Pink Floyd All the Songs

by Jean-Michel Guesdon

  Astronomical Sales

  For the album to achieve such enormous commercial success, however, something extraordinary was required on the marketing front. And this something was made to happen by Bhaskar Menon, the chairman of Capitol, the record company that distributed the Pink Floyd catalog in the United States. Hitherto relegated to Tower Records, a sub-label of Capitol, the Floyd were unhappy with their US sales and complained of being treated no better than a minor group. With Obscured by Clouds, Menon had already sensed the winds of change and that it was time to devote more attention to Pink Floyd. Unfortunately, unknown to Menon, Steve O’Rourke had just signed a new deal with Columbia Records, whose president, Clive Davis, he admired. Upon learning of this deal, Menon was able to persuade O’Rourke to stay with him for Dark Side, to bring their collaboration to a close with it. One hundred percent convinced of the enormous potential of the record, Bhaskar Menon moved heaven and earth to mount a phenomenal media campaign. Once sales of the album passed the million mark, he persuaded O’Rourke and his protégés to agree to release “Money” as a single. From this moment, not only did sales go through the roof, but the lives of Waters, Gilmour, Wright, and Mason were transformed for good.

  It also has to be said that success and glory also brought their share of disappointment. Roger Waters gradually assumed leadership of Pink Floyd, which resulted in the group splitting up in the early eighties. Meanwhile the sessions for which Alan Parsons was paid only £35 per week would leave the engineer with a bitter taste in his mouth, although at the same time he would be forced to acknowledge that the album had brought him a worldwide reputation that more than compensated for his modest salary.

  Technical Details

  Studios Two and Three, where Dark Side was by and large recorded, were equipped with EMI TG12345 consoles, a Studer A80 sixteen-track, two-inch tape recorders, Fairchild 660/666 limiter-compressors, EMT 140 plate reverb, and in all probability Tannoy Gold (Lockwood) monitors. There was evidently a wide assortment of mics available, but Alan Parsons would later explain that he recorded Gilmour’s guitar using a single Neumann U87, and that for voice or guitar overdubs he used a Neumann U47, positioned at a distance of at least eighteen inches from the amp in the case of the latter. Moreover, to record, Gilmour stood in the control room next to Parsons, his guitar connected to his amp (which was set up in Studio Three) via a long lead. Needless to say, Parsons had never before experienced a configuration of this kind.

  The drums are one of the characteristic sounds of the album. Parsons explains why: “I totally hate compressing drums. So, although Chris Thomas wanted to compress everything, I talked him into compressing just the instruments and vocals, but not the drums.”86

  The Instruments

  Whereas Roger Waters remained faithful to his Fender Precision Sunburst bass, David Gilmour was continually experimenting and tinkering with his guitars. Around June 1972, for example, he swapped over the necks of his two Stratocasters, so that the “Black Strat” now had the rosewood neck of his Sunburst Strat and the latter had the maple neck of his “Black Strat.” He also made striking use of his Fender 1000 double-neck pedal steel guitar in open-G and open-G6 (from lowest to highest string: D, G, D, G, B, E) tuning. Finally, for his third solo on “Money,” Gilmour uses his twenty-four-fret Bill Lewis. He also added a Colorsound Power Boost to his collection of effects pedals (for its distortion) and, according to some observers, a Valley People Kepex for his tremolo on “Money,” although he may also have achieved this with an EMS Hi-Fli guitar effects processor. Alan Parsons confirms his use of the latter: “And there was also a thing made by EMS called the HiFli, which was a sort of console device that had an early form of chorusing on it and some other effects. It was an interesting box.”86 As for amplification, Gilmour continued to use his Hiwatt DR-103 All Purpose 100-watt with WEM cabinets (Alan Parsons recalls him using Hiwatt enclosures), although he also seems to have used a Fender Twin Reverb.

  Nick Mason, who would infuriate Alan Parsons during the first five days in the studio with his quest for the perfect sound for his Ludwig drum kit, used Rototoms for the first time on “Time,” tuning them to the key changes on that track.

  Rick Wright added a Hammond RT-3 (with Leslie 122 speaker), a Minimoog synthesizer, and a Wurlitzer EP-200 to his usual array of keyboards. Along with Gilmour and Waters, he also used EMS synthesizers, in particular the VCS3 Synthi A “Portabella,” but also the new Synthi AKS model with integrated keyboard.

  For Pink Floyd Addicts

  The eighth Pink Floyd album was renamed Eclipse after the members of the group became aware that the band Medicine Head had released its LP Dark Side of the Moon (1972) a few months earlier. They readopted their original title following the commercial failure of the Medicine Head album…

  Storm Thorgerson took his inspiration for the cover of Rick Wright’s Broken China album (1996) from the visuals for The Dark Side of the Moon.

  Alan Parsons was nominated for a Grammy Award for his work on The Dark Side of the Moon. Nominated only, more’s the pity…

  The Decca Studios in West Hampstead, London, where the Floyd began writing and making demos for Dark Side toward the end of 1971, was where the Beatles had their famous Decca audition on January 1, 1962. Their performance met with a polite refusal from the company’s managers, who could not believe that the Liverpool band had much of a future…

  Alan Parsons and the Quest for Sound Perfection

  By the time he took his place behind the console for the Dark Side of the Moon sessions, Alan Parsons, then just twenty-four years of age, possessed a résumé that seasoned engineers everywhere had good reason to envy him for. He initially won his spurs in 1969 working alongside George Martin and the four Beatles as assistant sound engineer on the legendary sessions for Abbey Road. Says Parsons: “They were a band that always were ready to experiment and push the limits of the recording studio to the boundaries that had never happened before. I think other groups from the 1960s and 1970s took advantage of what the Beatles had achieved, and many of them would say, ‘if the Beatles can do it, we can do it too.’ And I think Pink Floyd was one of those bands that did that.”94

  A Collaboration

  Alan Parsons was born in London into an artistic family on December 20, 1948. He is the great-grandson of the famous actor and theater manager Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree and the son of the pianist, flautist, man of letters, folk singer, and harpist Denys Parsons. He made his debut as a musician in London at the end of the sixties as a folk singer and a guitarist with a blues band called the Earth. In 1967 he was hired as assistant sound engineer at Abbey Road. The rest is legend: collaboration with George Martin and the Beatles on the aforementioned Abbey Road, followed by more of the same on Let It Be.

  Alan Parsons first entered the world of Floyd via the back door, as assistant on the sessions for the single “Point Me at the Sky” in autumn 1968 and then for Ummagumma and Atom Heart Mother. Promoted to the role of sound engineer for The Dark Side of the Moon in 1972, he would contribute to one of the biggest albums in the history of rock music and play a part in the great technological revolution of the seventies. As a mixing desk specialist, and passionate about new technology, Parsons threw himself into the project body and soul, determined to obtain the best possible results at every stage of the recording process, and by whatever means. “I think it demonstrated the state of the art at the time and I am very proud of it. They would occasionally double-track guitars and I certainly multi-tracked guitars myself as Dave [Gilmour] would have as many as five or six parts going on and that was a demonstration of how the technology affected their creativity.”94 Nick Mason claims to have loved the drum sound Parsons was able to get for him on tape, and believes that “getting this right is still one of the great tests for any engineer”5 in rock music. He adds: “Alan’s full range of engineering skills were self-evident as we began to construct the record.”5 Although the staggering richness of the album owed a great deal to Parsons, the Floy
d drummer was nevertheless one of at most two members of the group to recognize the true scope of his exceptional contribution to Dark Side. Disparaged as much by David Gilmour as by Roger Waters, both of whom looked unfavorably on all the attention being paid to his role in the success of the album, Parsons decided not to continue his collaboration with Pink Floyd, who would add insult to injury in 2003 by failing to ask him to do the 5.1 and surround sound remix of the album.

  The Alan Parsons Project

  Having acquired considerable kudos with his work on the Pink Floyd album, Alan Parsons then pulled out all the stops. After reuniting with Paul McCartney for Red Rose Speedway (1973), he recorded the Hollies albums Hollies (1974) and Another Night (1975) and most importantly produced Rebel (1976) by John Miles, which yielded the enormous hit “Music,” and Year of the Cat (1976) by Al Stewart, a magnum opus of British folk rock. These successes were followed up with Al Stewart’s Time Passages (1978) and the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s Symphonic Music of Yes (1993). In 1976, Parsons had set himself another challenge when he decided to move around to the other side of the mixing desk and start a band. In partnership with Eric Woolfson, a Scottish composer, lyricist, singer, and multi-instrumentalist who had been given his first studio break by Andrew Loog Oldham (then manager and producer of the Rolling Stones), he set up the Alan Parsons Project. This led to the highly successful Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1976), a setting to music of several short stories by Edgar Allan Poe, with the participation of Arthur Brown (vocals), John Miles (guitar and vocals), and others. After leaving Mercury for Arista (a label newly founded by Clive Davis), a dozen or so further albums followed, including I Robot (1977), Eve (1979), Eye in the Sky (1982), and Gaudi (1987). Beginning in the nineties, Alan Parsons pursued his career as a solo artist, and in this capacity has produced five studio albums over the years: Try Anything Once (1993), On Air (1996), The Time Machine (1999), A Valid Path (2004), and Epilogue (2013). He also engineered Steven Wilson’s excellent concept album The Raven That Refused to Sing (2013). Currently living in California, Alan Parsons is regarded as one of the greatest sound engineers on planet Rock and one who is always prepared to explore new technology.

  Speak To Me

  Nick Mason / 1:07

  Musicians

  Rick Wright (?): piano, VCS3

  Roger Waters: sound effects

  Nick Mason: bass drum, sound effects

  Chris Adamson, Gerry O’Driscoll, Peter Watts, Clare Torry: voices

  Recorded

  Abbey Road Studios, London: June 23 and November 1 (?), 1972; January and February 1973 (Studios Two and Three)

  Technical Team

  Producer: Pink Floyd

  Sound Engineers: Alan Parsons, Chris Thomas

  Assistant Sound Engineer: Peter James

  Genesis

  “Speak to Me” serves as the overture to the concept album that is The Dark Side of the Moon. It presents a succession of sound effects that will be heard again at various points during the album, starting with a beating heart (which recurs in “Eclipse,” the last track on the album) and continuing with the clocks from “Time,” the laughter from “Brain Damage,” the cash register from “Money,” a helicopter noise generated on the VCS3, and an extract from Clare Torry’s vocal performance in “The Great Gig in the Sky.”

  There are also two spoken phrases in this opening track: I’ve been mad for fucking years, absolutely years, been over the edge for yonks, been working me buns off for bands, which is attributed to Chris Adamson, the Pink Floyd roadie and technician who had also provided the inspiration for “When You’re In” on Obscured by Clouds, and 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, uttered by Gerry O’Driscoll, the Irish doorman at Abbey Road Studios, who also features in “The Great Gig in the Sky” and comes back again at the end of the album. Years later the group would agree to remunerate O’Driscoll by paying him for the studio session in which he did his bit.

  With “Speak to Me,” which symbolizes birth or awakening, we get straight to the heart of the matter. The message is clear: solitude and isolation are the path to madness, while communication alone enables us to maintain our mental health. Although this first track on The Dark Side of the Moon is credited to Nick Mason, it was actually Roger Waters’s idea. It was Waters who, through the offices of sound engineer Alan Parsons, asked various people a series of fifteen questions relating to the themes of the album. These questions were written down on cards, and the respondents, Patricia “Puddie” Watts (wife of road manager Peter Watts), roadies Chris Adamson, Liverpool Bobby, and Roger “The Hat” Manifold, and various other persons present at Abbey Road at the time (notably Gerry O’Driscoll), were asked to answer the questions without beating around the bush. In order to put the respondents at ease, Waters started with innocent-sounding questions along the lines of “What is your favorite color/food?” before probing deeper with inquiries such as: “Do you fear death?” “When did you last hit someone?” “Were you in the right?” “Would you do it again if the same thing happened?” and even “What does the dark side of the moon mean to you?” All these questions would play a part in the development of the album.

  Production

  Alan Parsons was the first to be subjected to Roger Waters’s questionnaire. However, the engineer was too nervous to do more than stammer out his responses, which were consequently not used. Back in the control room, in order to set the sound levels on his tape recorder, Parsons addressed the respondents using a particular phrase: “Speak to me.” This phrase was retained as the title for the first track on The Dark Side of the Moon, a track whose almost hypnotic opening heartbeat would provide an ideal way to start Pink Floyd concerts. The heartbeat was not a new idea: it actually dated back to the Zabriskie Point era. Nick Mason explains that they had originally wanted to use a recording of a real heart, but the results were too stress inducing. In the end, they achieved the desired sound by padding out a bass drum and striking it with a mallet, an effect that sounds more realistic than the actual thing. “That was bass drum Kepexed with a lot of EQ around 100 Hz,” 9 Alan Parsons would subsequently explain. However, 72 bpm—the average human heart rate—was too fast for the mood they wanted to create. They therefore reduced the speed, as Mason relates: “We slowed it down to a level that would have caused any cardiologist some concern.”5 Alan Parsons comments that the loop sounded horrible as a result of having been transferred from tape to tape and the signal therefore distorted, but the illusion is perfect. From the first seconds of “Speak to Me,” when the heartbeat, to which a short reverb is applied, is heard, the tail end of a reversed piano chord, barely audible at first, grows progressively louder until it explodes into the beginning of “Breathe.” In the meantime, various sounds and sound effects follow in succession: the sped-up ticking of a clock along with another clock running at normal speed; the “Money” loop; Gerry O’Driscoll’s voice; the laughter of Pink Floyd tour manager Peter Watts; helicopter blades simulated on the VCS3; Clare Torry’s screaming vocal, taken from “The Great Gig in the Sky”; and finally a cymbal, again reversed, merging with the piano chord that reaches its climax as the perfect transition to “Breathe.”

  For Pink Floyd Addicts

  Paul McCartney, who was at Abbey Road recording Red Rose Speedway, willingly submitted to Roger Waters’s questioning. In the end, however, Waters decided not to include the former Beatle in the “Speak to Me” sound collage, judging him to be defensive, not sufficiently natural, and too “pro” in his answers.

  David Gilmour confirms that Roger Waters gave “Speak to Me” to Nick Mason as a gift. This is a gesture the bassist would regret after leaving Pink Floyd due to the complex legal action in which the members of the Floyd became embroiled.

  Breathe

  Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Richard Wright / 2:50

  Musicians

  David Gilmour: vocals, vocal harmonies
, electric rhythm guitar, pedal steel guitar

  Rick Wright: keyboards

  Roger Waters: bass

  Nick Mason: drums

  Recorded

  Abbey Road Studios, London: May 30 and 31, June 22 and 23, October 31, 1972; January 18 and 27, 1973 (Studios Two and Three)

  Technical Team

  Producer: Pink Floyd

  Sound Engineers: Alan Parsons, Chris Thomas

  Assistant Sound Engineer: Peter James

  Genesis

  “Breathe” is the final incarnation of a song by the same name that Roger Waters composed and recorded for the 1970 album Music from the Body, a collaboration with Ron Geesin. Moreover, the different versions share a first line: Breathe, breathe in the air. This invitation to inhale is “an exhortation directed mainly at myself,” explains Roger Waters, “but also at anybody else who cares to listen. It’s about trying to be true to one’s path.”82 In terms of the development of the highly conceptual The Dark Side of the Moon, “Breathe” may symbolize birth, the vocation of the newborn not necessarily being to adapt to the surrounding world, but to make its own life and value choices. This song can also be interpreted as a catalog of advice lavished by an adult (or elderly person) on a child or adolescent. It amounts to a philosophy of life, the phrase Don’t be afraid to care, which can also be understood as “appreciate life as it is, for it is short,” apparently looking forward to the closing line of the song: You race towards an early grave.