by Bill Kopp
On its release, The Dark Side of the Moon would be recognized as a significant leap forward for Pink Floyd, and a landmark album in the history of popular music. Critics far and wide remarked upon its virtues. “Probably this is Floyd’s most successful artistic venture,” wrote NME’s Tony Stewart, noting the album’s “development in form and structure” over Pink Floyd’s previous efforts. Observing the widened musical scope afforded by the intelligent use of the vocal ensemble, soloist Clare Torry, and saxophonist Dick Parry, Stewart likened Pink Floyd’s new vocal approach to that of the Moody Blues. Before ending his review with a few quotes from the album, Stewart suggested that The Dark Side of the Moon is “designed for late-night listening.”
In America, Rolling Stone—a publication that had on occasion been at odds with Pink Floyd—offered a more measured response. Reviewer Loyd Grossman felt that “The Great Gig in the Sky” went on too long, and called David Gilmour’s vocals “sometimes weak and lackluster,” yet still lauded Dark Side as “a fine album with a textural and conceptual richness that not only invites, but demands involvement.” Praising the record’s grandeur and ambition, he wrote that The Dark Side of the Moon had “true flash . . . that comes from the excellence of a superb performance.”
Time has only increased the stature of Pink Floyd’s 1973 album. At the end of the 1970s, when Rolling Stone published its book-length Record Guide, The Dark Side of the Moon earned five stars (defined as “Indispensable: a record that must be included in any comprehensive collection”). While he had savaged some of the band’s previous efforts—More and the Relics compilation each got one star, and The Piper at the Gates of Dawn earned only two—critic Bart Testa was unequivocal: “Dark Side of the Moon is Pink Floyd’s masterpiece.” Praising Waters’s lyrics and the album’s “rich lyricism” (and calling out the important contributions of Dick Parry and Clare Torry), Testa called the record’s songs “perfect vehicles” for the group’s “instrumental procedures.” MusicHound Rock awarded Dark Side five “bones” (its highest rating), calling the work “essential . . . a seamless and inventive song cycle bolstered by a three-dimensional soundscape of instruments and special effects,” but made sure to mention the high-quality songwriting as well.
Most every poll of rock fans places The Dark Side of the Moon at or very near the top of best-album lists. The United States Library of Congress holds a copy of the album in its National Recording Registry, noting it as a recording that is “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.” Several of the tracks on the album have topped polls for best guitar solo, and in 1974 the album won the NME Awards for Best British Album and Best World Album.
Even before its release, the members of Pink Floyd seemed to have realized they had created something truly remarkable in The Dark Side of the Moon. And with the benefit of hindsight, the members were able to articulate their thoughts on what it all meant. Speaking for the 2003 documentary DVD, The Making of The Dark Side of the Moon, Roger Waters summed up the album’s meaning as succinctly as he ever had, saying, “The Dark Side of the Moon was an expression of political, philosophical, humanitarian empathy that was desperate to get out.” Elsewhere in the same interview, Waters offered what he believed to be one of the album’s central themes: “At any point you can grasp the reins and start guiding your own destiny.” Commenting upon its near-universal appeal, Waters said The Dark Side of the Moon is “driven by emotion; there’s nothing plastic about it. There’s nothing contrived about it. And I think that’s . . . maybe one of the things that’s given it its longevity.”
In that same DVD, the generally reticent Richard Wright commented on the unity of purpose that characterized the album’s creation. “It felt like the whole band were working together,” he said. “It was a very creative time.” Nick Mason agreed, observing, “It was one of those really good moments that bands do experience where everyone is onside, and everyone likes the idea, and there’s some sort of agreement as to more or less who’s going to do what.” He also noted that Dark Side contained “a lot of ideas, compressed onto one record.”
In a 1988 interview for Musician Magazine with Pink Floyd biographer Nicholas Schaffner, guitarist David Gilmour connected some of the dots. “If you take ‘A Saucerful of Secrets,’ the track ‘Atom Heart Mother,’ then ‘Echoes,’ all lead quite logically towards The Dark Side of the Moon.” Commenting in 2003 upon the album’s continued lyrical relevance—and looking back several decades—David Gilmour recalled thinking, “My God, we’ve really done something fantastic here.” In a sentimental moment, Gilmour added, “I would love to have been a person who could sit back [and listen] with his headphones on, the whole way through, for the first time.” Noting that he never had that experience with The Dark Side of the Moon, he admitted, “it would have been nice.”
Thematically unified, seamlessly produced, and engineered with the utmost attention to detail, The Dark Side of the Moon would set the 1970s-and-beyond standard for albums as entities unto themselves. Certainly there were unified-concept releases before Dark Side. Some held together better as narratives, but none equaled Pink Floyd’s eighth studio album in terms of sonic continuity: The Dark Side of the Moon was (and remains) a movie for the ears. Oddly enough—especially as the product of a group that had been employing quadrophonic (four-channel) sound in its concerts since the late 1960s—The Dark Side of the Moon was never issued in quadrophonic sound. First marketed in the United States in May 1972, “quad” was trumpeted by is proponents as the ultimate in sonic reproduction. Though many quad releases were in the “easy listening” or soundtrack categories, estimates suggest that well over 150 rock albums received quadraphonic release. The track “Money” would, however, be remixed from the master tape into quadrophonic sound in 1976 for a various-artists demonstration record, Quadrafile. And engineer Alan Parsons had created a quad mix of The Dark Side of the Moon in 1972, but it was deemed unsatisfactory and was not released. For the album’s thirtieth anniversary in 2003, producer James Guthrie created a new 5.1 surround sound mix (the modern-day successor to the long-abandoned quadraphonic format), released on the Super Audio Compact Disc (SACD) medium.
Since the departure of founding member Syd Barrett, it had taken Pink Floyd the better part of five years, seven albums, and hundreds of concerts (not to mention film projects and ballet performances) to progress to the point at which the band would create a masterpiece. With The Dark Side of the Moon, the quartet of David Gilmour, Nick Mason, Roger Waters, and Richard Wright had done just that. Richard Wright would look back upon the making of Pink Floyd’s eighth album as “a very, very happy and creative and enjoyable time.” And Nick Mason—always an astute observer of his band’s situation—called the Dark Side sessions “probably the most focused moment in our career in terms of all of us working together as a band.”
But in their spare moments, the four members of Pink Floyd might have wondered to themselves, “What now?” Looking back upon the success of The Dark Side of the Moon, the period when Pink Floyd broke through, David Gilmour noted the situation in which the band found itself. “It certainly did the trick, and it moved us up into a super league, I suppose you might say. Which brought with it some great joy, some pride, and some problems.” Richard Wright admitted, “Of course it changed our lives; we were now a big rock ’n’ roll band playing in stadiums.” Gilmour observed that with that kind of success, “You don’t know what you’re in it for any more. You know, you were in it to achieve massive success, and get rich and famous and all these other things that go along with it. And when they’re all suddenly done, you’re going, ‘Well, hmm. Why? What next?’”
Part VIII
Playing Different Tunes
Chapter 28
Things Left Unsaid
The legacy of Pink Floyd—especially as manifested on The Dark Side of the Moon—would prove indelible in future years. Beyond the album’s durability as a commercial juggernaut, Dark Side would continue to invite study, analysis, and ap
preciation decades after its debut. A year after its release, NME’s Ian MacDonald attempted to describe the album’s meaning. “What happened to idealism, anti-materialism, and the brotherhood of man?” he asked rhetorically. “The Dark Side of the Moon is Roger Waters’ stab at answering such questions.”
Aiming to explain the album’s success on both artistic and commercial levels, he noted that “Waters’ own troubled conscience is, broadly speaking, successfully transformed into the troubled conscience of us all. It’s a record about unease.” Calling The Dark Side of the Moon “a passively compassionate view of the world,” he added, “but it’s also record-company ‘product.’”
In 1978, Trouser Press’s Kris DiLorenzo attempted a somewhat more scholarly analysis of the album. “The Dark Side of the Moon’s format could be seen as a reincarnation cycle,” he wrote. Pink Floyd “employ the trappings of ceremony in liturgical-sounding chants, angelic chorales, confessional passages and unmistakably Christian imagery, but the essence is entirely different: Pink Floyd are talking about a purer form of spirituality, a ‘cosmicconsciousness’ without denomination.”
Writing in 1976 not so much about Dark Side but more about the band in general, Miles penned an essay for NME, proudly proclaiming, “The Floyd were the loudest band anyone had ever heard at that time. They were also the weirdest. And they were without doubt the hippest. We all dug them. They were our band.” And Pink Floyd would become “our band” for countless music fans, including many who had never even heard the music the band made with Syd Barrett.
“My eldest sister was a bit of a hippie,” says Jason Sawford. “She came home with The Dark Side of the Moon. I was thirteen years old, and I was hooked instantly. I think I was searching for things in life to make sense of everything,” he says. He viewed Dark Side as “thinking man’s music.” Fifteen years later, keyboardist Sawford would co-found The Australian Pink Floyd Show, a massively successful tribute band.
Group co-founder Steve Mac was a bit older when he first heard Dark Side, but it made a similarly indelible impression. “I liked the way the album The Dark Side of the Moon was a work of art in its own right,” he says.
Both men would grow to appreciate the subtleties of Pink Floyd’s music—especially The Dark Side of the Moon—as they delved into learning to play songs from the group’s catalog. “I think there’s a kind of simplicity and grace in the music,” Sawford says, “that brings out the lyricism without getting overly complicated. Their songs are so sculpted to perfection that you couldn’t think of doing it any better.”
Guitarist Mac singles out David Gilmour’s instrumental work as a key to Pink Floyd’s appeal. “He certainly does some very imaginative, creative, and intelligent things. Where other guitarists may try to show off their skills, David Gilmour is more about enhancing the song for the listeners,” he says. “There’s a lot of skill and talent to be able to do that.” He characterizes Gilmour’s guitar style as one that takes the willing listener on “an emotional journey.”
“Pink Floyd weren’t trying to copy anyone else,” Sawford notes. “Their own style evolved, and it became very influential.” He believes that the group’s balance of sophistication and simplicity “speaks to people all over the world.” Mac affords special praise to what he calls Roger Waters’s “timeless lyrics” as well. “Even in today’s world, you can relate to the lyrics as if they were written today, for today.”
The Australian Pink Floyd Show has long had a fan of their own in David Gilmour; the guitarist hired the band to play at his fiftieth birthday party in 1996. “He got in touch and asked if we could come play to him and his 500 guests,” says Steve Mac, beaming. “Which we did,” he adds. “It was terrifying, but fantastic . . . such an honor indeed.”
With drummer Tahrah Cohen, American guitarist Joe Pascarell co-founded a Pink Floyd tribute band of his own, the Machine, in 1988. He, too, had been a fan of the band for many years. And like countless others, The Dark Side of the Moon was his introduction to the band’s music.
“I have a very, very cool older brother who loves music,” Pascarell says. “And in 1973 all I knew was the Beatles. My brother brought home The Dark Side of the Moon, and when I was 13 years old he actually took me to see them; that was in 1974.” Hooked for life, Pascarell would go on to see the band on all of its subsequent American tours.
Band mate and longtime keyboardist for the Machine, Scott Chasolen got into Pink Floyd when he discovered The Dark Side of the Moon in his dad’s record collection. “There’s no other music that puts you in that space,” he says.
Joe Pascarell hears in David Gilmour’s guitar playing a blues influence. “Every note is important: when the note begins, when it ends, how long it lasts. It’s never noodling, or riffing, or showing off.” Contrasting Gilmour’s style with that of “shredder” guitarists, Pascarell says, “he seems to get the most out of the least notes.” And like many others of his generation, discovering Dark Side would lead Scott Chasolen to explore the rest of the band’s catalog on his own.
Pascarell would learn to play guitar by listening to Pink Floyd records. “I sat there for hours and hours and hours trying to figure it out: ‘When I put this note in, why doesn’t it feel like when [David Gilmour] plays that note?’ That’s how I learned all of it. I ‘osmosed’ the music,” he says with a chuckle. Scott Chasolen emphasizes that he was influenced greatly by the keyboard playing of Richard Wright long before he joined the Machine. Wright “wasn’t particularly blues-based,” Chasolen says. “He spoke his own musical language.”
Pascarell describes the trademark Pink Floyd songwriting style as “patient. The music sits there for a very long time, and really allows you to get inside of it,” he says. Pascarell points to the song “If” from 1969’s Ummagumma as the first significant Roger Waters composition. “It’s very simple—it’s a young songwriter learning how to write—but it has hints of the beautiful things that were to come.” David Gilmour’s early composition “Fat Old Sun” from Atom Heart Mother also earns praise from Pascarell. Chasolen adds that “Pink Floyd’s music doesn’t make you feel inferior if you didn’t understand it; it’s not intimidating. It’s spiritual and it’s cerebral. It has a life of its own. When music is created from the right place, it never dies.”
While he makes it clear that he’s not comparing the music of Pink Floyd to that written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Pascarell does see some similarities in the respective musical legacies. “There’s a reason that 200-plus years after he’s dead, people line up to hear Mozart’s music,” he notes. “And Pink Floyd’s music isn’t driven by fad or fashion; it’s really honest music. I think if you can make honest music like that, and present it in a honest way, that’s when it becomes timeless. And that’s what happened with the music of Pink Floyd.”
Yogi Lang’s RPWL started out as a Pink Floyd tribute band, but soon evolved into a group playing its own original material. But as the German group’s 2016 album RPWL Plays Pink Floyd’s “The Man and the Journey” illustrates, the band has never forsaken its Pink Floyd–focused origins. “You don’t play Pink Floyd’s music by notes,” Lang says, attempting to get to the heart of the group’s sound. “You don’t even play it by chords. It just . . . flows.”
The keyboardist recalls a watch-phrase that he’d keep in mind when playing Pink Floyd songs: “Keep it simple. It’s not a mystery; it’s just about bringing your feelings [forth] on the keys.” Reflecting on the music of his favorite group, Lang says, “When the music and the story are together—and the story is told—it’s enough.”
Though his professional association with Pink Floyd ended in 1968 when he and Andrew King chose to manage Syd Barrett as a solo artist, Peter Jenner would continue to follow the band’s progress. And though in 1968 he viewed Barrett as the artist with the greater potential, he would be quite impressed with the music Pink Floyd made after its founding guitarist had left the band. He admits that in 1968, he thought, “Don’t they realize they can’t do it withou
t Syd? And they can’t do it without me!” But he soon revised his thinking. “I was dead wrong. Couldn’t be more wrong; I’m full of admiration,” he says. “The extraordinary thing for me is that Roger and Dave were able to make such great records, subsequently.”
On first hearing The Dark Side of the Moon, however, Jenner was less than impressed. He recalls thinking to himself, “Where are the tunes? Where are the songs?” But he says that he soon “grew to love it.” He maintains some reservations on a personal level—today he describes Roger Waters as “no great lovable human being”—but readily and enthusiastically gives Waters the credit he believes he is due. “Roger took an idea and built on it. Everything they did subsequently was there in what they did with Syd. And they built an empire on those foundations.”
When Steve Howe had his near-miss experience of almost sitting in for a missing Syd Barrett, the guitarist was in the band Tomorrow. By 1970, he had taken Peter Banks’s spot as guitarist in Yes, a position he still holds today. And Howe recalls that Pink Floyd would often be referenced during Yes recording sessions. “There was a marvelous cliché,” he says. “In the ’70s when Yes were twiddling around on something and worrying about money, we’d say something like, ‘Pink Floyd just did that in a day!’ We always thought of them as a very big band who projected their style of music, and never stopped living up to expectations.”