Finally, Look around, choose your own ground conveys the message: “You alone are responsible for your actions, no one can or should decide for you; never obey orders.” Advice is easier to give than to receive, however, and every human being is torn between contradictory feelings. It is clearly this conflict that Roger Waters means to express when he writes: Leave, but don’t leave me—conflict being a cause of inhibitions, which in turn can give rise to psychological problems. Hence another phrase that mercilessly points to the absurdity of life: Dig that hole, forget the sun/And when at last the work is done/Don’t sit down, it’s time to dig another one. The myth of Sisyphus revisited, in a sense… In fact, Roger Waters puts words in David Gilmour’s mouth that are almost the exact equivalent of what Albert Camus wrote in “The Myth of Sisyphus.” Waters: Forget the sun; Camus: “There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night, the sun being the light that guides, that preserves us from derangement.”
Production
“Breathe” is one of the pieces the Floyd had started rehearsing in Broadhurst Gardens back at the end of 1971. All the original version, written by Roger Waters for the soundtrack of Music from the Body, and the one on Dark Side have in common are the title and first line. Everything else—words, ideas, melody—differs greatly. In the music, Roger Waters was inspired more by Neil Young’s “Down by the River” (on the 1969 album Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere), and uses the same pivotal E-minor and A chords. The beginning of the refrain is also similar, although it continues differently thanks to a highly inspired contribution from Rick Wright, who brings an unexpected color to the piece. “The interesting thing about this song if we’re talking about jazz,” the keyboardist would later explain, “is that there’s a certain chord […] that I had heard, actually, on a Miles Davis album, Kind of Blue. […] That chord I just love.”83 For those who know about such things, the chord in question is a D7 (+ 9).
“Breathe” is inseparable from “Speak to Me,” whose gradual increase in volume, combined with the oppressive tension of the beating heart, finds its release in a sudden burst of adrenaline that propels “Breathe” toward the stars. The music explodes, generating a feeling of incredible fulfillment. The group is completely at one, the machinery well oiled following months of live performance. David Gilmour is omnipresent with his numerous guitar parts and lead vocals. His voice, whose texture has been enriched by his growing maturity, is just as gentle, intense, and emotional as before. He doubles himself in order to boost his power and improve his tuning, and harmonizes with himself in the refrains. Rick Wright would later describe Gilmour’s double-tracking as no less than brilliant. And his achievement on guitar is equally remarkable. It is presumably with his Fender 1000 pedal steel guitar, one of the characteristic features of The Dark Side of the Moon, that he gives the piece its unique character. His soaring slide guitar, which he controls with the volume pedal, is simply extraordinary. The notes seem to float in a sea of reverb, enhanced by delay. Gilmour harmonizes with himself to awe-inspiring effect on a second track. It is interesting to note that he uses open-G6 tuning, and that according to some witnesses, he was actually playing on a lap steel purchased just before the band entered the studio, or even, according to Waters, on his Strat (resting on his knees, and again in open tuning). From the very first bar, Gilmour also plays a rhythm guitar part on his “Black Strat,” the sound of which, strongly colored by his Leslie speaker (or Uni-Vibe?) significantly reinforces the floating mood of the piece.
The various keyboard parts are another important element in “Breathe.” In the first place, Rick Wright answers Gilmour’s rhythm guitar with some superb electric piano—either his new Wurlitzer EP-200 or the Fender Rhodes—played through a Leslie speaker. He then records two Hammond RT-3 organ tracks: pads in the refrains, and orgasmic upward-thrusting runs drenched in Leslie and Binson Echorec II at each refrain-verse join. As for the rhythm section, Nick Mason delivers a superb floating drum part, supporting himself continually on ride cymbal and totally in sync with Waters’s excellent bass.
“Eclipse Part 1,” the working title of “Breathe,” was recorded in seven sessions, with the January 27 session being reserved for the mixing. David Gilmour’s vocal harmonies received special attention, for it seems they were recorded and finalized over the course of at least three sessions, a pretty generous allocation of time for a piece that is not especially complicated. The results, however, are extraordinary, and “Breathe” draws the listener straight into the heart of The Dark Side of the Moon.
For Pink Floyd Addicts
The original title of the piece on the vinyl album was “Breathe.” For some inexplicable reason this was amended on the CD to “Breathe in the Air,” and then “Breathe (In the Air)” on later versions.
COVERS
“Breathe” has been covered by various musicians, notably Sea of Green (on their album Time to Fly, 2001). The Flaming Lips performed a version during their set at the Glastonbury Festival in 2003.
On The Run
David Gilmour, Roger Waters / 3:45
Musicians
David Gilmour: guitars, EMS Synthi AKS, VCS3 (?)
Rick Wright: keyboards
Roger Waters: EMS Synthi AKS, VCS3, effects, bass (?)
Nick Mason: drums, effects
Roger Manifold: voice
Recorded
Abbey Road Studios, London: May 31, June 13–15, October 11, 12, 15, 16, 31, 1972; January 18–20, 24, 26, 27, 30, February 9, 1973 (Studios Two and Three, Room Four)
Technical Team
Producer: Pink Floyd
Sound Engineers: Alan Parsons, Chris Thomas
Assistant Sound Engineer: Peter James
Genesis
“On the Run” is characteristic of Pink Floyd’s descriptive music, and of David Gilmour and Roger Waters, who are credited as its composers, in particular. It is an instrumental that saw the light of day during the course of a long improvisation in the studio and was transformed into a sequence of sonic effects that explicitly convey both the frantic life to which the four members of the group were subjected and, more specifically, the fear, if not paranoia (especially in Rick Wright’s case) inspired in them by flying. Moreover, “On the Run” was called “The Travel Sequence” when The Dark Side of the Moon was performed live by the group before the start of recording.
An airport announcement can be heard, followed by the noise of an aircraft engine. And already the machine is taking off, in a hellish cycle that will result in the plane crash at the end of the piece. “On the Run” generates an atmosphere of anxiety that is conveyed perfectly in a 1987 video…
Production
The initial live versions of “On the Run” differed from the album version. The piece was more of a jam, foregrounding David Gilmour on Echorec-laden guitar, answered by Rick Wright with a jazzy improvisation on his Wurlitzer. Nobody was happy with the piece in this form, however, and “Eclipse Part 2” (its working title at the time) was totally remodeled in the studio, starting on May 31, 1972 (the second session devoted to the new album). The results were still not right after the first day, and a new base track was cut on June 13, the fifth take serving as the foundation for a huge number of overdubs on which work would continue until the final mixing on February 9, 1973. Throughout June, the Floyd would record multiple sound effects, referred to in the session notes as “Weird Noises” and even “More Weird Noises,” but also drum, guitar, bass, and electric piano overdubs. After the summer, and following a series of North American concerts in September, the Floyd returned to Abbey Road in October and worked on the piece, now renamed “The Travel Section,” some more, adding further synthesizer, guitar, and bass overdubs. It was eventually finished in January 1973 and its two distinct parts, “Wild Guitar” and “Big Crash,” mixed and inserted into the final version on February 9.
“On the Run” opens with a rhythm tapped out on the hi-hat. The sound was derived fortuitously from the Synthi AKS sequence that serves a
s the main motif of the piece. But Nick Mason most likely doubles it with a hi-hat tape loop. Given the fast tempo (165 bpm), the tape is short but it works perfectly. Rick Wright’s Hammond organ accompanies Mason before Roger Waters surges into the picture on the brand-new EMS Synthi A. Nick Mason explains that this “was in fact one of the last pieces added since it was only at this point we had access to an EMS Synthi A.”5 It was apparently on October 16, 1972, that the sequencer was recorded, entirely for real, because Adrian Maben was at the studio taking shots for his documentary Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii, as Waters confirms: “[…] there’s quite a long shot of me in the studio recording ‘On the Run’ with the VCS3.”82 Nevertheless, the band member at the origin of the sequencing idea is David Gilmour, because it is he who initially entered the eight notes into the Synthi AKS and then substantially increased the tempo: “I just plugged this up and started playing one sequence on it and Roger immediately pricked up his ears and said ‘that sounded good.’”83 The result wasn’t quite to the bassist’s taste, however, and so he reprogrammed the sequence. “He put in another, quite like mine, and I hate to say, it was marginally better.”45
Other sounds made using the VCS3’s voltage-controlled oscillator then enter the picture. These electronic noises travel across the stereo field in simulation of a Doppler effect, a phenomenon well known to electroacoustics experts.
At 0:28 a female airport announcer seems to be saying:… Have your baggage and passport ready and then follow the green line to customs and immigration. BA 215 to Rome, Cairo, and Lagos. May I have your attention please, customs will be receiving passengers for Flight 215 to Rome, Cairo, and Lagos… We then hear footsteps moving initially from left to right and then from right to left again. According to Nick Mason, this was a sound clip taken from the EMI sound library, but Alan Parsons offers a different explanation: “The footsteps were done by Peter James, the assistant engineer, running around Studio 2, breathing heavily and panting.”82 At around 1:00, the same heartbeat heard on “Speak to Me” re-emerges and anchors the tempo. The second spoken phrase (Live for today, gone tomorrow, that’s me) is uttered by the roadie Roger “The Hat” Manifold, who underlines his answer to Waters’s question “Do you fear death?” with a resounding laugh (1:53). This is followed by a reversed, Larsen-like distorted guitar effect, played by Gilmour with the leg of a mic stand! The tension gradually mounts, with the sound of an aircraft moving along the runway, the heartbeat growing more insistent, and then Manifold’s laughter ringing out again before the airplane finally takes off and erupts in a mighty explosion. This explosion seems to be created partly from actual sound effects found in the studio’s sound library, and partly from an effect realized on the VCS3s and by Gilmour on his Strat. The footsteps then emerge from the chaos before giving way to the ticking clocks that announce the beginning of the next track, “Time.”
This was not an easy piece to mix. Because of its multiple sound sources and effects, each of the band members, in addition to Parsons and James, had to look after several tracks on the mixing desk, definitely helped to make “On the Run” even more vibrant than it would otherwise have been.
COVERS
In addition to the Flaming Lips, 2009, the Seatbelts have also recorded a version of “On the Run”—for the soundtrack of Cowboy Bebop (Cowboy Bebop: Tengoku no tobira, 2001), a movie by Shinichiro Watanabe.
For Pink Floyd Addicts
In concert, a scale model of an aircraft would travel across the hall as the explosion brought the piece to a conclusion.
Is it possible that Paul McCartney, who was working on Red Rose Speedway at Abbey Road at the same time that the Floyd were recording Dark Side, was influenced by the title “On the Run” when naming Band On the Run, released at the end of 1973?
Time
Nick Mason, Roger Waters, Richard Wright, David Gilmour / 6:53
Musicians
David Gilmour: vocals, vocal harmonies, electric rhythm and lead guitar, EMS Hi-Fli, VCS3 (?)
Rick Wright: vocals, keyboards, VCS3 (?)
Roger Waters: bass, VCS3 (?)
Nick Mason: drums, Rototoms
Doris Troy, Lesley Duncan, Liza Strike, Barry St. John: backing vocals
Recorded
Abbey Road Studios, London: June 8–10, 20, 22, October 17, 31, November 1, 1972; January 21, 24, 25, 1973 (Studios Two and Three)
Technical Team
Producer: Pink Floyd
Sound Engineers: Alan Parsons, Chris Thomas
Assistant Sound Engineer: Peter James
Genesis
“Time” is the only song on The Dark Side of the Moon whose musical composition is credited to all four members of the group. Roger Waters, by contrast, is the sole author of the lyrics, which constitute one of his most profound pieces of songwriting, from both a poetic and a philosophical point of view.
The clocks and bells that ring out by way of an intro are a metaphor: they are announcing some kind of realization or awakening of the spirit. Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way […] Waiting for someone or something to show you the way: what exactly is Waters trying to say here? Naturally the bassist is describing the inexorable passing of time, but he is also evoking our perception of it at the different stages of life (we have time to kill when we’re young, and yet we run and […] run to catch up with the sun as we grow older) as well as the urgent need for us to take in hand our own destinies. “I spent an awful lot of my life—until I was about twenty-eight—waiting for my life to start,” explained Roger Waters to Rolling Stone in 1982. “I thought that at some point I would turn from a chrysalis into a butterfly, that my real life would begin. So if I had that bit of my life to live again, I would rather live the years between eighteen and twenty-eight knowing that that was it, that nothing was suddenly going to happen—that it was happening all the time. ‘Time’ passes, and you are what you are, you do what you do.”87 In The Making of The Dark Side of the Moon, Waters is even more specific: “[…] my mother was so obsessed with education, and the idea that childhood and adolescence and everything, really, was about preparing for a life that was going to start later. And I certainly realised that life wasn’t going to start later, that it starts at dot and happens all the time. At any point you can grasp the reins and start guiding your own destiny. And that was a big revelation to me, it came as quite a shock.”83
“Time” is thus an evocation of the songwriter’s own experience, but it also conveys a tragically universal message: each passing day brings us closer to death, and all too often we are surprised to discover that already the song is over. Because we are going to die one day, it is important to relish even the simplest of pleasures, such as warming our bones beside the fire. Unless we believe in God, that is, whose church bell calls the faithful to their knees to hear the softly spoken magic spell. As for: And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it’s sinking, a somewhat overhasty reading of this line could bring to mind the Gospel according to Saint John, chapter 1, verse 5: “And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not,” which would not be without a certain piquancy for a songwriter such as Waters! Musically, “Time” ends with a reprise of “Breathe,” prompting listeners to ponder the eternal renewal of the world.
The Song of a Generation
Released (minus the reprise of “Breathe”) as a double A-side single with “Us and Them,” “Time” is also included on the live albums Delicate Sound of Thunder (1988) and Pulse (1995), on Roger Waters’s live album In the Flesh (2000), and also on the compilation Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd (2001). This song was a big influence on a whole generation of musicians, and reached far beyond the prog rock scene. Patterson Hood, guitarist-singer of the southern rock group Drive-By Truckers (and son of the renowned Muscle Shoals bassist David Hood), has revealed that The Dark Side of the Moon had been his “favourite album,” adding: “‘Time’ was a really big deal when I was a kid. My stereo was down on my uncle’s farm and I’d go stay with
him on weekends. Out on the farm, I could play it as loud as I wanted to. So when I went to bed at night, that was my ‘go-to-bed’ record. I liked how dreamlike it was and I especially like the hypnotic quality of it. It was a very melodic record. I followed Pink Floyd through my teens, right up until punk rock started happening at junior high school. Listen to any of the Drive-By Truckers songs I play lead guitar on and Dave Gilmour is one the bigger influences on my playing.”81
Production
The demo of “Time” that Roger Waters made prior to working on it in the studio presented the song almost fully formed, both musically and lyrically, except for the first line of the second verse, which differed (Lying supine in the sunshine, let the grass grow in your brain instead of Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain). However, the work done by the four members of Pink Floyd on creating the definitive version would raise the song to a new level, making it one of the most important pieces on the album. The first session took place on June 8 in Abbey Road’s Studio Two, and the whole of the song, including the link with the “Breathe” reprise, would be recorded during the course of five further sessions that month. It was then completed in October and November, not least with the addition of the David Gilmour solo, before being mixed and edited in the New Year.
“Time Song,” the working title by which this track was originally known, opens with the jangling and ticking of a multitude of clocks, which then explode at the same time in a sensational din of bells, chimes, and alarms. Alan Parsons had recorded these timepieces using a portable Uher tape recorder: “I had recorded them previously in a watchmaker’s shop for a quadriphonic sound demonstration record,”82 he would explain. Upon discovering what the subject of the song was, he himself offered his recording to the group. In order to fit in with the tempo of the piece, he had to calibrate the assorted ticking and ringing of the clocks. But the result is a triumph. One of the most famous effects on the album, it would be used for years to come to demonstrate hi-fi systems all over the world!
Pink Floyd All the Songs Page 39