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Pink Floyd "The Dark Side Of The Moon" (1973)
Speak To Me/Breathe/On The Run/Time/The Great Gig In The
Sky//Money/Us and Them/Any Colour You Like/Brain Damage/Eclipse
(Dark
Side of the Singing Dog):
....I
work for the AAA, so you know I've been mad, of course I've been mad for
years........
....It's
very hard to explain why you have a top hat but I've had it for years.....
...Live
for tomorrow, gone for today, that's me...............
...No
I'm not frightened of writing, any review will do, I don't mind. I mean you've
got to write sometime, as long as it's not Spice Girls - there's no reason for
it...
...Absolutely
I was right, David Cameron, Pig man, was cruising for a bruising...
....I
don't know, our other AAA mascot Bingo was really drunk at the time.....
...Good
manners don't cost nothing, unless you're a politician, eh?......
...There
is no dark side of the top hat. Matter of fact it's all dark....and what makes
it light is the lack of stuffing in my head
...And
everything under the sun is in tune, as Pink Floyd become eclipsed by the
'Moon'...
One of the few things all the members of Pink Floyd
have agreed on is that they were all caught by surprise by how big a success
this monster-selling album became. However one of the few other things the band
all agree on is that they thought this album was rather special when they were
making it, so perhaps no one should have been all that surprised. After all,
this is a band who thought even the masterpiece of psychedelia 'Piper At The
Gates Of Dawn' wasn't all that much and rated their later albums 'Ummagumma'
and 'Atom Heart Mother' as disgraceful rather than mixed albums possessing a
certain period charm (sample Roger Waters quote: 'If someone offered me a
million pounds and asked me to play 'Atom Heart' again I'd say...you must be
fucking joking!') The fact that all four
of the perfectionists involved in the making of it thought they had made their
best album yet ought to have been another sign. Perhaps, though, the Floyd were
simply confused over how easily this record came together, without any of the
usual angst that had greeted the writing, recording and packaging of every
album they'd made since Syd left the band - and which will, pretty much, sum up
the making of all six of the album's sequels, none of which were ever quite as
united or spirited again. Great art came from struggle, didn't it? From
personality clashes, record company interference and diluting ideas for public
consumption? This album was such an easy and peaceful album to make, with all
four band members pulling together roughly in harmony, that it couldn't
possibly be as god as they thought, could it? Surely an album that opens with a
sound collage, includes three instrumentals (more than any non-soundtrack Floyd
album - we'll give 'Several Species Of Small Furry Animals' a nod as an actual
'song' for now...), multiple sound effects and covers such subjects as death,
madness and paranoia could never be a big seller - could it?
The answer of course was yes and in a big way. Apart
from the Beatles compilation '1' this is the best selling AAA album of all time,
with a still unbeaten unbroken run of 741 weeks in the UK top 200 albums chart
- that's fifteen whole years (most records nowadays can't last a month!) EMI
were always good at their marketing and promotion and the Floyd were keen to
tour the album, both before and after it' release (a key and overlooked part of
its success actually, giving the band the chance to drop and alter some
half-hearted ideas while working steadily on what seemed to be having most
resonance with their audiences). However for an album to sell that well for so
long, there's clearly something bigger going on here. 'Dark Side', you see,
might well be the ultimate 'word of mouth' album: fans leant copies to friends
and families as the first Floyd record they didn't have to make allowances for
(self-indulgences like singing dogs and psychedelic breakfasts, that sort of
thing), big brothers passed it onto their siblings as a way of teaching them
about 'life', stereo aficionados passed it onto others so they could wallow in
the production and sound effects (many people only upgraded to CD when 'Dark
Side' came out...) 'Dark Side' was lucky in that it caught the public mood of
1973 - the zenith of prog rock - perfectly, with its futuristic synth sound
effects just far enough into the future to be exciting and album packaging that
combined four of the most guaranteed sellers of the first half of the 1970s
anyway: space, science, shapes (the prism) and ancient history (the Egyptian
pyramids on the inner sleeve poster - the band could have played this aspect up
a bit more in fact). However it's an album that did its homework too: unlike
some big selling albums that appeal most to a particular generation at a
particular point in time ('Sgt Peppers' 'Tommy', maybe even 'The Wall' come to
that...), 'Dark Side' chooses it's subject matter with care: these aren't the
worries and fears of a generation but the worries and fears of the human race,
going back to time immemorial. Our ancestors and our future offspring a million
years ago and in our future might have to use Googleyahooaskjeevesbing
(there'll inevitably be a merger) to translate why 'the lunatic is on the
grass' is so funny for a generation brought up on 1960s drug references, but
they'll understand the lines about the pressures of time, mortality and money
all right. And even if the bartering is with leaves or the immediate worry of
death is solved by a genetic code that allows us to regenerate, 'Dark Side'
will remain an important document as perhaps the most important album for
future historians trying to understand what living in the 20th century was
like. Ironically for an album that so heavily revolves around the concept of
time (how soon do we get rich? When will it be taken away when we die? Will our
race/creed/civilisation conquer the others in time?) the main reason 'Dark
Side' sold so well compared to other albums (especially Floyd albums) is that
it exists out of time to some extent, with even a production so 'new' it
doesn't quite sound like anything else out there.
It is, though, the concept that makes 'Dark Side'
such an important work. Legend had it that the band were fleshing out ideas for
their new album at drummer Nick Mason's house, partly to see a new kitchen he'd
just installed. Always one for a concept, Pink Floyd had made a career for
themselves making grand concepts sound bigger, without being restricted by
time. 'Atom Heart Mother' and 'Echoes' between them had proved the band could
do extended concept pieces and both had been well received at the time with
their fanbase (though no one's quite sure why in the case of the first one...)
However the 'other' half of the album always seemed to suffer, being a
collection of un-connected tracks that either over-powered or were in turn
over-powered by the side long suites. The step to making a full album of
interlinked songs rather than a suite of parts is a small but significant one
that was always going to appeal to a band who liked to think 'big'. The actual
kernel of the piece came from Roger's suggestion that they write a series of
songs about what happened to their founder leader Syd, who after rallying in
1970 had clearly left the music business - and society - for good by 1973. The
band had been too busy to mourn properly and even helping their friend on his
two solo albums hadn't really helped the guilt. They were also sick of the
press asking them where Syd had gone and when he would be coming back, so
decided to make 'Dark Side' a tribute album for someone they were only just
realising had gone and by trying to come to terms themselves with what had
happened to make the brightest spark of 1967 a shadow of his former glory. Dark
Side changed along the way to a more varied account of the pressures of living
in the modern world - Syd, for instance, cared very little for 'Money' and his
songs were mainly involved with looking backwards to childhood than forward to
death - but Syd still looms large on this record, the 'madness' that chief
lyricist Roger feared might one day take him too (some might argue after
listening to his opera 'Ca Ira' that it already has; the pair were more similar
than people realise by the way, a lot of Roger's 'Syd' songs are about 'there
but for the grace of what God wants go I', rather than 'this is what happened
to my friend'). It's fascinating to me that both 'Wish You Were Here' and 'The
Wall' will both end up with the same starting point, though taking the idea in
different directions (the theme of absence and the barriers built up around the
Syd-like rockstar Pink respectively), perhaps as a lucky talisman or out of
giving the audience what they want - but also, perhaps, because it 'feels' like
the story the Floyd were sent to tell us - opening up about the one event that
scarred and shaped their band more than any other, which no other band of the
1960s really had (though Love could make a case for Arthur Lee I suppose).
We've forgotten about it slightly through
familiarity, but the record's title and the closing two tracks of this record
are both about madness - and about 'real' madness, not the comedy sort beloved
by love-struck 50s and 60s teenagers. This is completely against the grain of
anything else released in 1973 (when madness was music's cardinal taboo after
writing about old age - which funnily enough is on here too) and yet also chimed
with a public of 1973 who had slightly lost the arrogance of hippie hope and
were beginning to think the world was mad anyway, with endless wars and
capitalist crusading. If ever a record captured that feeling of being lost in a
dead-end it was the Floyd, but unlike previous albums which tended to end in
melancholy, scares or marmalade-enhanced breakfasts, the finale 'Eclipse' added
to the album at the last minute is perhaps the most powerful Floyd song: on one
layer it tells us that nothing we ever do can matter because we're only a small
speck of insignificance, but on another level in context with that groundswell
of music rising up like never before it's now a shared experience, a rare Floyd
communal singalong where we're all in this together. After an album's worth of
songs largely about division - class, status, age, 'us and them' - finally we
get to feel part of something bigger than ourselves, united by our shared
experiences even if they were from different ages, races and perspectives.
'Dark Side' really touches into something here which hadn't really been touched
on before, shared sub-consciously by everyone with enough of a 'brain' and
'heart' to worry about their and their loved one's future (which ought to lead
neatly on to a discussion of how well 'Dark Side' slots in with the film
'Wizard Of Oz' when both are played at the same time - although I haven't got
the 'nerve', in both meanings of the word. And I still say this record works
better when watched in tandem with the Monkees film 'Head').
The other songs about what lead up to this finale
work so well because they both feel like they are leading up to this inevitable
point (via the technicolour musical breakdown of 'Any Colour You Like') and
work well in separation. 'Breathe' is the album overture that every concept
album wants to have, a reminder to enjoy life while it's there and to live it,
which might well be the most warm-blooded lyric that Waters ever wrote (usually
he's at his best sarcastically flailing against the failing system, but this is
a rare song that has him remembering why getting that system right means so
much to him). 'On The Run' is the inevitable result of a band who loved playing
with concepts and ideas let loose with a state of the art synthesiser (you can
see that Roger is settling in for what looks like hours of experiment in the
'Dark Side' recording snippets seen in the 'Live At Pompeii' film), always said
to be about fear of accidents whilst travelling, although it sounds more like
good old fashioned Floyd paranoia to me. 'Time' is gorgeous, the sound of a man
about to turn thirty whose been told the whole of his life to prepare for
something across school and college that never actually came (it's a theme
common to several other AAA bands and though being in a band makes most writers
use their friends as subject matter, this song works because Roger makes it
clear he's criticising himself as much as anyone). 'Is this is it?' is
effectively the running theme of this whole album but particularly this one
song. Rick's 'The Great Gig In The Sky' is the song that changed the most from
first rehearsal to final recording, originally pencilled in as 'religion'
before the gospel flavour Rick used reminded him more of death, even if guest
singer Clare Torry probably had more to do with shaping the song than Wright
did. 'Money' is the hit single every hit album needs to have, even if it took
until as late as 1981 for it to be released as such (and then it was the
inferior re-recording released on 'A Collection Of Great Dance Songs'!)
Beginning life as a blues lament, turning into a tour de force rock song in the
middle as money gets it's addictive hold on the narrator, it's a lecture posing
as a rock masterclass. Best of all is 'Us and Them', the last of three
collaborations between polar opposites Roger and Rick that unites Waters'
bluntness and Wright's subtlety to great effect, especially when matched with
Gilmour's greatest ever vocal, sighing over and yet slightly removed from a
world of petty divisions caused by other people who can't see the bigger
picture. Based around a piano piece rejected from the 'Zabriskie Point'
soundtrack, it feels like the band's 'theme song' even though plenty more in
their canon are better known: live and let live has always been the Floyd's philosophy
from the beginning (underwear thief Arnold Layne would be the figure of fun or
the villain in most band's songs, but to Syd he sounds like a fascinating
character he quite admires), even to the extent of haranguing British and
American foreign policy on 'Final Cut' and 'Amused To Death', not to mention
'The Division Bell' but it's never been better addressed than in this gorgeous
song.
One other major factor in this album's popularity is
that it manages to be both gloriously daring and ear-catchingly commercial. In
the former camp, it's not just the theme or the songs that are so gloriously
unique but the way this record is put together. The spoken words that dart in
between the songs, which could have been handled so badly, instead add yet
another layer on top of this album. Roger may be using his most poetic words
yet, but he's only really saying what other human beings have been saying and
using other voices to express those themes too. On earlier albums that needed a
bit of something extra he would have simply asked Nick to oblige (that's him
promising to cut us into little pieces on the last 'proper' Floyd album Meddle
for instance - friendly chap). On later albums you suspect Roger would have
shipped in special guest stars at vast expense to read out carefully prepared
cue cards ('The Wall', another deeply personal album made universal, loses a
little of its lustre and sounds more ordinary every-time we hear it sung by
someone outside the band I think). Thankfully common sense prevails and instead
he prepared a series of questions relating to each of the subjects heard on
this album, which he held up silently to everyone in close approximation at
Abbey Road late on in the recording
stage of the album, with every response recorded 'for real' without any scripts
or aids (the voice everyone remembers is Abbey Road door man Jerry Driscoll'
who answered the question if he was afraid of dying with 'no, you've got to go
sometime...' and contributes the philosophical closing speech 'There's no dark
side of the moon at all really, matter of fact it's all dark...' What he
actually went on to say, scientifically accurately, was '...and what makes it
light is the sun' but the band, sensing a great comment on how all life is mad
chopped his speech in two. Elsewhere one Floyd roadie Roger 'The Hat' Manifold
warns about a 'short sharp shock' and offers the profound 'live for today, gone
for tomorrow, that's me'; roadie Chris Adamson is the one whose 'been mad for
fucking years' - Roger's knowing laugh suggests that he's noticed!; band
manager Peter Watts was interviewed but the only sample used was his heavy
laugh near the beginning and end of the record; that's his wife Patricia who
turned up with him that day talking about a fight she go into 'where this
geezer was cruising for a bruising'; that's Wings guitarist Henry McCullough,
busy at work on the album 'Red Rose Speedway' next door, who contributes 'I
don't know but I was really drunk at the time' - the only place where fans can
hear what his irish brogue actually sounds like as he wasn't with the band very
long; Paul and Linda McCartney were both reportedly interviewed but were
considered too 'cagey' and practised at dodging hard questions to be used -
sadly neither Denny Laine nor drummer Denny Seiwell seem to have been asked).
I'd love to know if these tapes still exist complete (the Floyd were one of the
better bands for keeping everything, as the 'Dark Side' Immersion box set
demonstrates) as they'd make the (atom heart) mother of all CD extras one day).
The use of voices adds humanity - something so often missing from other Floyd
albums more concerned with the abstract or themes of isolation - which gives a
stronger human heartbeat behind the words, taking it out of the abstract and
closer to the 'real world'.
The heartbeat is also, of course, what opens the
album (and can be 'seen' pulsing in Dark Side's inner sleeve) and a throwback
to the 'Zabriskie Point' instrumental 'Heartbeat Pigmeat' (David Cameron's new
favourite song!) Along with all the other sound effects on the album it's
brilliantly managed by engineer Alan Parsons, who really deserved a bigger
album credit bit did at least launch his own successful music career of the
back of this record. The production is one of the things that really stands out
across this album, which sounds more 'adult' and polished than the rather
un-discplined and messy Floyd ever really had before and yet doesn't sound in
anyway slick or unauthentic. With the best engineered records, there's a place
for everything and everything is in its place, but there's always the hint of
the different compartments being juggled, that the music is always trying to
spill out from its boxes and joins another. 'Us and Them' is a good example of
engineering at its finest: Rick's organ pulses life at the heart of the mix
echoing the heartbeat from earlier, the echo adds even more distance to what
Gilmour's trying to say (though Parson's original rejected 1972 mix without
this echo as heard on the 'Immersion' set is even better I think), the gospel
female quartet warble away but in the background as colour rather than as the
main show, the greatest saxophone part ever cools its heels at the start of the
song waiting for the action to begin, the vocals drift in and out at precisely
the right millisecond and everything seems still and pristine - until the
agonising 'second section' destroys it all in an instant, Dave and Rick
releasing the fury they've been keeping in check for the rest of the record.
Every song on the record benefits from this extra attention to detail though,
being busy but never cluttered, with the space-age synths of 'On The Run'
strikingly less embarrassing than similar uses on similar albums of the period.
Though the band, Roger especially, have always backtracked on just how much
work Parsons did on the album (and it has to be said that none of his other
early album mixes come close to the released versions' level) it also speaks
volumes that no other Floyd record, even 'Wish You Were Here', comes close to
matching the pure clarity and warmth of this album.
Floyd designers Hipgnosis, too, play their part on
an album cover that has rightly become one of the most celebrated in rock and
roll. On the one hand this is purely commercial: it's bold black background
really made it stand out in a year of glam rock and colourful sleeves, while
the way the inner and outer gatefold sleeves joined up as one continual whole
was perfect for shop displays. On another it adds so much to the allure and
mystery of the album, which melds scientific principle with heavy symbolism, a
'real' world from a slightly different perspective (which also happens to
missing the colour 'Indigo', for the ease of design rather than any symbolic
reason; it's a real shame that 'Pink' isn't a primal colour and it would have
been perfect!) In a neat mirror of the record's contents (which everyone loved,
but weren't sure would sell), Hipgnosis actually went along with a whole block
of ideas, but found the band in another rare unified mood as they all simultaneously
chose the same image before going back to work - even though all four admitted
later they weren't sure if the public would 'get' the design. It's clearly one
of Hipgnosis' best and now one of the most famous images in the world - and yet
what's interesting in retrospect is how little it has to do with any of the
album's themes (madness, paranoia, travel, mortality, money) or even the more
obvious design of the 'heartbeat' incorporated into the inner gatefold sleeve.
Like many a Hipgnosis sleeve though, it's hard now to imagine the record coming
with any other picture - the two go together so well nowadays.
Not that the praise for 'Dark Side' belongs to any
one individual. We've so far referred to Roger most across this album because
he is, for the first time, the band's sole lyricist across the album and most
of the ideas are his (only three tracks don't bear his name and he's said to
have had more than a hand in both the collage style 'Speak To Me' - 'a gift' to
Nick who was getting less credits than the others - and the instrumental 'Any
Colour You Like'). However this is the one Floyd record where everyone shines
more or less equally. By now Roger has grown to think of David Gilmour as less
of a rival and more of an interpreter, handing all of 'his' songs except the
album finale over to his colleague to sing. Gilmour is a variable singer, but
when he understands and believes in the material, as here, he is a truly gifted
vocalist adding a warmth that Roger's more acerbic vocals could never hope to
add (it's interesting, actually, that he wasn't given the communal singalong
'Eclipse' to sing as well, though only Roger could have performed the slyer
'Brain Damage' I suspect; 'Money' too feels more like a 'Roger' song though
Gilmour sings it with just the right shoulder shrug here). 'Breathe' 'Time' and
'Us and Them' all reflect David's best work and though he admitted later he
helped shape rather than create the songs (adding the sudden switch to 4/4 that
makes 'Money' work so well for instance) he still picks up four album credits.
Rick gets his last real hurrahs with the band until 1994, adding some gorgeous
harmonies across the album and, unusually, the harder heavier part on 'Time'
and 'Us and Them' (as if to say when even the gentle Rick's been riled by
something happening in the world then you know it's serious!) The most
'emotional' of the three Floyd composers, his two main songs for the album
('Great Gig' and 'Us and Them') are also the two most beautiful, sad and weary
reflections on the cruelty of the world which makes for a great foil to Waters'
intelligence and Gilmour's melody. Nick, credited with at least the idea of the
opening sound collage, also raises his game for this album by adapting his
style to so many different genres and playing with around 90% of the intensity
of before (which is still pretty intense but not quite so central to the
arrangements - a hard thing to pull off). You have to be a great drummer to
pull off the switch in tempo in the middle of 'Money' convincingly, never mind the
semi-improvised chaos of 'Any Colour You Like'.
In other words, this is the best Pink Floyd band
album - because it's the only real Pink Floyd band recording (that isn't a film
soundtrack album anyway). Rather than competing for the lead role spot after
the loss of Syd Barrett things have calmed down in the Floyd universe so they
can each get along with bringing their own particular style to the table:
Roger's lyrics, Rick's melodies, Nick's drumming and Dave's singing make for a
very powerful recipe which is never heard across such an extended run of songs
again. Usually I have a real disliking for majorly successful albums: 'Pet
Sounds' for instance is a let-down sandwiched between 'Beach Boys Today' and
'Smile', 'Imagine' and 'Band On The Run' are only two of many similarly great
Lennon/McCartney records no better or worse than the rest and even this album's
sequel 'Wish You Were Here' is only half a masterpiece, not the single greatest
album ever released by mankind as so many people seem to think. It's also worth
pointing out that even this album isn't perfect: more could have been made of
the 'Speak To Me' opening which teases with so many bits to come but doesn't
really excite, 'On The Run' feels out of place with the rest of the album and
sounds like a weak digital copy of the gloriously 'real' paranoia instrumental
'Careful With That Axe Eugene', while three instrumentals compared to only six
actual 'songs' doesn't feel like quite enough somehow. There are individual
twenty minute 'sides' of other Pink Floyd albums I prefer more than either of
these: the pastoral beauty of nature and breakfast that is side two of 'Atom
Heart Mother', side three of 'The Wall' for instance (the one packed with all
the 'humane' songs like 'Hey You' 'Is There Anybody Out There?' 'Nobody Home'
and 'Comfortably Numb') and the entire side-long 'Echoes' from 1971's 'Meddle',
which sounds like the entire theme of 'Dark Side' squashed into a single song
and inflated again with one of the greatest instrumental workouts in the AAA
lexicon ('Any Colour You Like', though still strong, just isn't quite as
inspired by comparison). However 'Dark Side' isn't one of those records that
simply gets lucky mirroring a time or place so well (I'm looking at you
'Graceland'!), which had a lucky hit single everyone had to buy before they
realised the album wasn't much cop ('Thriller') or appealed to the single
lowest common denominator as a means of fooling people into parting with their
cash (every Spice Girls record ever!) It's also an album that's daring, that's
inventive, that isn't afraid to make mistakes - but then for the most part
doesn't make them anyway. Unlike some other million sellers, Dark Side feels
most of all as if it still tells 'the truth' and all the pretty bits that go on
in between merely help tell the story of what's left unsaid on the spaces
between.
No other Floyd record feels quite as important as
'Dark Side', which is one of the few records around that ticks all the boxes:
originality, commerciality, the songs, the recording, the production, the
musicianship, the ideas and the cover, all in one neat little package. 'Dark
Side' sounds like an album that a band went through hell to make - that it came
together only after dark nights of the soul and un-negotiable schisms. Actually
part of its brilliance is that 'Dark Side' is the only Floyd album to have all
the band members - and designers and engineers - pointing the same way,
prepared to find unity on an album that everyone, even Roger, can be agreed is
bigger than all of them. 'Dark Side' may be named after a celestial body, but
it's one of the greatest albums ever
made about what it really means to share a world together, suffused with just
enough emotion, rock songs, ground-breaking effects and long-lasting images to
prevent it from seeming like a dull school lesson. It's 99% of the way to
making the perfect record about what it means to be human (which is The Beach
Boys' 'Smile', by the way, in case you're asking) - which of course means that
it's perfect, because of course the perfect record about humanity could never
be perfect. There is no one factor for the success of 'Dark Side Of The Moon'
really - as a matter of fact it's all dark (and serious), but what makes it
light is one of the greatest productions and some of the greatest uplifting
arrangements of the Floyd canon.
'Speak To Me' is a minute long collage of sound
effects that will go on to play a future role on this album ('Money' cash
registers, ticking clocks from 'Time', the screams from 'Great Gig In The Sky',
the synths from 'On The Run' and Jerry Driscoll's 'dark side' comments) heard
over a simple heartbeat thud, slower and closer to the natural human heartbeat
tempo than the one from 'Heartbeat Pigmeat'. It's an ear-catching scene setter
that's like one of those 'coming soon...' trailers they so love on TV nowadays
though it would have been quite inventive at the time and sets up the album better
than simply leaping headlong into the opening track would have been. Decided on
more or less from the first when the album was discussed, the official credits
credit this song to Nick Mason, though one of the first things Roger did after
the 1980s Floyd fall-out was reclaiming this track as his own idea claiming it
was 'a gift' he could afford to give away with so many other credits on the
album and that he 'regretted it' later when Nick stuck by Dave in the Floyd
wars. Some CDs index this as the 'same' track as 'Breathe'...
Of course, it can't last. In one of the better
segues on this album, the slow sleepy chords of 'Breathe' try to fall back on
the relaxing final ponderous note but is instead rudely awakened by what must
by 1973 standards have been the distinctly alien and futuristic sounding
synthesiser of 'On The Run'. You can see Roger playing around with this on the
'Live At Pompeii' concert film where he's clearly close to creating the backing
track but his main synthesiser bleeps are louder, 'carrying' the tune more
conventionally than the final version, which is more of a cue for sound
effects, spoken word, manic laughter and Gilmour's screeching guitar. Though
the Floyd have used similar technology before
(the concept of machines playing music is already closely related enough
to the band for them to be asked about in 'Pompeii', much to Roger's obvious
disgust) and have done paranoid before, they'd never done it quite like this.
'Eugene' and it's variants are creepy precisely because they're so slow your
head is always playing with what comes 'next', but on this far more modern song
you just can't keep up - there's a manic Mason drumbeat that's relentless
(there's a case to be made this track invents the whole 1980s-1990 style of
digital drum backings, but I won't hold that against the song) and so much
going on to catch the ear, like being stuck on a bucking bronco that just won't
let go. Usually this song is said to refer to the fear of accidents while travelling
- lots of rock bands, including some AAA ones, had accidents in the back of
group vans travelling to and from gigs and back then travelling up and down the
country and though nothing did ever happen to the Floyd they'd have worked with
roadies and socialised with people from other bands who had. The opening tannoy
dialogue in the distance, made deliberately hard to hear although the mode of
transport does seem to be travelling from 'Los Angeles', sounds like some high
and mighty voice compelling the hapless narrator onwards to his death, while
his fast footsteps and heavy breathing suggest he's late for departure. I'm
convinced, though, from the title alone that Roger (the song's chief creator,
though Dave gets a credit too) also had the good old fashioned Floyd subject of
paranoia in mind here, with the feeling not so much that you're about to miss
something about to leave so much as that there's something behind you about to
get you if you stop. In that sense 'On The Run' fits the album's theme of
people trying to disrupt what your life should be with a list of rules and
instructions, but otherwise it has to be said that this track doesn't really
fit the rest of the album. Claustrophobic in the extreme, it's hard to know
what to make of 'On The Run' because there's never been another track like it -
'Welcome To The Machine' on next album 'Wish You Were Here' uses much of the
same technology but to create an actual 'song' - this is one of those filler
Floyd instrumentals, but played on such ground breaking technology that it
still sounds like a 'big' statement even now. Once a piece of music that people
proudly showed off their new stereos too, by the 1990s it had become a song set
to footage of a giant flying bed that crashed into flames on stage for 'real'
by the end of the song. Here the whole song is genuinely scary rather than an
advert for Ikea gone wrong, with the final crash into smoke and carnage rolling
on into several fireballs if you turn the fade of the song up loudly enough
(warning: the opening chimes of next song 'Time', recorded in a genuine shop
selling genuine clocks by Alan Parsons as a stereo 'test' project long before
working on the album, will blow your ears off if you're not quick enough to put
the levels back to 'normal' again!)
'Time' is one of the truly great songs on the album,
the closest thing to a full Floyd collaboration that's an actual 'song' rather
than a piece of film soundtrack fodder. All the band excel here. Nick's opening
roto-tom drum riff (already used on 'Childhood's End' from last LP 'Obscured By
Clouds' but working even better here) is immediately compelling, as are his
scattered improvised tom toms over the top, the sound of a man desperately
trying to break loose his bonds and do things his way. The song spends a full
2:20 here, which is shockingly daring for an album considered as mainstream as
'Dark Side' and would have fallen apart badly had the five minute song that
follows been disappointing. But it isn't: Roger's words are among his greatest
of all, conveying his realisation at the fact that human beings only have a
limited space to do everything they need to do and his frustration that he's
wasted and been made to waste so much time doing such mundane things.
Remembering life before the Floyd, Roger recalls years 'waiting for something
or someone to show you the way' - a common thought for anyone whose ever been
through the British schooling system, where you're told what to think and what
to do for so long you've rather forgotten how to think for yourself. In 'Time'
Roger sees a world of people like himself, stuck 'kicking around on a piece of
ground in your home town', sure there's something worth reaching out for, but
not sure where to find it. Later lines about how 'no one told you when to run -
you missed the starting gun' suggest that he's learnt sadly and eventually that
there is no one to tell him how to live his life or steer it in anyway, because
there's no one else on this planet except fellow human beings, none of whom
have a clue. The song is urgent and blistering, Gilmour excelling with a rough
vocal just the right side of gritty, while his guitar solo is immense, fat and
heavy with unspoken feelings and the equal even of his more celebrated solo on
'Comfortably Numb'. Rick, too, excels as the yin to David's yang, his gorgeous
voice perfect for lines about 'lying supine in the sunshine' and trying to live
out the advice given to us on 'Breathe', of ignoring pressures and simply
enjoying life. Only this method doesn't work either: 'One day you find ten
years have got behind you...', gone in the blink of an eye, never to return.
'Time' spends the whole song flitting between these two extremes but can't find
a way out, the narrator realising that all he's got for his extra years is a
body 'shorter of breath - and one day closer to death!' The last verse has
rightly become celebrated as one of Roger's best: Rick sings of 'hanging on in
quiet desperation being the English way', a line actually modified from American poet Henry David
Thoreau and 'Anglicised', is the perfect line for the Floyd (while the Kinks
were the most English-orientated of AAA bands in terms of subject matter, the
Floyd are closest to the basic English character which often bleeds into their
songs). Roger also mocks himself with a line about how his great ideas 'either
come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines', before the song comes to a
sad climax that life doesn't last forever: 'The time has gone, the song is
over, thought I'd something more to say...'
Only the song isn't quite finished yet, slotting
back cleverly into 'Breathe' for a track that's become known to fans as
'Breathe (Reprise)' although most releases list it as part of 'Time' still. A
weary Gilmour finds himself home again, his responsibilities and duties out the
way and preparing to finally crack on with what he should be doing with his
life. Only, well, the fire's so cosy and he's so tired...The song's true end,
though is peculiar and the one aspect of it that's never worked for me. Gilmour
hears in the distance an 'iron bell' calling 'the faithful to their
knees'...Originally Dark Side was meant to veer into a song about religion Rick
was due to write but which ended up instead a song about death. Was the segue
originally meant to lead on into the religious track? If so, then it still
would have been the clunkiest segue on an otherwise perfectly crafted album -
as it is the last four lines of this song appear to belong to a different song
entirely.
Though we talked in our opening about how easily
this album came together, the one exception is Rick's 'The Great Gig In The
Sky'. Early concerts reveal a hammy gospel style track that's accompanied by a
religious sermon by Malcolm Muggeridge - the sort of thing the old Floyd would
have treated as a joke but played so 'straight' that you half wonder if they
believed it (the idea may have inspired Roger's wicked sense of humour on
'Animals', where the 'Lord Prayer' is modified into a bleating synthesiser
sheep praising the very beings about to send him to the slaughter). By the time
Rick started recording the song for the album he'd mercifully dropped the talk
and begun playing his beautifully expressive melody on the piano instead of the
organ, with the vague idea that the song now reminded him of 'death' (he said
later that he'd never have made the track so beautiful had he started with the
idea first; the band's own tour booklet began calling this 'The Mortality
Sequence' before someone - probably Rick himself - came up with the far better
title, which in a very Floyd way heavily hints at death without actually saying
it and turning it into a bit of a joke). There's no joke about the performance
though: Rick's gently flowing keyboard chords and the sudden full-on heavy
rocking of the second section sound like the most solemn and serious thing the
band ever did, a million miles away from flying pugs and psychedelic
breakfasts. The song still didn't sound complete though, especially compared to
the others around it, so the band played around with a few ideas, including
bringing in session singer Clare Torry. A friend of Alan Parsons, who'd worked
on a few of his other projects, he recommended her to the band after hearing
her cover The Doors' 'Light My Fire' - only they weren't entirely clear what to
do with her. Telling her the song was about death and asking her to improvise
whatever came into her head, the band simply handed her a pair of headphones
and retreated to the control room. Unknown to them, Torry had recently lost a
pet and decided to replay the sad scene in her mind, remembering the sudden
awful moment of grief and turning it into cathartic wailing before sinking into
the sad reflective afterglow of acceptance. Amazingly she only ever did two
takes, giving up early on a third when she thought she was repeating herself:
the finished product is a combination of the first two versions. Though some
have accused her vocals of being overblown (when Rick needed the money in a
hurry in the 1990s he okayed its use in the soundtrack of an advertisement for
headache tablets - presumably Yoko had already said 'no'), it's actually one of
the most striking moments of any Floyd album, slowly making its way to peak
shriek rather than doing what lesser artists (ie the Spice Girls) would do,
which is to fast-track right there. Torry's final wails as, energy spent, she
somehow finds the strength to carry on, is perfect in context of both track and
album and is so perfect it sounds as if it had been planned for years; many
fans still refuse to accept that Torry heard the track no more than once for
pre-planning and twice for recording; so well are her vocals tied in with
Rick's peaks and troughs that it sounds like she's been singing it all her
life. She's also perfect for the song - loud without being as shrill as lesser
gospel singers would be (Floyd songs are all too easy to go OTT over: even P P
Arnold's gorgeous voice struggles in Waters' band and she's one of the best out
there). How very Floyd, to overwhelmingly suggest grief and death without
actually coming out and saying it. The Floyd got very lucky here, although at
first they weren't at all sure if they'd got what they wanted (Torry was
convinced she'd blown it when she walked out the studio, with nothing more than
a standard session fee wage of £30 - she didn't even get a credit on the
original vinyl); although they got less lucky in the 1990s when Torry
successfully sued for a co-credit and an undisclosed sum. Many would say she
deserved more, though you have to wonder why it took thirty years for her to
bring the case to court. The use of spoken word, dribbled so far across the
album, also reach their peak here, especially Gerry Driscoll (the oldest person
interviewed for the album) says 'anytime will do, I don't mind' but says it in
such a way that you can't but help tell that he's afraid - very Floyd. The end
result is a moving track that, unlike most instrumentals (certainly most Floyd
instrumentals), perfectly expresses everything there is to say about a tricky
subject.
Over on side two, there's the green-fingered sound
of moolah, as money-bags Waters gives up the album's unusually high standard of
revealing autobiography for a song far more keeping with his usual cynicism. 'Money'
is generally heralded as the greatest moment on this album and it certainly
would be on most other albums with a lot about it to love. The inventive and pioneering use of sound
effects, for instance, which appeared as far back as Roger's sketchy demo when
this was a blues song (he made most of them himself, tearing up paper, throwing
coins into a pot and using an old cash register). This took an age to set up in
the studio, though, with each sound effect stuck on three second lengths of
tape and painstakingly measured, put together by hand and re-checked in the
days before computers to keep up the song's urgent rhythm. Gilmour, not for the
first or last time, takes a half-finished Waters song and makes it shine,
adding extra grunt and bullying weight to the sarcastic lyrics about living the
high life and being ignorant to everyone else (you really feel like screaming
'you mean he hasn't been listening to the first side of this album?!' to lines
like 'I'm alright Jack, keep your hands off of my stack'). The sudden switch
from this song's slightly comical 7/8 time (the demo was in an even more
unwieldy 7/4) into a full on rock swagger in 4/4 is also a majestic moment
(suggested by Gilmour and inspiring another of his all-time great solos, this
one double-tracked), turning a song about comedy into one of tragedy as the
song goes from being one about avarice and greed into denial and desperation.
However this is still perhaps the weakest of all the actual 'songs' that makes
up this album (as opposed to instrumentals), again slightly out of place here
as the one song on the album that's hiding things from face value by means of
comedy rather than a 'stiff upper lip'. The lyrics lake Roger's usual depth,
although they make more sense in the context of the original idea of this as an
updated 'blues' song about the comparative ease of modern day living (what a
modern day hashtag would call 'first world problems', which aren't actually
problems compared to our neighbours but are still blooming irritating). Oddly
Roger has always been proud of this lyric, even using it as the one the 'Pink'
character is writing in class in 'The Wall' film, horrified when the teacher
holds it up to ridicule. The song's waddled riff makes less sense in rock than
it does as blues (where it's more menacing than funny) and the overall track
outlasts its welcome long before the 6:23 running time is up (unusual for the
Floyd, who despite their longer-than-average lengths generally knew when to
quit and leave us waiting for more; putting the two longest tracks on the album
together - next track 'Us and Them' lasts for nearly eight unbalances the album
a little I feel too). Even if this is Roger's weakest song for a while, though,
the Floyd are still enough of a band to make the most out of it and the
arrangement, performance and production more than shine enough to make a so-so
song sound great (well apart from a ropey sax solo, but then to be fair to Dick
Parry it's meant to sound blooming awful). It's also the closest to this record
possessing a 'hit' song, with this track receiving lots of airplay despite its
length - lighter than most of the record, while still full of universal appeal,
you can see why it did well, although frankly anyone who still thinks this is
the album highlight over 'Breathe' 'Time' and 'Us and Them' isn't listening
properly.
No such qualms about 'Us and Them', however, which
is one of the most perfect songs ever written. The melody came first, Rick's
mournful piano lick senselessly rejected from the 'Zabriskie Point' soundtrack
(and thus the second 'recycled' song from this album) now finally restored to the
world via the Dark Side 'Immersion' box set. It's one of his best, full of
haunting chord progressions and melancholy, similar in feel to George
Harrison's 'All Things Must Pass' era ballads, sad that they know they don't
have the power to change the world but angry enough to give it a go anyway.
Roger, never one to dish out praise and especially to his polar opposite
bandmate, always loved the melody and it was probably his idea to revive the
song. Thinking back to his socialist upbringing, Roger tries to put into words
what his family drilled into him growing up but that nobody else around him
seems to believe: that all lives are equal, that all people are sacred and that
all wars are wrong. Realising in a bolt of inspiration that all wars and
conflicts are because of 'with [versus] without' (who can deny that's what the
fighting is all about?), Roger shames thousands of years of civilisation with a
song that's so simple it's profound. As usual when Roger gets most inspired, he
turns to his father as a code for living his life and again agonises over how
cheaply his life was thrown away by people unworthy of him for all their class
and stature: 'Forward they cried from the rear - and the front flank died!',
while he also depicts the boundaries of the map 'moving forward and back'
pointlessly, with more soldiers fallen along the way. His conclusion: 'In the
end it's only round and round' 'Us and Them' is more than just an anti-war song
though: it's about the divisions between all of us, of prejudice and fear. Even
the narrator marches past declaring 'out of my way, it's a busy day' as he
pushes a beggar away. The song's harrowing last words ring in our ears long
after the song is over: the man passes away of starvation soon after, 'for the
want of the price of tea and a slice' (which means 'cake' for those of you who
don't get the British reference - though Roger probably had Marie Antoinette's
famous 'let them eat cake' saying in mind too, summing up the pig ignorance of
the ruling classes about the lives of their citizens). Words and music together
make for a powerful combination, Rick's slowly unfolding subtlety bringing out
the best in Roger's usual bluntness and bringing him to new poetic heights,
while similarly Roger's new lyrics lead Rick to slightly modify his meandering
style with a sudden surge of emotion in the closest thing this peculiarly
structured song has to a chorus, the closest Wright ever came to bluntness.
Sung for the main part by Gilmour, who had no part in writing the song, is the
perfect singer for a song that calls for both detachment and sympathy, while
the extra echo added to his voice by Parsons in the mix is a masterstroke,
offering the sense of separation and distance. He's joined by Rick, again
acting against type, in the shorter, emotional and downright angry chorus
bursts which are truly heart-tugging - if even the laidback Floyd are getting
mean and nasty then this is clearly a subject worth us getting worked up about.
One of the best sax solos ever (and you'll know by now how much I usually hate
sax solos!) again by Dick Parry is the icing on the cake, played for authentic
emotion and hands-in-pockets ignorance rather than being flash or show-offy. A
truly towering achievement, 'Us and Them' is one of the greatest combinations of
words, music, arrangement, performance and production out there, hauntingly
beautiful and powerfully involving. Roger, Rick and Dave all excel themselves
here on one of the best examples of how much greater the Floyd were when they
all worked together like this. Only the least successful use of spoken word in
the middle (which is more about sudden violence than growing simmering hate as
per the lyrics) mar an otherwise perfect song - and then not badly. Clearly the
album highlight for me, even on a record packed with brilliance, never have the
Floyd sounded less like 'ordinary men'. Sadly though and unbelievably, this is
the last non-band credit Rick will get with the Floyd until as late as 1994 and
his last part approaching 'lead vocal' status until then too, as Roger fails to
heed his own lyric about respecting different ideas and temperaments and all
but forces his fellow co-founder out of the band.
The old man's dying breath gives way to the urgent
instrumental freak-out 'Any Colour You Like' - the last time any of the Floyd
will get a credit without Roger's name attached to something until 1987. The
song here closest in style to the 'old' Floyd, but played on the same
up-to-date-and-more technology as the rest of the album, this is a curious
piece that sounds as if started as a fierce improvised jamming session one day
on normal instruments (that's how the band usually played it live before the
album came out) before being carefully reconstructed into the more organised
piece we have here. Usually that's an awful idea - the whole point of jamming
sessions is the thrill of the unknown, something the Floyd knew better than
most (the period 'Pompeii' film reveals just how great their telepathy had
grown by 1973). However the excitement and energy is very much here as the band
finally stop playing around with heavy constructs and simply have a bit of fun.
The song starts as a Rick Wright masterclass as he shadows himself on a
delightful duel before passing the baton over to Dave's howling guitar,
accompanied as so often in the past by his wordless singing along. Suddenly
Dave splits himself in two as well, the two Gilmours bouncing ideas off each
other as they reach for a manic climax with Rick again coming in for the kill,
as Roger and Nick try to race each other to the finish (Mason, given so
comparatively little to do across the album, really comes into his own here).
Heard outside the context of the album it's a nifty little track that would
have fitted 'More' or especially 'Obscured By Clouds' well. However in context
you have to ask what this song is doing here, as it's the only one not related
to the album's theme of life pressures (although musically it is a little bit
like a faster paced, more urgent 'Breathe' so if you were feeling generous you
could make the link that this track is about having 'fun' and enjoying life
while you can, without rules). Some people have taken the song's title - half
of a Henry Ford quote describing his 'Model T' car design, which you could buy
'in any colour you like - so long as it's black' - as evidence that this track
is here to represent the evils of advertising or the lack of choice in the
world too, although those concepts sound a little underwhelming compared to
'money' 'time' and 'prejudice' to me. Roger also hinted later that he named the
song after memories of friends selling stuff in vain out of the back of vans
which always seemed to end with the line 'any colour you like - so long as it's
blue' - an in-joke he thought worked well for an album where every stark choice
faced by humanity seemed to be 'blue' ie depressing. Chances are the band were
laughing inwardly at the stark black cover they'd picked out for the album,
which so ran in the face of what record companies wanted in the era of glam
rock.
'Colour' finally comes to a breathless full stop on
the first pinging Rickenbacker notes of 'Brain Damage'. The song on the album
most overtly about Syd, Roger comes up with a moving tribute to his old
friends, 'remembering daisy chains and laughs' the same way his 21-year-old
companion once mourned for childhood. Most of the lyrics of this song fear
ending up in the same place ('The Wall' takes this concept even further,
blurring the lines between Roger and Syd), but for now Roger is content to keep
the 'lunatic' at arm's length, describing him in the third person, but with
affection. The opening line 'the lunatic is on the grass' is often taken as a
simple joke about drugs, but Roger probably also had in mind the idea of
breaking rules and putting up with the consequences in a society based on law
and order: it's a long standing joke that petty English bureaucrats try to curb
childish games with signs reading 'keep off the grass' in public parks, though
in my experience most people ignore them anyway (this isn't private property
after all but meant to be there for the public to use!) There's a famous
Beatles photo of 1966 where they makes the same comment, knowingly smoking next
to a 'Keep Off The Grass' sign, which is such a 1960s versus society idea
there's a glorious full university thesis on it out on the net somewhere, well
worth reading (and no before you ask I didn't write it, though I surely would
have done if I'd been clever enough to think of it - my university thesis was
on The Monkees in relation to postmodernism!) Anyway, each progressive verse
takes Roger further to the brink of madness. Many take the second verse, of
'loonies; landing on Roger's hall, as the pressure of bills but I think its
newspapers full of conniving politicians and air-headed celebrities telling us
what we should be doing with our lives, but always coming too thick and fast to
keep up with ('And everyday the paperboy brings more'). Figuring that 'there is
no room upon the hill' - ie with the elite - for all of us, Roger admits that
his head is about to explode with frustration and by now ours probably is,
promising to meet us on 'the dark side of the moon' - where madness is normal.
By the last verse 'the lunatic is in my head', Roger imagining a Syd-style
devolution where 'there's someone in my head - but it's not me'. While everyone
assumed Syd was simply an acid casualty, Roger's always been more open than
that, remembering that his friend was always slightly mad and paid the cost for
being naturally outrageous, something he could no more change than he could his
breathing. Here it's the pressures of modern conventional living that get to
his friend and, like 'If', he admits to being a former bad friend afraid of
what he was seeing but realising what his friend went through and wanting to empathise
with him now he's understood what he went through. The closing line about
ending up in madness 'when the band you're in starts playing different tunes'
was clearly meant as an apology to Syd, but soon became a brickbat passed
between the Floyd when the 1980s split comes. Another fine Waters song, which
makes a lot more sense when you realise his back story as possibly Syd's
biggest friend, this is another great song, though simpler and working at less
levels than much of the album (Rick, for instance, was said to hate it and
called it the album's 'weak link'), but wouldn't have worked the way the band
intended as the album's final crowning glory.
Instead that's 'Eclipse', the last song to slot into
place and acting as a more musical summary of the album than 'Speak To Me'. A
two minute variation on 'Brain damage' but without the insistent beat and sense
of melancholy, this is instead Roger trying to make sense of everything he's
recently come to realise in his life about the way some lives turn out the way
they do. Written at short notice when the band agreed their 'piece for assorted
lunatics' needed a stronger ending (it wasn't in the first eight performances),
it returns to his favourite default setting of writing lists rather than
lyrics, but it's a good list that really builds to a climax at the end of the
two minutes. It's effectively the bricks from 'The Wall' all built together,
with everything we've ever seen, heard, read, tasted, felt or loved leading us
up to the point when madness comes 'and the sun is eclipsed by the moon'. Syd's
clearly uppermost in Roger's mind again, the 'sun' in 1967 shining brighter
than anyone, 'eclipsed by the moon' of darkness. However instead of being a sad
song, this is a dementedly happy one: Syd's become his 'true' state (at least
in Roger's imagination - sadly this probably wasn't the case given the tales of
a reclusive and lonely life that have come out since his death in 2006) and far
from feeling 'wrong' suddenly everything is 'in tune'. Madness means no longer
caring what anyone thinks of you and being 'free' from all the pressures of
earning a living, risking death by travelling, worrying about your future or
being open to prejudiced ideas. Building up to a swelling throbbing climax,
gloriously captured by Rick's sun-gazing Hammond organ that peaks at just the
right moment, this is the Floyd's most unified and most joyful singalong, even
if in typically Floyd fashion it's actually a lot darker than everyone
realises.
Overall, then, 'Dark Side' isn't perfect, but is more
than worthy of the mantle of being in most top ten 'best albums' lists. Unlike
most other AAA records that always make it ('Pet Sounds' 'Sgt Peppers' 'Abbey
Road') this record offers up themes and ideas that no other record has ever
attempted and manages to sound like a rewarding listening experience whether
you've heard it a million times or once. While I don't quite buy the usual line
that this was the first prog rock album for the heart as well as the brain (the
Moody Blues got there first), this is certainly one of the more 'complete'
records out there which mixes the traditional methods of storytelling (poetic
lyrics, warm melodies), with contemporary sounds (this is Pink Floyd at their
most traditional as a 'rock band' for such an extended period of time) and
quite a bit that's daring and of the future - even now (the spoken words and
the artificial faceless robots of 'On The Run'). It's an album where the band
pull together to use each other's strengths and by and large the extra planning
and knocking songs into shape excises the usual Floyd weakness of meandering
and becoming self-indulgent. 'Dark Side' is streamlined and edited more than
any other Floyd album thanks to months on the road and months more in the
studio perfecting this record, but it's time well spent: there are other Floyd
records that have moments the equal of this album and in the case of a few
tracks are superior, but none keep it up for quite so long or with such a
clever overall theme stringing the whole thing together. Though I still rate
'Piper' as a greater album (that one's all inventive, sparking with life and
ideas with enough moments to last most bands a career- 'Moon' is that bit more
serious and keen to tell us what to think when it wants us to think), 'Moon' is
a lot of people's favourite for lots of very good reasons, the moment when the
band's stars really were in alignment and everything came together seamlessly,
by Floyd standards easily and quickly. If anyone had told the public the day
before the album's release that this strong-selling but still kind of cult band
were going to change the record market with an album about madness containing
three instrumentals and a sound collage, without any hit singles, they might
have considered you mad yourself. Hearing this record, though, is another
matter entirely, with everything so carefully made and yet still fizzing with
life and full of pearls of wisdom, this album couldn't be anything but a big
seller. The real question the band should have been asking themselves isn't
'will this work?' but 'how the hell are we ever going to follow this up?' Which
is, of course, another question for another day...
A Now Complete List Of Pink Floyd and Related Articles To
Read At Alan’s Album Archives:
'Piper At The Gates Of Dawn' (1967) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-13-pink-floyd-piper-at-gates-of.html
'A Saucerful Of Secrets' (1968) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/news-views-and-music-issue-118-pink.html
'More' (1969) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/pink-floyd-more-1969.html
'Ummagumma' (1969) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/news-views-and-music-issue-90-pink.html
'Atom Heart Mother' (1970) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/01/news-views-and-music-issue-18-pink.html
'The Madcap Laughs' (Barratt) (1970) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/news-views-and-music-issue-101-syd.html
'Meddle' (1971) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-50-pink-floyd-meddle-1971.html
'Ummagumma' (1969) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/news-views-and-music-issue-90-pink.html
'Atom Heart Mother' (1970) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/01/news-views-and-music-issue-18-pink.html
'The Madcap Laughs' (Barratt) (1970) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/news-views-and-music-issue-101-syd.html
'Meddle' (1971) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-50-pink-floyd-meddle-1971.html
‘Obscured By Clouds’ (1972)
http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/pink-floyd-obscured-by-clouds-1972_3681.html
'Dark Side Of The Moon'
(1973) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/pink-floyd-dark-side-of-moon-1973.html
‘Wish You Were Here’
(1975) https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/pink-floyd-wish-you-were-here-1975.html
‘Animals’ (1977) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/pink-floyd-animals-1977.html
'The Wall' (1980) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-76-pink-floyd-wall-1979.html
‘Animals’ (1977) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/pink-floyd-animals-1977.html
'The Wall' (1980) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-76-pink-floyd-wall-1979.html
'The Final Cut' (1983) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/pink-floyd-final-cut-1983.html
'A Momentary Lapse Of
Reason' (1987) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2013/12/pink-floyd-momentary-lapse-of-reason.html
'Amused To Death' (Waters) (1992) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-96-roger-watters-amused-to-death.html
'Amused To Death' (Waters) (1992) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-96-roger-watters-amused-to-death.html
'The Division Bell' (1994)
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/news-views-and-music-issue-47-pink.html
'Immersion' Box Sets (Dark Side Of The Moon, Wish You Were Here and The Wall) (2011/2012) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/news-views-and-music-issue-144-pink.html
Rick Wright Obituary and Tribute: http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008_09_07_archive.html
'Immersion' Box Sets (Dark Side Of The Moon, Wish You Were Here and The Wall) (2011/2012) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/news-views-and-music-issue-144-pink.html
Rick Wright Obituary and Tribute: http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008_09_07_archive.html
The Best Unreleased Pink
Floyd Recordings http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/the-best-unreleased-pink-floyd-songs.html
Surviving TV
Clips 1965-2014 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/10/pink-floyd-surviving-tv-clipsfilm.html
Non-Album Songs
1966-2000 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/10/pink-floyd-non-album-songs-1966-2009.html
Live/Solo/Compilation
Albums Part One 1965-1978 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/10/pink-floyd-livesolocompilation-albums.html
Live/Solo/Compilation
Albums Part Two 1980-1989 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/10/pink-floyd-livesolocompilation-albums_31.html
Live/Solo/Compilation Albums Part Three 1990-2015 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/11/pink-floyd-livesolocompilation-albums.html
Landmark Concerts and Key Cover Versions http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/06/pink-floyd-landmark-concerts-and-key.html
Live/Solo/Compilation Albums Part Three 1990-2015 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/11/pink-floyd-livesolocompilation-albums.html
Landmark Concerts and Key Cover Versions http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/06/pink-floyd-landmark-concerts-and-key.html
Essay: Why Absence Makes
The Sales Grow Stronger http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/05/pink-floyd-essay-why-absence-makes.html
