On their classic record, one of the best-selling of all time, the British band taught others how to blend grandeur and malaise.
The New York Times – Sad, heavy songs about madness, mortality and greed, punctuated by tense instrumentals. Was this the blueprint for a blockbuster? It hardly sounds like the result of one of the best-selling albums of all time.
But there’s no denying the popularity and tenacity of The dark side of the moonthe indelible album that the Pink fluid launched 50 years ago, on March 1, 1973. Looming like an inscrutable monolith, dark side spent nearly all of the next 14 years — through punk, disco, hip-hop, and MTV’s pop heyday — lodged in the Top 200 of Billboard’s album chart. board. It’s come to the analog days, with record stores and vinyl LPs, and when buying an album was a commitment. And no matter how familiar dark side became FM radio broadcasting: people still wanted to own their own copy, or perhaps a new copy to replace a scratched one. In the digital age, the album The dark side of the moon charted again on CD, selling millions more.
the success of dark side nurtured the ambitions of Pink fluid and their leader roger waters, which has toured arenas and stadiums ever since; Waters, 79, will play his “first farewell date” this year. he conceived The wall, a narrative rock opera released in 1979 that would foreground their anti-authority reflexes, from teachers to heads of state; she performed it against the backdrop of the Berlin Wall. Decades later, Waters would continue to make exuberant, conspiracy-theorized, pro-Russian political statements that many former fans detested. When Dark Side appeared, all of that was in the future.
There will, of course, be another deluxe edition for the latest anniversary of Dark side. Arriving March 24, the new box set contains hi-res surround sound remixes and other extras, though it’s largely redundant following the exhaustive reissue of the Immersion edition in 2011. Both Immersion and the new set include a performance worthy of a 1974 concert by dark sidewith a vigorous live sound and long jams on stage.
Waters also announced his full remake of Dark side, who will have his own lead vocal – not the hoarse, lugubrious voice of the Pink Floyd guitarist, david gimour – with the same words spoken by Waters on the album’s instrumentals, as well as having no “rock ‘n’ roll guitar solos”.
Uh huh.
In 1973, dark side it was an album that worked equally well for showcasing a new stereo – or, for some early adopters, a quadraphonic system – or for contemplating in private communion over headphones and a joint. The clocks and alarms and chimes that open Time are startlingly realistic, even when they are no longer a surprise, and the perpetual motion synthesizers and desperate footsteps of Runaway they are eternally stunning.
Massive tempos, cavernous tones and solemn framing herald the high seriousness of dark side, which begins and ends with the sound of a heartbeat. The album juxtaposes rousing sounds and big pronouncements with the human scale experience. His tracks are punctuated by the voices of the Pink Floyd crew and friends, dishing out loop-ready tidbits like I’ve always been crazy with working class accents.
Like other crushing bestsellers of the 70s and 80s – Thriller, In Michael Jackson, California hotelsof the Eagles, voicesIn Fleetwood Mac -, dark side it deals with disillusionment, fear and resentment, despite the sophistication of its production. He is troubled and obsessive at heart. Countless bands and producers would learn from Pink fluid about blending grandeur and malaise, and how a few well-placed sounds can say so much more than an ostentatious display of virtuosity.
dark side it was a product of its time. The early 1970s marked the heyday of progressive rock, particularly in Britain where bands love Genesis, King Crimson AND YES they were building long-form songs and revealing elaborate concepts. But the early 1970s was also a time when the utopian promises of the hippie era were fading, rejected by entrenched interests and corporate co-option. dark side catches the fall of naive hopes.
It was Pink Floyd’s eighth album, the continuation of a cult career that had been synonymous with psychedelia and progressive rock: with extended structures and open jams, with verbal puzzles and with an oh-wow appreciation of reverberant textures and spatial effects.
The founding songwriter of Pink Floyd, Syd Barrett, he left the band in 1968 with mental health issues, taking his sense of fantasy with him. Waters has emerged as their most saturnine new leader. But it took a series of uneven albums filled with amorphous studio jams before the relative brevity and clarity of dark side came on fire. While the album sounds like a 42-minute prog-rock suite – despite the need, in 1973, for an LP – it also contains clearly delineated verse-chorus-verse songs that radio stations could play. Waters deliberately made his lyrics more blunt and realistic than before: “Money, it’s a gas / Grab that money with both hands and hide.”
Waters tackled big themes: time, money, war, the inevitability of death, the banality of everyday life, the importance of seizing the moment. Your perspective is gloomy. In Breathe (in the air), describes life as a “race to an early death”; in Time, he notes that every sunrise brings you “One day closer to death.” But why dark side become a box office success is that the music of Pink Floyd – the full band, with the modest but fundamental keyboards of Richard WrightWaters on bass, steady drums from Nick Massone and Gilmour’s piercing, cutting, high-pitched guitar playing – defies it all.
The album builds dramatically and inexorably towards the songs that close each side of the LP. The Great Concert in the Skyending side 1, is a processional chord progression from Wright’s keyboard, topped with spoken words denying the fear of death – “You’ve got to go sometime” – followed by the leap of Clare Towers in a soaring and mesmerizing vocal improvisation. She is pure life force, with pain and freedom and determination in her voice, refusing to accept oblivion. (Torry only received songwriting credit in 2005, along with an undisclosed settlement, after suing the band.)
The conclusion of the album – brain damage directed to Eclipse, both written by Waters – sounds dark, but feels transcendent. In brain damage, the singer feels succumbing to a mental illness. “The madman is in my head,” he warns, responding with a manic laugh; in the chorus he sings, “If your head explodes with dark forebodings / I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon.” Then, in Eclipse, he heads for a revealing unity – “All that is now and all that is gone / And all that is to come and everything under the sun is in tune” – only to be swallowed up by the darkness as” the sun is eclipsed by the moon.” But on both songs, the music swells behind him, with religious organ and robust major chords, thundering guitar and gospel choral harmonies. When the album ends, news of the catastrophe sounds like a triumph; it’s a breathtaking arena rock finale. In recent interviews, Waters has described the album’s message more positively. “What’s really important is the connection between us as human beings, the whole human community,” he told al Berliner Zeitung in February. This is revisionist; dark side it revels in alienation, futility, and despair. Their persistence reveals how many listeners feel the same way.
Source: Terra
Earl Johnson is a music writer at Gossipify, known for his in-depth analysis and unique perspective on the industry. A graduate of USC with a degree in Music, he brings years of experience and passion to his writing. He covers the latest releases and trends, always on the lookout for the next big thing in music.
