by Mark Blake
‘Alan Parsons, without doubt, would have done more than simply engineer the record,’ said Nick Mason. ‘We were extremely lucky to have him. Alan was definitely an engineer/producer.’
‘Alan was a very good engineer,’ concurred David Gilmour. ‘But we would have got there with any good engineer operating the knobs and buttons.’
While the band initially agreed to let Chris Thomas mix the album alone, Waters, unable to help himself, snuck into the studio on the first day of mixing. When Gilmour found out, he snuck in on the second day. From then on, the two would sit either side of Thomas, making their feelings known. As Gilmour would later insist, ‘Luckily, Chris was more sympathetic to my point of view than he was to Roger’s.’
Diplomatically, Chris Thomas would later state, ‘There was no difference of opinion between them. There were never any hints that they were going to fall out later.’
Yet, whatever musical tug of war may or may not have been raging between the bassist and the guitarist, Roger Waters was convinced of the album’s worth. ‘I had a very strong feeling when we finished the record that we had come up with something very, very special.’ He played a copy of the just-finished album to his wife Judy. She listened in silence. Then as soon as it ended, she burst into tears. ‘I took that as a very good sign.’ A month after completing the recording, EMI hosted a press reception at the London Planetarium in Baker Street. As EMI’s staff engineer, Alan Parsons was entrusted to produce the event. When the company were unable or unwilling to install a quadraphonic sound system in time, the band tried to stop the event. When that proved impossible, they chose to boycott it. The assembled writers and liggers gathered for cocktails at 8 p.m., to be confronted by life-size cut-outs of Gilmour, Waters and Mason in the Planetarium reception. According to press reports from the time, Richard Wright was the only Floyd to show up in the flesh, though he subsequently claims to have no memory of the event: ‘Did I go or didn’t I? … I’m not sure. I guess I did.’
‘I thought the fact that they didn’t show up was rather churlish,’ says Parsons. ‘But it was a case of, “We are Pink Floyd and we want to do it our way.”’ Melody Maker’s subsequent assessment of the album, on first hearing, described some of the music on the first side of the record as ‘diabolically uninteresting’, while describing how various guests made comedy shadows on the wall of the Planetarium as soon as the lights dimmed.
There was, however, another underlying factor to the Floyd’s non-attendance: their relationship, or rather lack of, with the music press. The cosy bond that existed between many rock groups and writers in the mid-1970s did not extend to Pink Floyd. By 1973, the band would submit to interviews, but only rarely and sometimes, it seemed, under duress.
‘We weren’t a favourite with the music journalists, since none of us had worked that hard to cultivate a relationship with them,’ admitted Nick Mason, who would, nevertheless, prove more press-friendly than some of his bandmates at the time.
‘Roger once told me that when they were touring the States they hired a person specifically to reply no to any requests for interviews or talk shows,’ remembered Adrian Maben. ‘This was the Pol Pot quality of the Floyd. Remain unseen, enigmatic; don’t let anyone know who we are.’
The same enigmatic quality would find its way into the artwork for Dark Side of the Moon. The original idea for what is now one of the most instantly recognisable album covers of all time was conjured up by Storm and Po at Hipgnosis during one of their weekly nocturnal brain-storming sessions. ‘We’d stay up until, say, 4 a.m., working up ideas and then sell them to a band,’ says Po. However, their creations for the last two Floyd albums, Obscured by Clouds and Meddle, had not been among their best. The pair had heard some of the new album and had been shown some of the lyrics. ‘So we had some understanding of where Roger’s head was at,’ says Po.
‘Rick Wright suggested we do something clean, elegant and graphic, not photographic,’ explained Thorgerson. At one late-night session, Storm showed his partner a photograph of a prism sat on top of some sheet music, which he’d found in a second-hand photography book. ‘It was a black and white photo,’ remembers Po, ‘but it had a colour beam projected through it to give it a rainbow effect.’ Thorgerson also saw a similar picture in a physics textbook. Their graphic designer, George Hardie, created a line drawing of a prism, but in white on a black background, which was then airbrushed, so EMI’s printers could reproduce it.
In contrast to Ummagumma and Atom Heart Mother, the design for Dark Side of the Moon was clinical and almost cold. According to the band, several other alternative ideas were also proposed, but the only one anyone can remember was a design based on the Marvel Comics character the Silver Surfer. All the ideas were pitched to the band at Abbey Road, during the final recording sessions, but there was no contest.
‘As soon as we saw it, I think everyone said, “That’s the one!”’ said Waters.
‘I think it took about two minutes,’ laughs Po. ‘They were like, “That’s it!” And went back to finishing the record.’
When EMI agreed to produce a gatefold sleeve, Waters suggested that the colours continue across the inside, augmented by an image of a heartbeat, akin to the blip seen on a hospital oscillator. Thorgerson then decided to add a second prism to the back cover. There would, of course, be no mention of the band’s name or the album’s title anywhere on the outside cover. Clearly on a roll, Hipgnosis then proposed some additional artwork: a sticker featuring a cartoon drawing of the Egyptian pyramids at Giza, and two posters: one featured an infrared image of the pyramids; the other individual photographs of the band members playing live, superimposed over a pink-lit, almost abstract group shot of the band on stage. There were, however, two shots of Roger, though perhaps only for design purposes.
Hipgnosis’ original suggestion of putting everything – posters, stickers and album – in a box was refused by EMI as being too expensive. Nevertheless, in a tribute to the record company’s largesse and Hipgnosis’ admirable blagging skills, Storm and Po were given a budget to fly to Egypt and shoot the pyramids themselves. Unfortunately, Po was struck down by, in his own words, ‘the worst runs you could ever have in your life’, and had to stay back at the hotel, leaving Storm to complete the shoot.
‘I scared myself shitless doing it, too,’ Thorgerson recalled. ‘I hired a taxi at 2 a.m. to take me out to the pyramids. It was a wonderful, clear night and the moon was fantastic. So I’m doing it, and then, at 4 a.m., these figures come walking across – soldiers with guns. I thought: This is it – young photographer dies a strange death in a foreign land. Of course, they were really friendly, and just wanted a bit of bakshish, a little bit of money, to go away.’
Hipgnosis’ eye-catching cover design was a gift for record shop window displays. With the gatefold covers opened and the front and back covers matched up, the prism and spectrum continued into infinity. ‘It was such a brilliant concept,’ said Gilmour. ‘I remember the first time I saw it pinned up in the window of a record shop. I thought it looked amazing.’
A window display in a record shop alerted Clare Torry to the possibility that her vocal, from some two months earlier, might have found its way onto vinyl.
‘There was a record shop next door to the Chelsea Potter pub on Kings Road, and there was this display in the window with the prism,’ says Clare. ‘I remember thinking: Is that the thing I did? I went in, took the cover out of the plastic sleeve and opened up the record. Sure enough, it was. My name was on it. And they’d spelt it right, too … I bought a copy and took it home and played it to my boyfriend when I got in. I was astonished when I heard “The Great Gig in the Sky”. I thought they’d just use a few bars of my singing. I didn’t expect them to use the whole thing.’
Reviews for Dark Side of the Moon disproved the belief that all critics were opposed to the band. Despite some sniffiness at the Planetarium playback, Melody Maker now insisted that it was ‘the best Pink Floyd album since Ummagumma’ and that ‘si
de two is perfect’. New Musical Express was even more effusive: ‘Floyd’s most artistic musical venture.’ In America, where the band were already touring when the album was released, Rolling Stone writer Loyd Grossman (who would go on to a high-profile career in the UK as a TV chef and presenter) applauded ‘a grandeur that exceeds mere musical melodramatics and is rarely attempted in rock. Dark Side of the Moon has flash.’ Elsewhere in the review, though, Grossman suggested that ‘The Great Gig in the Sky’ should have been canned. It was the one song on the album that most polarised opinion. ‘Some people love it, some people hate it. It’s that kind of song,’ admits Clare. Q magazine once asked David Gilmour if, when listening to ‘The Great Gig in the Sky’, he’d ever thought, ‘Oh, put a sock in it.’ He replied, ‘Sometimes. Sometimes no. Sometimes yes.’
Played out against a domestic situation in 1973 in which Britain was stricken with its highest unemployment levels in years, and with the IRA soon bringing its conflict with the British government on to English soil, Dark Side of the Moon also seemed to mirror the troubled world around it. ‘A grim record for a grim time,’ as one observer put it, albeit with the promise of something better over the next horizon. Like so much of Roger Waters’ future work, it bleated and moaned and harangued the listener, while also grabbing hold of them and reassuring them that all would be OK in the end. It was a sad but uplifting experience.
Waters’ philosophical message was also making its way through to the critics, with New Musical Express picking up on its themes of ‘madness, death from overwork, and the separation of the classes’. Even now, though, when questioned about the album on its various anniversary reissues, each of the band members has expressed slightly different interpretations of what it all means. ‘But it expressed emotions that I think we all felt at the time,’ said Wright.
What Wright and Gilmour, especially, brought to Waters’ personal vision was a musicality. However bitter the pill, these two sweetened it with some inspired arrangements and musicianship. There was none of the freeform wig-outs heard in A Saucerful of Secrets; even the album’s instrumental jams showed a rare economy and focus. This was highbrow rock music with a broader, low-brow appeal.
For Floyd’s ex-managers Andrew King and Peter Jenner, hearing the album was a strange experience. ‘I played it and immediately picked up on certain influences,’ says King. ‘One of Rick’s favourite composers had always been Stockhausen, and you could still hear that in there. The whole album contains a lot of study and awareness of what was happening in the avant-garde in Europe, especially on things like “On the Run”. But Roger synthesised it in a way that made sense in a pop group. They made it palatable for a mass audience.’
‘After Syd left, they never had the musical excitement for me,’ admits Jenner. ‘And I remember really pouring piss on Dark Side when it came out, because I was still comparing it to what they’d done with Syd. I had what you might call cultural sour grapes. Why? Because I’d backed the wrong horse. Once I got over that, I came to appreciate what they were doing. I just needed to adjust my view and accept what Pink Floyd had become. That it was now Roger’s baby.’
For the first time on a Pink Floyd album, Roger Waters had, at his own behest, written all the lyrics, a decision that had not gone unchallenged, but which would have repercussions later on.
Richard Wright’s single or co-writing credit on five of the ten tracks hints at a greater musical contribution than history sometimes allows. His co-written composition with Waters, ‘Us and Them’, would remain both parties’ favourite song on the record, long after their personal relationship had soured. ‘Dark Side of the Moon contains the best songs the Floyd have ever written,’ Wright told writer Carol Clerk. ‘Even though I wasn’t great friends with Roger, there was a great working relationship. To this day, I think it’s sad we lost it.’
Nick Mason scooped two credits, a co-writer’s credit alongside Waters and Gilmour for the space-filling instrumental ‘Any Colour You Like’, and a sole writer’s credit for the opening fanfare ‘Speak to Me’. Oddly, Gilmour’s name was listed on just four of the songs, and only ever in conjunction with one or more of his bandmates. Yet his presence is all over the album: taking the lion’s share of the lead vocals; maintaining a dominant presence on the guitar; and, finally, acquiring a close approximation of the warm sound he’d pushed for on the final mix.
‘I didn’t pull my weight when we were writing Dark Side of the Moon, though,’ Gilmour told writer Phil Sutcliffe. ‘I went through a bad patch. I don’t think I contributed to the writing in the way that I would have liked, hence the credits.’ Gilmour would blame his lack of songs on ‘laziness’.
Roger Waters would take a more sanguine view: ‘He doesn’t have very many ideas. He’s a great guitar player, but he’s not really a writer. However conscientious or hard-working Dave was, he would never actually write anything.’
For Waters, the decision to allocate some writing credits in the spirit of band democracy would come back to haunt him.
However good it may have been, there was still the issue of selling the new album. Not least in America. In 1971, Bhaskar Menon had moved to Los Angeles to take up the position of president of Capitol Records. Menon had been appointed to address the issue of the label’s under-performance, immediately cutting back their roster and focusing on those acts he believed to have a future.
Menon was a Pink Floyd fan, but also understood why America didn’t quite get it. ‘Extremely long tracks, philosophical ruminations and some very English themes – these were all outside the radar of American Top 40 radio,’ says Menon now. ‘America was still coming out of the Eisenhower period of pop music. FM radio was still evolving, and was almost regarded like an underground society, like a “head shop”.’
Bhaskar realised that Capitol’s marketing and promotional departments were as unfamiliar with the band’s music as the public, and, in some cases, intimidated by their overseas success. ‘The label was struggling to adjust to the post-Glen Campbell and Beach Boys markets,’ he says. ‘They just didn’t understand it.’
Dark Side of the Moon was Pink Floyd’s last album under contract to Capitol. Despite the concerted wooing by Warners and Atlantic, which Steve O’Rourke had been fending off in Lindos, the band had agreed to sign to Columbia in the US, for a rumoured £1 million advance. The label’s president, Clive Davis, was a huge presence in the industry, had signed Janis Joplin and Santana, and would later sign Bruce Springsteen. (In the event, Davis would drop out of the picture almost as soon as Pink Floyd signed the deal, when he was relieved of his position after it was discovered that he’d paid for his son’s bar mitzvah out of the Columbia coffers.) Nevertheless, Bhaskar Menon flew to France in November 1972 to watch Pink Floyd perform with the Ballet de Marseille, and talk business with Steve O’Rourke.
The group and their manager had neglected to tell Menon that Pink Floyd would not be renewing their contract with Capitol. ‘In our usual, non-confrontational way we just forgot to mention it,’ wrote Nick Mason later. However, Bhaskar insists that he knew all along. ‘I was aware of what was happening with Columbia, but could see no great value in sharing that information with Pink Floyd.’
Adding to Menon’s problems, Steve O’Rourke was also angling to have the band released from their contract, meaning that Pink Floyd now effectively owned Dark Side of the Moon, and could shop it to Columbia. O’Rourke believed that Capitol would agree to this in exchange for a long-term deal with the band for territories outside North America.
Menon proposed a bet. ‘I wagered him my Casio watch against his bejewelled Rolex that he would never succeed in dividing the EMI empire,’ he laughs. ‘I wanted to ensure that the momentum we’d got going on Obscured by Clouds continued. Some people might have said, “Why waste your energies on this?” But it wasn’t in my interests or Capitol’s shareholders’ not to keep going. I wanted this album.’ An all-night meeting ensued in a seedy Algerian bar and restaurant near to the band’s Marseilles h
otel. ‘I finally concluded a deal for the album just after sunrise,’ says Menon, ‘rescuing Steve from the loss of his very valuable watch and me from having to pick up another Casio at the Duty Free counter.’
Having culled several acts from the roster, Menon was free to put the weight of Capitol’s promotional department behind the new Floyd album. His diligence and belief in a record that he claims ‘was as important as Sgt Pepper’ paid off. Dark Side of the Moon made it to number 1 in the US. America had finally come round to Pink Floyd. The album reached number 2 in Britain, number 1 in France and Belgium, and number 3 in Australia, with similar Top 5 placings in Brazil, Germany and Spain.
Back on tour in America in March, the band were now joined by saxophonist Dick Parry, and three female backing singers – sisters Phylliss and Mary Ann Lindsey, and Nawasa Crowder, all fresh off the road with American songwriter and pianist Leon Russell. DJ Jeff Dexter joined the touring party in New York, and found the band and their entourage in high spirits. While the wives shopped for antiques, Gilmour and Waters were engaged in high-stakes games of backgammon. In between, they attended a lunch reception in their honour at the exquisitely upmarket Four Seasons Restaurant.
‘It was a buffet affair,’ recalls Jeff Dexter. ‘One of the servers put a spoonful of caviar on Dave Gilmour’s plate. He asked if he could have some more, and was told, “I don’t think so, sir.” At which point someone from the record company stepped in: “If the gentleman would like more, then give him as much as he would like.” Dave took the ladle and helped himself. Then he turned to me and said, “If I can afford it, they can afford it, too.”’
At New York’s Radio City Music Hall that night, Pink Floyd’s entrance on stage at 1 a.m. was as portentous and dramatic as their new album demanded. An elevated platform transported them upwards to stage level, where they materialised, like scruffy, hippie deities, coloured smoke billowing around their feet, lights blazing, and a twenty-speaker quad system relaying the throbbing heartbeat and chiming clocks of Dark Side of the Moon to the rapt audience. ‘It was,’ says Jeff Dexter, ‘one of the best shows ever.’