Solar eclipse celebration for 50th anniversary of Pink Floyd’s iconic album The Dark Side of the Moon
It’s been 50 years since Pink Floyd dealt with the madness of its founding frontman by creating an album steeped in insanity. On Thursday, fans were able to experience a rare total solar eclipse to the strains of the masterpiece.
When Pink Floyd fired co-founder, songwriter and frontman-guitarist Syd Barrett in 1968 as a result of his rampant use of LSD and subsequent mental illness, they never told him. Instead, they just didn’t pick him up on their way to a performance in England. Through trial and error, the band figured out how to fill Barrett’s creative shoes after they officially parted ways later that year.
By 1971, with the release of Meddle, few rock bands were dreaming on Pink Floyd’s scale. To cope with their Barrett guilt and growing creative differences, the quartet, with David Gilmour now lead vocalist and guitarist, began using their albums and concerts as a form of therapy. For their eighth studio album, bassist and lyricist Roger Waters envisioned an LP that would explore a single concept – the forces that chip away at one’s sanity.
The result was The Dark Side of the Moon, evoking both the mysterious, sunless lunar rear and the centuries-old belief that the moon influenced moods and was responsible for lunacy. Released 50 years ago, the album reached No. 1 on Billboard’s LP chart for a week (the Australian ARIA charts did not begun until 1988) but has since remained on the chart for nearly 1000 weeks, selling more than 50 million units worldwide.
To commemorate the 50th anniversary, Sony Music has released a new deluxe boxed set of the remastered studio album on CD, LP and Blu-ray and DVD audio, and for the first time in Dolby Atmos, as well as a CD and LP of Live at Wembley Empire Pool, recorded in London in 1974.
As a runaway bestseller, Dark Side had a considerable impact on rock’n’roll fans, scaling up expectations for album production and concert performances. Among those influenced by the early futuristic soundscapes and textured use of synthesisers and vocals were Steve Miller on his album Fly Like an Eagle, Brian Eno and David Bowie on their collaborative records, and 10cc, Kraftwerk, Radiohead and The Flaming Lips.
Yet Dark Side produced just one major Billboard pop hit – Money, which reached No.13. There were no teeth-rattling rockers, and the entire album seemed to move in slow motion, as if weightless. Sales were driven by a confluence of external events.
The record arrived just as arena concerts were catching on. Pink Floyd widely toured music from Dark Side leading up to its release and again after it came out. Meanwhile, more affordable and better-quality component stereo systems maximised appreciation of the LP’s sonic quality and electronic effects. And manned Apollo moon landings had become routine, with two in 1972. David Bowie’s Space Oddity (1969), Life on Mars? (1971) and Ziggy Stardust (1972) along with Elton John’s Rocket Man (1972) had created a market for solar-system rock.
Though many at the time viewed the record as musings on the universe, Waters told Rolling Stone in 1987: “None of those pieces were about outer space. They were about inner space.” In 2003, he added in Britain’s Uncut magazine that the album was about “things that could impinge upon one’s life in an emotional or physical way.”
As a concept album, Dark Side still captivates, like an adventure story. One song drifts seamlessly into the next, relying on extended instrumentals to tie them together. The music is remarkably gentle and hypnotic, while the lyrics are of their time, examining such issues as madness, sadness, empathy, war, materialism and human existence.
Waters wrote the words for all 10 tracks, while the music was composed by different band members – keyboardist Richard Wright, Gilmour, drummer Nick Mason and Waters, with vocalist Clare Torry co-credited on one song. Breathe (In the Air) has a calming, inhale-exhale quality. Gilmour’s vocal here and throughout is euphoric. Lyrics urge listeners to live out their dreams now, before regrets set in: “Breathe, breathe in the air / Don’t be afraid to care.”
“Time” looks at how little of it there is in life to do something meaningful. The vocal overdubbing is expansive, and the lyrics chastise those who “fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way”. The song features superb guitar work by Gilmour.
The Great Gig in the Sky centres on the fear of death. Torry was brought in to wind down the song and came up with a wordless, howling vocal.
Laced with sounds of an old cash register, adding machine and tinkling coins, Money is a reverb-heavy, anti-greed screed in 7/4 time. Gilmour toughens up his vocal and provides a searing guitar solo with Dick Parry on sax.
The high point is Wright’s misty Us and Them, originally written for the film Zabriskie Point (1970) but rejected as too sad. Reminiscent of the Beatles’ “Because,” the lyrics are about the senselessness of war.
In the closer, Eclipse, the moon is once again taken to task for being a drag: “And everything used under the sun is in tune / But the sun is eclipsed by the moon.”
Despite the lyrics’ now clichéd plea for a better world, The Dark Side of the Moon remains a radical, large-canvas synthesiser-and-choral masterpiece. Sadly, Waters’s antisemitism, recent pro-Putin harangues and seemingly irrational acrimony toward former band members have undercut the album’s tranquillity.
The bigger Pink Floyd became, the more they ran afoul of the traps that “Dark Side” warned about, including greed, wasted time and dashed dreams. Blame it on the moon.
The Wall Street Journal
–
Pink Floyd - The Dark Side Of The Moon (Live At The Ningaloo Eclipse) April 20th 2023 https://t.co/2U81tLUllv
— Pink Floyd (@pinkfloyd) April 20, 2023
There were two dark sides of the moon on Thursday when a select group of lucky contest winners were ferried to a secret location at Ningaloo Reef, near the West Australian town of Exmouth, to experience a rare total solar eclipse to the strains of Pink Floyd’s 50-year-old masterpiece album.
The Dark Side of the Moon was played in full for Sony competition winners as the eclipse took place at the WA outpost and home of the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Ningaloo Marine Park, where an estimated 20,000 people had gathered to witness the phenomenon. Exmouth had been touted by astronomers as the best place in the world to witness the eclipse. Overseen by the group’s long time Creative Consultant and Hipgnosis co-founder, Aubrey Powell, Pink Floyd offered eight Australian competition winners the exclusive opportunity to visit a special scenic location to listen to the album in full.
The experience had been timed to ensure Roger Waters’s iconic closing lines “But the sun is eclipsed by the moon …” coincided with the solar event. Says Powell: “Since its release 50 years ago, The Dark Side of the Moon has been embraced by multiple generations across the world because it examines universal themes of greed, mortality, the dark and light sides of the human psyche and, of course, our place in the cosmos — I couldn’t think of a more fitting way to commemorate its release than with this rare and beautiful phenomenon that visually symbolises so much of what the album explores”.
There’s no such thing as too many books
My wife thinks my collection is out of control, but that’s nonsense: I just need a few more shelves.
Test your general knowledge
Pit your wits against Review’s resident Quizmaster.