Deepening their music while sharpening their songwriting,
Pink Floyd in Dark Side of the Moon created a complex, luxurious album with
infinite space and depth. It was an immediate success, reaching number one on
the Billboard charts and peaking at number two in the U.K., but what was more striking was its longevity. Dark Side of the Moon found its space on the charts and then just stayed there, week after week - a total of 741
weeks to be precise. Dark Side is a staple on classic rock radio,
but it is also a rite of passage, an album passed down to our sons and daughters when they turn
to serious music (not to mention a t-shirt staple).

"Speak To Me" is the eerie opening
overture of the album. Its thumping heartbeat (in reality a heavily treated
bass drum) and layering of creepy-sounding interview tapes sets a haunting tone
for the record, before an emerging backwards piano chord reaches its crescendo
and propels into the solid, tranquil baseline of the record's
first proper song, "Breathe." Parsons commented, "For the intro sequence, 'Speak to Me' – we didn't have names for the songs
at the time and I am still not used to the titles — we called that 'The Intro
Sequence.' 'On the Run' was called 'The Travel Sequence.'"
Of the clocks on
Time, Parsons noted that this was "a recording I did for a sound effects record,
originally. It was done for a quadraphonic sound effects album. Nobody took
much interest in it. When I heard the clicking bass, I told them that I had
this recording of these clocks that would fit in. I played it to them, and they
loved it.
"I went into this clock shop — it was a little antique shop with lots of clocks in it — that was right down the street from Abbey Road. We got the shopkeeper to stop all of the clocks so I could record each one individually. I recorded each one individually, both ticking and chiming. We assembled a 16-track with each clock synchronized, so they all chimed at the same time."
"I went into this clock shop — it was a little antique shop with lots of clocks in it — that was right down the street from Abbey Road. We got the shopkeeper to stop all of the clocks so I could record each one individually. I recorded each one individually, both ticking and chiming. We assembled a 16-track with each clock synchronized, so they all chimed at the same time."
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Alan Parsons |
"It was I
that brought Clare into the studio. She had been doing vocals on sessions. She
was essentially a session singer. I told them to call Clare, as she was great.
I think she came into the studio the same day that we called her. She was
essentially unknown. She had a name in recording circles, because she did
jingles and that kind of stuff. She sang background sessions singing oohs and
ahhs with other girls on albums. I knew she was a really good solo singer, so I
told them to give her a try. She was given almost no direction at all. She put
a few of her own words in there … like, 'Oh, baby' or something like that. That
was the first take. Roger actually came in and said, 'No words. Just
ooh and ahh.' She tried twice more, and then we compiled a performance from
that." The beautiful vocal harmonies utilized the
often double-tracked vocals of Dave Gilmour and Richard Wright which allowed
them to combine two individually distinct harmony parts and layer them
together. At the time this vocal texturing was still an extraordinarily
innovative technique.
When asked about Money he
said, "We had to assemble a loop that worked, timing-wise, for
all of those different sounds. The only way to keep it in time was to take a
piece of tape with the sound on it and measure it with a ruler. You would take
the exact length of tape and then splice the next exact length of tape onto it.
We would make circular loop that was supported with microphone stands around
the machine, and we would roll the tape, and that was what the band played to." It was that kind of meticulous innovation that created the legacy that nearly 50 years later still sounds as good as in 1973.
Indeed, On March 10, 2004, "Eclipse" was used to wake the Mars
probe Opportunity. (It was not the first time Pink Floyd
had been played in outer space; Russian cosmonauts took and played an advance
copy of Delicate Sound of Thunder aboard Soyuz TM-7,
making it the first album played in space.) The song was also used at the finale of the 2012 Summer Olympics opening
ceremony in London called "And in the end," immediately following the lighting of the cauldron by seven young athletes. The song was played as a fireworks display took place
and images of famous Olympians was projected onto a screen, climaxing with a
view of the Olympic rings over the earth from a balloon launched at the
beginning of the ceremony. All that Wizard of Oz silliness pales in comparison.