Dark Side of the Moon at 50
Some personal thoughts on the 50th anniversary of the greatest rock album ever
My favourite band is Pink Floyd. Though I was only introduced to the band in my 20’s, they quickly became a regular fixture in my musical rotation. Over time I started noticing that Pink Floyd was becoming special to me. Unlike many folks who were immediately mesmerized by the Floyd sound, it took a while for the tunes to really take on a deeper meaning and resonance. But once the music (and, in some cases, the lyrics) found their way into my soul, there was no going back.
Like many Floyd fans, my introduction to the band was their 1973 magnum opus, ‘Dark Side of the Moon.’ While nobody has asked for another middle aged white dude to wax poetic about Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side of the Moon,’ this is my blog, and I can do whatever I want with it ☺️
Sections: Us and Them / Money / Time
Before I get to some of my favourite tracks, I want to note that Pink Floyd’s entire œuvre, at least through ‘The Wall,’ were innovative for their time. They took musical risks, incorporating electronic sounds, recorded voices, and everyday noises into standard rock-and-roll instrumentation in ways that had never been done before. Coming to the music as an adult, having grown up in the ‘90s in a religious home that prohibited secular music, I had very little knowledge about the history of rock music. This is one of the reasons why the music grew on me over time, rather than hitting me with its brilliance on the first listen - the first few times I listened to the album, it almost felt like awkward sounds and drawn-out music. It was only after I learned more about how the album came together, including the splicing together of electronic sounds and recorded voices into the music, that I began to realize just how incredible the album actually is.
I don’t want to spend a lot of time saying things that others have already said, so let me just get to my favourite tracks on the album, and share a little bit about why they mean so much to me.
Us and Them
Let me start by saying that a key theme on Dark Side of the Moon was the experience, fears, and challenges of end-of-life. While themes of death have long since fascinated me (hello, metalhead here!), what it means to die has become much more potent for me in the years since my health crisis. But death doesn’t only come at the hands of disease, it frequently comes because humans insist on inflicting it on others that they very often know little about. The song “Us and Them” was written with the Vietnam War in mind, the senselessness of sending soldiers to their deaths. A jazzy flow carries the song, which slowly crescendos, coming down again before once again carrying the listener into “Any Colour You Like” with great emotion.
Money
For my second of three songs, I’m going to highlight one of the album’s mega-hits, “Money,” which is easily recognizable by the cash register sounds at the beginning of the song. While I have my problems with 21st century Rogers Waters, there’s no denying that 1970s Roger Waters, the primary writer of “Money,” was a very astute gentleman. As he continues to do in the three subsequent albums, “Money” is a dig at the seductiveness of wealth and status in a society where many people where being left behind. While Thatcherism in Britain was just around the corner, Waters was watching as working class Britons were losing out to exploitative industry owners, increasingly supported by the government. Throughout all of this the Vietnam War was on-going, the Cold War was raging, and rock stars were getting rich. With the late 1960’s and early 1970’s being the hey-day of British rock, psychedelia, and early heavy metal, there was a lot of pressure on rock and roll musicians not just to play music, but also to be commercially successful.
Living in 2023, there is very little chance that the average person will become rich, myself included. Unfortunately capitalism continues to peddle the lie that if we just work hard enough, and think of ourselves merely as temporarily embarrassed millionaires, we can all become very rich. The reality is that the same slippery tentacles that afflicted Rogers Waters and his bandmates in 1973 continue to afflict all of us today.
Time
The ringing clocks at the start of this song, recorded by audio engineer Alan Parsons as a test of the then-brand new quadraphonic audio system, always startle me. They always make me sit up, wherever I am, stop whatever I was doing, and just listen. Then the continuous tick-tock-tick-tock which undergirds the first bars of the song kicks in, and the slow, dulcet tones underlaid with a complex tom-tom take over the musical entrance. Then the kick of the drums, and David Gilmour’s voice takes over:
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way
Time is, by far, by favourite song on the album. It stands out musically, yes, but lyrically it is sublime. As I said at the outset, the theme of death is a favourite of mine. What makes “Time” so poignant is that it pairs death with life in such a way as to make you reflect not only on what you are doing with your life, but who you are becoming as you age. The band’s nonchalant musings about the banality of life’s day-to-day routines, while tying them in to the jarring finality of The End has always been fascinating to me.
And you run, and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again.The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death
Indeed, I can identify with it in so many ways - as a largely bedridden disabled person, I don’t have a lot of opportunities to ‘do big things with my life.’ The days of running for political office are behind me now, they are not in front of me. I spend my days reading, alternating between academic papers in philosophy that are interesting to me, and other non-fiction material, always trying to learn something new. I also spend them building relationships with people who are important to me, whether that be my wife, or my close friends. As I get older I recognize the importance of maintaining close friendships, and of ‘hanging out’ with people who mean something to me. And while it might sound depressingly boring to some, I like my new life.
Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say
If, one day, you see me with a tattoo that contains or alludes to some of the above lyrics, you should not be surprised.
All FREE subscribers have access to Dinner Table Digests, and to any past content that has been pulled from behind Peter’s Support (Pay)Wall.
Content behind the paywall will include Special Edition Digests, rough drafts of essays, shorter, more personal essays, and acerbic social commentary.
Thank you so much for supporting my writing, with your eyeballs, your time, and your $5 bills. I am deeply grateful, and I appreciate any feedback you might have. Please feel free you leave a comment below, or, if you’d like to connect with me directly, you can email me at peter(at)peterthurley(dot).ca. You can also connect with me on Facebook or on Twitter.