The Forever Intriguing Dark Side of the Moon

How could we have made a 1973 edition without mentioning the colossus in rock music that is Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon? Often a fan favourite, the 10-song album hasn’t aged a bit since its release in March of ’73. In this memory-filled piece, Tatiana Rijks tells us about the history of a record that’s gone down in history as legendary, as well as her own story with it, two generations after it first hit the charts.

A trip at the Polish coast with my family and the colourful streets of Gdansk were packed with people and stalls. We had stumbled upon St Dominic’s Fair, it was pure luck. A 60-something-year-old man was standing in the shadow with some boxes full of old vinyl records. From one of them, I lifted a dark sleeve, a triangle sitting in the middle and a rainbow-like ray coming out of it. “First Canadian edition”, the man said. It went on to become the first record of my freshly-started collection that I had bought myself and not simply inherited. I was 16; the record, 43. It was Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon.

The Dark Side of the Moon sure feels like a staple of music any dedicated record collector should own. Coming third to Michael Jackson’s Thriller and ACDC’s Back in Black as one of the best-selling albums of all time, Pink Floyd’s LP holds the title for longest time spent on the Billboard 200 charts with 942 weeks, of those 736 consecutive ones from its release in 1973 to 1988. Often considered as a turning point in modern music, it was chosen to be a part of the preserved sound recordings deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” by the Library of Congress in 2013. But the cover art for the album — designed by Hipgnosis and Storm Thorgerson and drawn by George Hardie — remains just as iconic. A part of me is convinced not one high school physics lesson on refracting light has passed without a student noting the familiar prism motif since the album has launched.

THE UNFORGETTABLE COVER DESIGN OF THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

The making process of The Dark Side of the Moon began in 1971, as Pink Floyd prepared to tour internationally and were considering adding new tracks to the setlist. The album was therefore already being played throughout the 1972 live performances of the quartet, an opportunity to fine-tune the album before the recording. The latter took place at the legendary Abbey Road studios with multitalented, then only engineer Alan Parsons.

Conceived not as a mere compilation of songs but as a cohesive suite, the titles composing Dark Side of the Moon bleed into one another. The record was built as their first actual conceptual album and centered around the tragic aspects of modern life that make people fall into insanity. Running after money and life passing you by. Life and death. Money and conflict.

The interpretations on the metaphor of the Dark Side of the Moon differ: is the hidden side an eerie, mysterious and mentally dark place? Historically, it was believed that the Moon influenced diseases, including mental illnesses. Even Greek ancients linked bipolarity to full moons.

The reference to the stellar body in Pink Floyd’s catalogue already traced back to a few years earlier: some of the titles — notably Money and Breathe — draw inspiration from an improvised session the band had given during the BBC broadcast coverage of the first Moon landing in ’69. Only this time, it rather evoked lunacy. Syd Barrett, a former member and founder of the band, had, in fact, been evicted from Pink Floyd in 1968 following his deteriorating mental state. The theme of insanity and a reference to Barrett figure through Brain Damage.

THE QUARTET AT THE TIME: RICHARD WRIGHT, DAVID GILMOUR, NICK MASON AND ROGER WATERS

The timelessness of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon might, at least partially, lie in the choice of topics, quite philosophical albeit put in a direct and clear manner. Topics that are still relevant today and lyrics — all written by Roger Waters — that briefly sum up living and dying, caring or not caring enough and regretting. The synthesis holds up so well to the test of time that I had decided on including some lines of Eclipse — typewritten with a defective typewriter which made the ink alternate between black and red — on the lower right side of my yearbook, a few months prior to leaving secondary school. Of course, it’s never too late to discover and enjoy the experience that is The Dark Side of the Moon, but adolescence now seems to me as the perfect time to get introduced to this recurring theme of the soundtrack that might make up one’s life and that will probably only get even more relatable as you age.

Your teenage years have now flown by, you’re leaving school and your naive and carefree approach to life starts crumbling. You’re faced with the regrets that accompany the end of an era, life starts speeding up. The realization that soon you’ll have to play the game by the rules to earn a living and that conflict is never-ending gradually hits you. Teenage angst has made you question the society you’ve grown in and now you’re wondering what’s worse: trying to fit in despite feeling like the world has gone crazy or being treated as a madman and risking actually becoming insane by trying to escape the fate that’s been designed for you? And then you hear Roger Waters’ words and it just sums everything up so perfectly. And you relate to them. And 20 years from now, you’ll still find them relatable.

It had been a while since I had last listened to the Dark Side of the Moon front-to-back and, as I was writing this article, I thought there was nothing better to ignite inspiration than exactly that. I suddenly remembered evenings spent sitting at my desk, listening to this specific album rotating on the record player. I remembered how it made me feel: as if I was floating just a bit above myself, just a bit above reality. Discovering the wonders of experimental music and finding the use of mundane and less mundane sounds — coins clinking! ringing alarms! synths! — absolute genius. With the Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd managed to set an ambiance so well that it takes you on a trip beyond the limits of the perception of your existence as you know it. Maybe the Moon you’re exploring the dark side of is only your consciousness. And maybe, for 43 minutes and 9 seconds, Pink Floyd has made you experience being a bit of a lunatic, too.

Discover Pink Floyd’s live performance of the Dark Side of the Moon album here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H IGuTCY-- xc&ab_channel=HDPinkFloyd