By: Lee Atterton
As a guitarist of 25 years, I spent my youth unintentionally listening to my parents playing Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon. This surely had an effect on me.
At the time, I hated it! Bells ringing in my ears! Oh, how it changed the course of my life in years to come.
A truly unique album. Huge string-bending solos and that iconic Gilmour Stratocaster tone.
If you’re a fan of Pink Floyd, or a music fan, hen you will know the album, Dark Side Of The Moon, is one of Floyd’s most iconic and well-known works.
It signaled a change in their sound and reflected the dark side of their personal life.
Featuring some of the most creative music ever written, Dark Side Of The Moon is an essential piece of rock history.
Here are a few things you probably didn’t know about the classic album.
Why Dark Side Of The Moon?
Pink Floyd’s official biography claims: “Pink Floyd came to see Dark Side of the Moon as a kind of challenge. They were tired of people making assumptions about their music, what it was about, what it stood for, and how much it meant to them.”
David Gilmour: “We wanted a hard-hitting album title that wasn’t about the record company and yet expressed the lyrical content of the album. Everyone had a go until someone thought: dark side of the moon.
Unfortunately, it had connotations with eclipses, seemingly something out of the ordinary, but all too often incredibly mundane, far less exciting than we intended. We could have gone with The Beggar’s Opera, but decided on the Dark Side.”
The album’s title, Dark Side of the Moon, refers to a phrase coined by the psychic Edgar Cayce. Edgar Cayce was a prophet and founder of New Age beliefs known for “reading” people’s fortunes through hypnosis.
Cayce is best known for his book, The Sleeping Prophet, which describes his predictions about human consciousness and the afterlife using themes of reincarnation and karma.
He would sometimes describe people as being on “the dark side.”
The album marked a significant departure for the band in that they were more experimental and experimental in every aspect.
The Album Cover
In the early ’70s, marketing impacted what music looked like and how it was designed. The unique Dark Side Of The Moon album cover reflects much of this.
The logo, created by Storm Thorgerson, is one of the most famous and most recognizable album covers today.
The London-based art-design group, Hygnosis, had worked previously with Floyd with the album cover to Saucerful of Secrets.
The band liked the prism dispersing light design straight away.
Roger Waters then decided the prism of light be lengthened to the other side of the vinyl cover. Just like a heart monitor in a hospital. The elongated light beam travels across the album cover with a heart blip/beat, a unique design.
In 1973, Pink Floyd’s hit “Money” was released. David Gilmour wrote the song after the band toured and became frustrated with how they were being treated as musicians.
The musicians decided to make an album to pay people back for their hard work. The song “Money” tells of how the band needs money to pay for certain things and other expenses but doesn’t have any.
The band then goes on to express that it would be best if those who are not satisfied with their life gave them money, or something of the sort, which is much like the act of charity.
In the lyrics, David Gilmour sings about hope and optimism instead of desperation and depression, a common theme in this album.
“It’s a long time since I have seen any money,” says Roger Waters. “There are people who do what they need to get paid/And those who get paid just follow their lead.”.
Roger Waters constructed a loop of coins being thrown into a cash register.
Waters created the coin-dropping parts with his wife’s mixing bowl (from her pottery shed).
After recording “Us and Them,” “Money,” “Time,” and “Great Gig In The Sky,” the band took a two-month break to prepare for their US tour.
‘The Violent Sequence’ aka ‘Us and Them’
‘Us and Them’ is another excellent song from the album.
The song describes different people who live in the world and shows how they can live with one another but are entirely different. They all know the real meaning of love and hope, but their differing views on how to get it can cause conflict.
Us and Them was the first song initially recorded to tape—a bare-bones piano song about the mindless implications of War.
At this stage, the song was called ‘The Violent Sequence.’
The band took this idea and stretched it into an 8-minute masterpiece.
They were almost shading it like a beautiful piece of art. Powerful lyrics and textures made this a surreal adventure for a listener to undertake.
This would be the beginning of the experimental sound effects that created one of the biggest selling albums of all time.
Here’s a video of Pink Floyd in concert played “Us and Them”…
Between May 1972 and January 1973 – Approx eight months
The album was recorded live over many sessions at Trident Studios in London, and Abbey Road Studios, London, England.
During the initial tracking and overdubbing of Dark Side of the Moon, it was decided that it would be best to record all instruments at Abbey Road Studios, except the piano and string section, which was recorded at Trident Studios.
This enabled the band to capture a wide range of sounds from different rooms in the studio.
Timeless and Unique Recording Process
Pink Floyd used state-of-the-art equipment in creating this album.
This is why it still sounds like a futuristic space adventure.
The engineers used a mix of effects or “fuzz,” such as distortions, echo delays, tape compressions, and dynamic switching to produce the sonic impact.
In early 1972, Dark Side Of The Moon, was being written and rehearsed by the band.
They now decided it was a good time in the band’s career to alter the creative environment to develop something completely new.
Over the years, most songs were written either on the road or in studios worldwide.
Meddle, the album previous to Dark Side Of The Moon, was abstract. In the words of Nick Mason, he went on to suggest the song “Echoes” (from Meddle) was “pretty drawn out, and the theme gets repeated whereas Dark Side is much more focussed, as has a point to it.”
The band felt it was an excellent time to create something fresh and original.
Pink Floyd didn’t have much in the way of song ideas for the new album, nothing set in stone anyway.
Dave Gilmour had bits and pieces of a song in 7/8. A catchy verse and chorus that was then to become ‘Time.’
At the time, the band was in a good place. They had no genuine grievances with each other or society as a whole, so writing songs wasn’t easy.
They came to a conclusion to write down the hardships of modern life and work on the premises.
The list contained the following:
Within a few weeks, the band had the rough structure to the aptly named, Dark Side Of The Moon – Music for assorted lunatics.
At this point, there was a spanner thrown into the works.
Medicine Head, another English blues band, had also named their album, Dark Side Of The Moon.
They decided they’d need to change the album title, so as to not to cause complications.
‘Eclipse’
Bill Curbishley, of ‘EMI’ suggested the title because he thought Eclipse would be the perfect name for a double album. But, the band’s manager, Peter Jenner, and all the band members were unconvinced, feeling that an eclipse was not a very inspiring title.
The band struggled to come up with an alternative, but finally, after The Medicine Heads album flopped, they decided on Dark Side of the Moon.
They believed it worked well as a generic phrase to describe sadness and depression.
Performing The Album Live
It was generally not seen as something a band would normally do, but Pink Floyd performed the Dark Side Of The Moon album live on several occasions, mostly at London’s Rainbow Theatre.
This was a good time for the band to test out a brand-new PA system and rehearse the album thoroughly before recording.
Unknown to fans at the Brighton Dome gig on Jan. 20, 1972, they got an early live performance of one of the greatest albums of all time.
Imagine being in the audience for that!
16 Track Recording
The Summer of 1972 saw the band finally in the studio, ready to record. This lasted through to the winter of 1973. The band would take a very experimental attitude to create the songs.
State of the art sixteen track recording was available, and it’s safe to say they made the very best of this opportunity.
With the band only having the ability to record with four or eight-track previously, the sixteen-track gave the band endless possibilities.
Incredible vocals, NASA and The Bible (Great Gig In The Sky)
Clare Torry was the voice behind the truly brilliant display on “Great Gig In The Sky.”
At the time, she was an unknown 25-year-old session vocalist.
The band asked Clare to improvise and think about death, horror, and darkness. She was also instructed not to sing any words. It was said that after only two takes, Clare had produced a masterpiece.
It is now clear what was in Clare Torry’s vocal passage, previously to her being hired by the band.
Firstly, there was an organ instrumental with spoken biblical readings and small fragments of a speech by Malcolm Muggeridge. Muggeridge was known for his right-wing religious views.
As this didn’t sit right with the song, the passage was reverted to a piano piece. The band then created and experimented with various sound effects—even snippets of real NASA astronauts talking to each other!
After many attempts with no real success, the album engineer, Alan Parson, brought forward the idea of trying out a vocalist he’d worked with before. Clare Torry
The rest is rock history.
Equipment
VCS3 – “Putney”
The sounds you probably remember the most about Dark Side Of The Moon are the swirling effects and loops of the VCS3.
Floyd used this in abundance on tracks’ “Brain Damage\” and “Any Color You Like” “Time” and famously at the beginning of “On The Run.”
The VCS3 Synthesizer gave birth to some of the most unconventional sound effects ever recorded on rock albums.
Other notable users of the VCS3 were The Who, Hawkwind, and John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin, who used it on quite a few major selling tracks.
Although this type of sampling is the norm today, Pink Floyd revolutionized the echo and atmospheric feel before anyone else.
The album’s soundbites and atmosphere made you feel a part of the Pink Floyd experience. It’s almost like being a part of the band’s consciousness.
The listener would be taken on a journey, totally engulfed by the ambiance and skill of the band.
Questionnaire
Did you know the soundbites came from a list of questions Roger Waters compiled to anyone who came through the studio door?
Waters would put them into a sound booth and ask them to answer the following questions
Waters would then tape the person, and his favorite answers were used throughout the album as part of the experience
Paul McCartney walked through the door and was handed the questions.
In typical jovial Beatles’ style, he answered the questions with humor.
McCartney’s input wasn’t used!
Two things that apparently don’t go together: Pink Floyd & Paul McCartney!
It was now the turn of Doorman Jerry O’Driscoll.
What do you think of our album title? In a solid Irish accent, the following words made it onto the album.
“There is no dark side on the moon, really, matter of fact, it’s all dark. The only thing that makes it look light, is the sun.”
Jerry was also the star of the lines:
“I’ve always been mad, I know I’ve been mad” – Speak To Me
“I’m not frightened of dying, anytime will do”- Great Gig In The Sky
Jerry would be the Irish accent you may hear on many parts of the album.
Album Achievements
Dark Side Of The Moon sat on the billboard charts for a whopping 750 weeks, from 1973 to 1988. Just let that sink in!
Sales have made it Platinum 15 times!
Roger Waters later said Dark Side Of The Moon was the end of Pink Floyd. There is nowhere to go when you’ve achieved such success.
ABOUT LEE Atterton:
Lee has been playing guitar for over 25 years. In the 1990s he made a few TV appearances in London and supported a few big bands at festivals.
He’s recently sung on radio and worked as a full-time guitarist/singer at a holiday resort. Lee is the founder of Authority Guitar, a site where he wants readers to enjoy every aspect of learning the guitar.
(c) Lee Atterton 2022 – Guitar International Magazine received permission for publication.
