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Q Magazine, May 1991

The Q Sleevenotes: PINK FLOYD Dark Side of the Moon

   Dark Side of the Moon is the album which dominated the '70s. Released
on March 24, 1973, it ushered in an era of album-oriented rock and
transformed Pink Floyd from ranking English acid-rock conceptualists
to a goliath of the international super-league. It enjoyed unprecedented
chart longevity, especially in America, where it was the group's first
album to breach the Top 40. It remains a perennial presence, especially
in the CD market, and in the four years since David Gilmour and Nick
Mason revived Pink Floyd and set off on the Momentary Lapse of Reason
tour, Dark Side of the Moon has sold four million copies, bringing the
current sales tally to 23 million.
   The album was made during the summer of 1972, at a time of rapid
technological change. It was recorded on 16-track equipment at Abbey
Road, with the new Dolby noise reduction system being adopted halfway
through the sessions. A decision was taken not to do a quadrophonic
mix, although that ill-fated system was just beginning to appear on the
domestic market. EMI went ahead anyway and commissioned a quad-mix from
the then-engineer Alan Parsons, which the record company played at a
press conference held at the Planetarium to launch the album. The group
did not approve and boycotted the event, their place being taken by
life-size cardboard cut-outs.
   As was the practice in those days, the Floyd maintained a steady gigging
schedule throughout the period of the recordings, but Dark Side of the Moon
was the first album which the band had both written and toured before
going into the studio.
   "It was called Eclipse when we first played it live," recalls Gilmour.
"We showcased it to begin with at five nights at the Rainbow,
which tightened it up performance-wise, although one or two of the
pieces which were a bit more performance-oriented got thrown out
and replaced in the studio. On The Run started as some strange on-stage
jam, but when we discovered the sequencer capability of the little
VCS3 synthesizer we used that instead."
   The album bears the legend 'Produced by Pink Floyd'. "In theory we were
all producing," says Gilmour, "but in practice it meant that Roger and
I would argue considerably about how it should sound." Chris Thomas (who
later produced The Pretenders, The Sex Pistols and others) was called in
at the mixing stage as a 'neutral party' to try and resolve the internecine
wrangling.
   Clearly, Dark Side of the Moon has touched a deep chord with succeeding
generations of record and CD buyers, a reflection perhaps of the timeless
qualities of both its production and its theme. The production, although
basic by today's standards, does not sound unduly primitive. Indeed, there
are later Floyd albums which now sound more dated.
   This was probably due more to luck than judgement. Although the Floyd
have always been renowned for their stringent quality control, their music,
like any other act's, was frequently locked into the spirit of its time.
But not only are tracks like Money, Time, Us and Them and Brain Damage
powerful, concise musical statements, they also boast a cohesive thematic
content.
   While Gilmour provided many suitably majestic instrumental passages
Roger Waters' lyrics bore down with stark perception on a universal
subject - the simple, often trivial pressures of daily life that can lead
to insanity. Still a couple of years shy of his 30th birthday, Waters
had already twigged the ultimate misery of it all, and he wrought his
bleak verse with bold slashes of the pen. There was no air of a false
new dawn or hippy optimism about this record; rather the despairing
observation that with each new day "... you're older, Shorter of breath
and one day closer to death."
   Dark Side of the Moon has been available in CD format bearing EMI's 001
catalogue number since August 1984, and it remains among the top 10
selling CDs of all time. With it striking sound effects of chiming clocks
and ringing cash tills, it is the sort of album that has traditionally
appealed to the audiophile section of the rock market and has doubtless
been a priority purchase for many proud investors in the new CD technology.
   Such fans may be surprised, if not dismayed, to learn that the early
CD version of the album was transferred not from the master tape, but from a
standard 15ips Dolby copy, a practice which David Gilmour believes to be
fairly widespread.
   "We weren't involved initially. They just went ahead and did it. When
we found out about it we had to do an investigation to find out where
the original master was, and then have it remastered."
   Dark Side of the Moon was undoubtedly a high water mark in the Pink Floyd
odyssey. Gilmour now recalls that "it changed our fortunes everywhere. We
became much more visible. We were selling out 12-15,000 seater venues in
America, but thereafter we could sell out vast football stadiums and we had to
change our way of doing shows. Whereas we used to get a respectful silence
from the audience, once Money had been a hit single (it reached number 13 in
America) we had thousands of kids partying at the front. Some of the things
we had been able to do previously, such as very quiet sequences, simply
didn't work any more."
   Waters took a jaundiced view of its impact. Speaking in 1987, he declared
that "Dark Side of the Moon finished the group off. Once you've cracked it,
it's all over."
   Either way the album remains a work of rare intensity, a powerful evocation
of the shadowy corners of the rock psyche. Plainly unsuitable as an
accompaniment for the snappy advertising of beer or jeans, it seems entirely
appropriate that the one track from Dark Side of the Moon which has found
its way into a TV commercial - keyboard player Richard Wright's haunting
interlude for piano and voice, The Great Gig in the Sky - was adopted for
a surreal Nurofen painkiller advertisement.
   Large chunks of the album still feature prominently in the live shows
of both Pink Floyd and Roger Waters and it is clearly a body of work that has
become part of the collective rock consciousness. The secret of its longevity
is anybody's guess, although one clue may be the curiously reductive quality
which it has demonstrated over the years. As Gilmour notes wryly, "I thought
it was a very complicated album when we first made it, but when you listen to
it now it's really very simple."