Pink Floyd: As a Matter of Fact it’s All Dark

It’s not often that a band’s eighth album is regarded as their best, but Pink Floyd are no ordinary band.

Emerging from London’s late ‘60s psychedelic scene and led by troubled visionary Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd were too weird for Top 40 kids, instead finding fame and favour with art school students who like the band themselves were exploring ways to step outside themselves and create something new in the fields of painting, theatre, film and books.

It's almost an alien concept now but in the ‘60s & ‘70s, it was quite common for bands to replace their main member and simply carry on - think The Yardbirds, Genesis and Fleetwood Mac.

That’s exactly what Pink Floyd did following the decline of Barrett’s health, adding David Gilmour as an additional guitarist/singer for touring purposes and then to cover for Barrett wholesale when it was decided that Barrett would concentrate solely on writing songs for the group.

This became unsustainable, however, and Barrett left the group in 1968 as the band was concluding work on their second album, ‘A Saucerful of Secrets’.

Pink Floyd had often been pilloried in the music press for their tendency to elongate ideas into ten-minute-plus opuses such as ‘Saucerful of Secrets’, or suites such as ‘The Narrow Way’ or the 23-minute fan favourite ‘Echoes’.

Despite the fact that ‘The Dark Side of The Moon’ is in reality two large portions of audio with every song bleeding into the next, the album cleverly disguises Pink Floyd’s tendencies to go big or go home by delivering the material in more distinguishable bite-size chunks with seven of the ten tracks weighing in at under five minutes.

Many of the segues on the album foreshadow upcoming songs with flashes of melody or by utilising voice clips, which were collected by the band asking Abbey Road staff and other people working in the studios at the time to answer the same set of questions, such as “When was the last time you were violent?” and “Were you in the right?”

The album’s engineer, Alan Parsons (pre-Project), was recorded answering the questions but didn’t make the grade. Neither did Paul or Linda McCartney, though their Wings bandmate Henry McCullough from Northern Ireland did.

Ironically, despite McCartney’s contribution being dismissed, The Beatles became a part of the tapestry of rumours surrounding the album, such as the false suggestion that the album had been designed to be played in tandem with the film ‘The Wizard of Oz’. Many people claimed they could hear ‘Paperback Writer’ towards the end of final track ‘Eclipse‘.

Dealing with themes such as depression, war and greed, the tone of ‘The Dark Side of The Moon’ is set by opening track ‘Speak to Me’, which foreshadows ‘Money’ by utilising its currency sounds, and voice clips referencing madness to create a tense, claustrophobic overture that gives ways to the album’s first real song, ‘Breath (in The Air)’

‘Breath (in The Air)’ again foreshadows a later moment in the album with a haunting snippet from ‘The Great Gig In The Sky’.

‘Breath (in the Air)’ feels almost tranquil in the face of its predecessor thanks to its languid guitar strains, but it’s not long before the lyrics bring us face to face with capitalism and the rat race and digging yourself into an early grave.

‘On The Run’ sees Pink Floyd in full-on experimental mode playing with synths and sequencers, namely, the newly invented Synthi AKS, to create a sense of restlessness.

‘On The Run’ gives way to the album’s second longest track, ‘Time’, which gives drummer Nick Mason time to showcase his talents before David Gilmour and Richard Wright share lead vocals on this epic tale of trying not to lose your sense of self whilst working 9-5. David Gilmour’s guitar work is exquisite as he delivers one of the greatest guitar solos of all time.

Side A of ‘The Dark Side of The Moon’ ends in truly extraordinary fashion with the magical ‘The Great Gig In The Sky’.

Commencing with Richard Wright’s haunting classically tinged piano motif, it gives way to one of the most singular moments in the history of recorded song with Clare Torry’s impassioned vocal painting – never has a voice said so little and expressed so much.

In the age of radio, popular music has been dominated by the 4/4 time signature. Name your favourite song and it’s more than likely in 4/4 time; Pink Floyd’s ‘Money’ is in 7/8.

Roger Waters created the track’s unique tapestry of monetary sounds by recording a cash register and other machines and by throwing coins and other items into his wife’s metal potter’s bowl then looping them to create the track’s intro.

The song’s groove was inspired by Waters’ love of Booker T and The M.G.’s and showcases his growing disgust with capitalism and the dirty nature of the music business.

Undoubtedly, one of the album’s highlights, ‘Us and Them’, commences with a Led Zeppelin-esque Hammond organ figure before Dick Parry’s tenor saxophone enters giving the track an extra dreamy feel. ‘Us and Them’ delivers an anti-war message, highlighting that its always poor young men sent off to war at the behest and to the benefit of the rich.

‘Us and Them’ gives way to the futurist vamping instrumental ‘Any Colour You Like’. This is the last track on the album credited to anybody other than Roger Waters, who takes sole credit for the album’s final two songs as well as taking over lead vocal duties from Gilmour and Wright.

‘Brain Damage’ brings the thread of madness that runs throughout ‘The Dark Side of The Moon’ to the fore, referencing former frontman Syd Barrett’s declining mental health. The lyric “And if the band you're in starts playing different tunes/I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon” is a direct reference to Barrett’s behaviour towards the end of his stint in the group.

‘Eclipse’ brings this monumental record to a close, continuing to muse on madness. Perhaps Waters and co. worried that the rock‘n’roll lifestyle would lead them into madness too.

The album’s striking cover of a prism being hit by a ray of light so as to create a spectrum of colour has become as iconic as the music contained within. Its creators made a mistake in the design, however, leaving out the colour indigo.

It’s hard to know which, if any, albums from 2023 we’ll still be listening to in 2073, but it’s safe to say that Pink Floyd’s ‘The Dark Side of The Moon’ will still be the source of much joy and debate 100 years after it was released.