the breaking up of the band in the mid-1980’s. But so much of this is still so relevant to our time. Does this not summarize 2020 America? - “With, without. And who’ll deny its what the fighting’s all about?”

A synthesizer transitions us into Any Colour You Like, with a great 70’s groove and the synths are so cool sounding, even for 2020. And then the guitar comes in with crazy reverb but sounds great. It’s a fun instrumental track that moves right into….

Brain Damage. The lunatic is in my head. If the band you're in starts playing different tunes, I'll see you on the dark side of the moon. The track is written and sung by Waters, who is referencing former band member Syd Barrett, their faithful leader at the beginning of Pink Floyd before drugs destroyed his life mentally. The band would devote their next album to Sid, but this track was created from their previous tour and tested on the road as a song titled “Lunatic”. 

The album closes with Eclipse - Waters is providing the yin and yang of life, the balance of all things. There’s dark. There’s light. There’s good. There’s bad. How we decide to act on them is all up to us. So maybe there is no fate, we make what we want to make with the world. That’s deep Roger. Mind blown. And then as the album ends we get a final tease of dialogue - “There is no dark side of the moon, really. Matter of fact, it's all dark”. 

To give this album the attention and appreciation it truly deserves, listen to it in its entirety, beginning to end. Listening to these tracks isolated just doesn’t convey their meaning, or set the mood right. Since each song moves into the next, there is a rationale for why these songs are organized and ordered the way they are. It’s a piece of art. Picking pieces of it apart deteriorates the value of it. It’s my belief that people that don’t get it don’t listen to it beginning to end. Spend 40 minutes distraction free and give it a listen. I challenge you.

Have opinions on this album, , or Pink Floyd in general? I’d love to chat about it! Send a message either on social media or on the Gamezilla Media discord. In addition, if you love gaming and movies, check out the five podcasts on Gamezilla Media, and consider being a patron on Patreon! You can find me on the Last Action Podcast or the Noobs and Dragons podcast. 

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Sphinx