The Dark Side of the Moon
The Dark Side of the Moon cover
The iconic refracting prism cover
Studio album by Pink Floyd
Released	March 17, 1973 (1973--)
Recorded	June 1972 – January 1973 at Abbey Road Studios in London, England
Genre	Progressive rock, psychedelic rock,[1] art rock, electronica, classic rock
Length	42:59
Label	Harvest, Capitol
Producer	Pink Floyd
Professional reviews
All Music Guide link Blender link Rolling Stone link
Pink Floyd chronology
Obscured by Clouds (1972) The Dark Side of the Moon (1973) A Nice Pair (1973)
Alternate covers
20th Anniversary cover
30th Anniversary SACD cover

The Dark Side of the Moon (titled in the 1993 CD release as Dark Side of the Moon, and often abbreviated as DSotM) is a concept album by the British progressive rock band Pink Floyd, released in 1973 and engineered by Alan Parsons. It is notable for its use of Musique concrète and philosophical lyrics, something that would eventually become a trademark of Pink Floyd's music. The album was a landmark in rock music, as it featured radio-friendly songs such as "Money", "Time", "Us and Them", and "Brain Damage/Eclipse". Some music critics use the album as a point of reference in determining between "classic" blues rock and the then-new genre of electronic music.^[2]

The Dark Side of the Moon explores the nature of the human experience. For example, "Time" deals with aging and the overwhelmingly fast approach of death. "Money" deals with materialism with tongue-in-cheek lyrics and wealth-related sound effects. "Us and Them" deals with conflict, ethnocentrism, and the belief that a person's self is "always in the right".^[3]

The Dark Side of the Moon is widely hailed by many critics and fans as Pink Floyd's magnum opus, and is generally considered their definitive album.^[4] In 2006 it was voted "My Favourite Album" by viewers and listeners to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.^[5] In 1990, Australian radio listeners voted it the best album to make love to,^[6] and in 2003, Rolling Stone heralded The Dark Side of the Moon as the 43rd greatest album of all time.^[7]

The Dark Side of the Moon spent 741 consecutive weeks on the USA-based Billboard 200 album chart, the longest duration in history.^[8] It is also the fifth highest selling album globally of all time, selling more than forty million units.^[9]

The only time there is a gap of silence on the whole album is between The Great Gig in the Sky and Money, where there is a side change on the LP; this pause was filled in with a barely audible transition by Alan Parsons for its CD release.

Recording

Recorded by the band and engineer Alan Parsons at Abbey Road Studios between June 1972 and January 1973, the album sessions made use of the most advanced techniques available for recording instruments and sound effects in rock music at that time. Along with the conventional rock band instrumentation, Pink Floyd added prominent synthesisers to their sound as well as some unconventional noises: an assistant engineer running around the studio's echo chamber (during "On the Run"), myriad antique clocks chiming simultaneously (as the intro to "Time"), and a specially-treated bass drum made to sound like a human heartbeat. The heartbeat is most audible as the intro and the outro to the album, but it can also be heard underneath most of the album—the song "Time" and "On the Run" has the low thudding underneath the rest. Roger Waters wrote all of the lyrics in the album and created the early demo tracks in a small garden shed-turned-recording studio at his home. It was in there he also created the intro to "Money" by experimenting with dropping a range of monetary objects.

Another novelty found on The Dark Side of the Moon is the metronomic sequence of sound effects played during "Speak to Me" and "Money." This was achieved by laboriously splicing together recordings of ringing cash registers, clinking coins, tearing paper, and buzzing counting machines onto a two-track tape loop (later adapted to four tracks in order to create a unique "walk around the room" effect in quadrophonic presentations of the album). Due to the sonic experimentation on the album, many songs on The Dark Side of the Moon (particularly "On the Run") required every member of the band to operate the faders simultaneously in order to mix down the intricately assembled multitrack recording.

Pink Floyd also perfected the use of other studio techniques such as the doubletracking of vocals and guitars (allowing David Gilmour to harmonise flawlessly with himself), flanging effects, odd trickery with reverb and the panning of sounds between channels. To this day, audiophiles use The Dark Side of the Moon as a reference standard to test the fidelity of audio equipment despite the fact that it was originally mixed from third-generation tape with Dolby noise reduction.^[10] Alan Parsons engineered the album while on staff at Abbey Road. He once said in an interview that he swapped shifts with colleagues in order to work on the whole project.^[11]

All four members of Pink Floyd, which included guitarist David Gilmour, drummer Nick Mason, bassist and lyricist Roger Waters, and keyboardist Richard Wright, had some form of participation in the writing and production of the album, which is a rarity among later Pink Floyd albums. However, it is the first of five consecutive Pink Floyd albums with lyrics completely credited to Roger Waters.

On most CD pressings, a barely-audible orchestral version of The Beatles' "Ticket to Ride" is audible after "Eclipse", playing very faintly over the heartbeats that close the album. It is unknown why this was included, but it may have been the consequence of a mastering error. The bootleg recording A Tree Full of Secrets includes an amplified, re-processed version of this oddity, which allows it to be heard clearly. This is not found on the original vinyls.

Although The Dark Side of the Moon was the planned title of the album, upon the discovery that the band Medicine Head was to release an album of the same name in 1972, the year prior to The Dark Side of the Moon's release, the band changed the album's title to "Eclipse: A Piece for Assorted Lunatics". However, the Medicine Head album flopped, so Pink Floyd was able to revert to the original title without trouble.

Voices

Clare Torry sang on "The Great Gig in the Sky". In 2004 she sued EMI and Pink Floyd for songwriting royalties, claiming that she co-wrote "The Great Gig in the Sky" with keyboardist Richard Wright. She was originally paid £30 for Sunday studio work. The High Court concluded that Torry was correct but the terms of the lawsuit have yet to be decided.^[12] On Pink Floyd's 2006 live DVD P*U*L*S*E, Torry is credited with the vocal composition for "The Great Gig in the Sky" segment.

Snippets of dialogue between and over songs are also featured on the recording. Roger Waters devised a method of interviewing people, whereby questions were printed on flashcards in sequential order and the subject's responses were recorded uninterrupted. The questions related to central themes of the album such as madness, violence, and death. Participants were commandeered from around Abbey Road, placed in the darkened studio in front of a microphone, and told to answer the questions in the order which they were presented. This provoked some surprising responses to subsequent questions. For example, the question "When was the last time you were violent?" was immediately followed by "Were you in the right?"^[13]

Recordings of road manager Roger "The Hat" Manifold were the only ones obtained through a conventional sit-down interview because the band members could not find him at the time and his responses (including "give 'em a quick, short, sharp shock..." and "live for today, gone tomorrow, that's me...") had to be taped later when the flashcards had been lost. Another roadie, Chris Adamson, was on tour with Pink Floyd at the time and recorded his explicit diatribe that opens the album ("I've been mad for fucking years, absolutely years, over the edge for yonks...").

Pink Floyd's executive road manager Peter Watts (father of actress Naomi Watts) contributed the repeated laughter during "Brain Damage" and "Speak to Me." The monologue about "geezers" who were "cruisin' for a bruisin'" and the often-misheard "I never said I was frightened of dying" (during the middle of "The Great Gig in the Sky") came from Peter's wife, Myfanwy Watts.

The responses "And I am not frightened of dying, any time will do I don't mind. Why should I be frightened of dying, there's no reason for it you've got to go some time" (during "The Great Gig in the Sky") and closing words "there is no dark side of the Moon really... as a matter of fact it's all dark" (over the "Eclipse" heartbeats) came from the Abbey Road Studios' Irish doorman at the time, Gerry Driscoll. Paul and Linda McCartney were also interviewed, but their answers were considered too cautious for inclusion. McCartney's bandmate Henry McCullough contributed the famous line "I don't know, I was really drunk at the time." (Apparently in answer to the question "Why does anyone do anything?", which immediately preceded it.)

LP packaging

The album was originally released in a gatefold LP sleeve bearing George Hardie's iconic refracting prism on the cover. Inside were two posters, one bearing pictures of the band in concert with the words PINK FLOYD broken up and scattered about, and the other being a slightly psychedelic image of the Great Pyramids of Giza taken on infrared film. Also included was a sheet of stickers of the pyramids. The album was also the first Pink Floyd album to have picture labels on the record where it depicted a blue prism with black background and the credits written either in grey lettering (European issues) or white lettering (US and Canadian issues). In 1991, the refracting prism album cover was #35 on Rolling Stone's 100 greatest album covers of all time list.^[14] In 2003, VH1 named Dark Side's cover the 4th Greatest Album Cover of All Time on their 50 Greatest Album Covers of All Time special.^[15]

Reception

The Dark Side of the Moon is one of the best-selling albums of all time worldwide, and the 20th-best-selling album in the United States. Though it held the №1 spot in America for only one week, it spent a total of 741 consecutive weeks, approximately fourteen years, on the list until April 23, 1988 only to be removed by a rule change. To this day, it occupies a prominent spot on Billboard's Pop Catalog Chart, reaching №1 when the 2003 hybrid CD/SACD edition was released and sold 800,000 copies in the U.S. alone. On the week of May 5 2006, The Dark Side of the Moon achieved a combined total of 1,500 weeks on the Billboard 200 and Pop Catalog charts.

Sales of the album worldwide total over forty million as of 2004, with an average of 8,000 copies sold per week and a total of 400,000 in the year of 2002 — making it the 200th best-selling album of that year nearly three decades after its initial release. It is estimated that one in every fourteen people in the U.S. under the age of fifty owns or owned a copy of this album.^[16] According to an August 2 2006 Wall Street Journal article, although the album was released in 1973, it has sold 7.7 million copies since 1991 in the U.S. alone and continues to log 9,600 sales per week domestically.^[17]

The LP was released before platinum awards were introduced by the RIAA on January 1 1976, and it initially only received a gold disc. However, after the introduction of the album on CD, The Dark Side of the Moon would eventually be certified platinum in 1990. On April 6, 1998, the RIAA certified the album at 15x platinum, denoting sales of fifteen million in the United States alone - making it their second biggest-selling album there. "Time", "Money" and "Us and Them" remain radio call-in request favourites, with "Money" having sold well as a single in its own right.

Some of the profits from The Dark Side of the Moon were invested in the making of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The members of Pink Floyd were reportedly huge Monty Python fans, to the point of interrupting recording sessions to watch the Flying Circus.^[18]

Dave Gilmour disputed the urban myth that Pink Floyd interrupted recording sessions to watch soccer or Monty Python. In an interview with Uncut Gilmour said, "We would sometimes watch them, but when we were on a roll, we would get on."^[19]

On February 3-11, 1995 the opening sequence of Time was played as a wakeup call for the crew of space mission STS-69.^[20]

Reissues and remastering

In 1979 The Dark Side of the Moon was released as a remastered LP by Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab (MFSL). It has since been re-released several times on CD. MFSL remastered and re-released the album again in CD form, and the album was again re-released later as a remastered CD as part of the 1992 box set "Shine On." The 1992 remaster was then re-released by itself as a 20th Anniversary box set edition with postcards.

The Dark Side of the Moon was re-released as a 30th anniversary hybrid Super Audio CD with a 5.1 channel DSD surround sound version remixed from the original 16-track studio tapes. Some surprise was expressed when longtime producer James Guthrie was called in to mix the new surround mix rather than the original LP engineer, Alan Parsons, who had already produced a definitive quadraphonic mix shortly after the original album was released.[1] This 30th anniversary edition won four Surround Music Awards in 2003. The Dark Side of the Moon was also re-released in 2003 on 180-gram virgin vinyl (mastered by Kevin Gray at AcousTech Mastering) and included reprints of the original posters and stickers that came with the original vinyl release, along with a new 30th anniversary poster.

In 2003, bootleg DVD-Audio of the original Parsons quadraphonic mix began circulating.[2]

Dark Side of the Rainbow

Main article: Dark Side of the Rainbow

When the album is played simultaneously with the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, numerous images from the film appear to synchronise with the music and lyrics. All band members (save Roger Waters) have firmly stated that the phenomenon is a coincidence.^[21] This effect has often been called Dark Side of the Rainbow.

Track listing

Track title	Credited to	Vocals	Track times for individual releases				Vorbis sample
			Original release 1973 LP	Original CD and 1994 remaster	Shine On box set and 1993 rerelease	2003 SACD
"Speak to Me"	Nick Mason	instrumental	1:30	1:00	1:13	1:08
"Breathe" (or "Breathe in the Air")1	David Gilmour Roger Waters Rick Wright	David Gilmour	2:43	2:59	2:46	2:48
"On the Run"	David Gilmour Roger Waters	instrumental	3:30	3:35	3:34	3:31
"Time" (containing "Breathe (Reprise)")	David Gilmour Roger Waters Rick Wright Nick Mason	David Gilmour (verse) Rick Wright (chorus)	6:53	7:04	7:04	7:06
"The Great Gig in the Sky"	Rick Wright Clare Torry²	Clare Torry	4:15	4:48	4:44	4:47
"Money"	Roger Waters	David Gilmour	6:30	6:24	6:32	6:23
"Us and Them"	Rick Wright Roger Waters	David Gilmour Rick Wright (harmony vocal)	7:34	7:49	7:40	7:48
"Any Colour You Like"	David Gilmour Rick Wright Nick Mason	instrumental	3:24	3:26	3:25	3:25
"Brain Damage"	Roger Waters	Roger Waters David Gilmour (harmony vocal)	3:50	3:50	3:50	3:50
"Eclipse"	Roger Waters	Roger Waters Rick Wright (harmony vocal) David Gilmour (harmony vocal)	1:45	2:04	2:02	2:06

Original LP side B starts with the song "Money".

Notes:

¹ Some releases merge "Speak to Me" and "Breathe"
² Clare Torry was credited for vocal improvisation for "The Great Gig in the Sky" for the first time in the P*U*L*S*E DVD release, due to legal battle won by Torry against Pink Floyd.

Personnel

• David Gilmour – vocals, guitar, VCS 3 synthesiser
• Roger Waters – bass guitar, vocals, VCS 3 synthesiser, tape effects
• Richard Wright – keyboards, vocals, VCS 3 synthesiser
• Nick Mason – percussion, tape effects
• Pink Floyd – producers

Additional personnel

• Lesley Duncan – background vocals
• Doris Troy – background vocals
• Barry St. John – background vocals
• Liza Strike – background vocals
• Clare Torry – vocals (on "The Great Gig in the Sky")
• Dick Parry – saxophone
• Alan Parsons – engineer
• Peter James – assistant engineer
• Chris Thomas – mixing consultant
• James Guthrie – remastering supervisor on 20th anniversary edition, remastering on 30 anniversary editions, 5.1 mixing on 30th anniversary edition
• Doug Sax – remastering on 20th and 30th anniversary editions
• Hipgnosis – design, photography
• Storm Thorgerson – 20th and 30th anniversary edition designs
• George Hardie – illustrations, sleeve art
• Jill Furmanosky – photography
• David Sinclair – liner notes in CD re-release
• Drew Vogel – art and photography in CD re-release

Singles

In some countries, notably the UK, Pink Floyd did not release any singles between 1968's "Point Me at the Sky" and 1979's "Another Brick in the Wall (Part Two)". However, the following were released in the U.S. and many other countries:

• "Money"/"Any Colour You Like" – Harvest/Capitol 3609; released June, 1973
• "Time"/"Us and Them" – Harvest/Capitol 45373; released February 4 1974

The latter is sometimes considered a double A-side.

Charts

Albums

Year	Chart	Position	Notes
1973	Billboard's Pop Albums (North America)	1	Initial album release
2003	Billboard's Pop Catalog (North America)	1	30th Anniversary Hybrid SACD Edition
1973	UK album chart	2

Singles

Year	Chart	Single	Position
1973	Billboard Pop Singles (North America)	"Money"	13
1974	Billboard Pop Singles (North America)	"Time"	101
1974	Billboard Pop Singles (North America)	"Us and Them"	101

Selected album sales

Country	Certification	Sales	Last certification date	Comment
Austria	2x Platinum [22]	60,000 +	20/01/93
Australia	11x Platinum [23]	770,000 +
Canada	2x Diamond [24]	2,000,000+	14/03/03
Europe	12x Platinum [25]	12,700,000+		7th best selling album in Europe
France	1x Diamond [26]	1,250,000+
Germany	2x Platinum [27]	400,000+	1993
Poland	1x Platinum [28]	20,000+	2003
United Kingdom	9x Platinum [29][30]	3,800,000+	6th best selling album in U.K.
United States RIAA	15x Platinum	15,000,000+	06/04/’98	11x Platinum at 16/02/90
United States Soundscan	8x Platinum [31]	8,360,000+	since 1991

See also

Notes

References

• The "Dark Side of the Moon": The Making of the "Pink Floyd" Masterpiece, John Harris, Fourth Estate, (2005) ISBN 0-00-719024-7 (United Kingdom); Da Capo Press, (2005) ISBN 0-306-81342-4 (United States); Jorge Zahar Press, (2006) ISBN 8571109605 (Brazil)
• "The Complete Guide to the Music of Pink Floyd", Andy Mabbett, Omnibus Press, (1995) ISBN 0-7119-4301-X

External links

• The official The Dark Side of the Moon webpage
• Musical analysis of The Dark Side of the Moon
• A full conceptual analysis of Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon
• Recording and history of the album
• The Coverville podcast's all-cover track by track version of "The Dark Side of the Moon"
• Dark Side of the Moon A Cappella - Completely vocal version

•  • [ e] Pink Floyd

David Gilmour • Nick Mason • Richard Wright Syd Barrett • Bob Klose • Roger Waters Discography Studio albums: The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967) • A Saucerful of Secrets (1968) • Ummagumma (1969) • Atom Heart Mother (1970) • Meddle (1971) • The Dark Side of the Moon (1973) • Wish You Were Here (1975) • Animals (1977) • The Wall (1979) • The Final Cut (1983) • A Momentary Lapse of Reason (1987) • The Division Bell (1994) Soundtracks: Tonite Let's All Make Love in London (1968) • More (1969) • Zabriskie Point (1970) • Obscured by Clouds (1972) Live: Ummagumma (1969) • Delicate Sound of Thunder (1988) • P•U•L•S•E (1995) • Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live 1980-81 (2000) Compilations: Relics (1971) • A Nice Pair (1973) • Masters of Rock (1974) • A Collection of Great Dance Songs (1981) • Works (1983) • Shine On (The Early Singles) (1992) • 1967 Singles Sampler (1997) • (2001) Unreleased material: Lucy Leave (1965) • (I'm A) King Bee (1965) • One in a Million (1967) • Vegetable Man (1968) • Scream Thy Last Scream (1968) • Moonhead (1968) • Seabirds (1969) • Hollywood (1969) • Pink Floyd Live at Montreux Casino (1970) •The Violent Sequence (1970) •Oneone/Fingals Cave (1970) • The Wall • Delicate Sound of Thunder • La Carrera Panamericana • P•U•L•S•E • • The Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett Story • London '66-'67 Steve O'Rourke • Contributors • Live performances • Household Objects • Pigs • Publius Enigma • Dark Side of the Rainbow • The Man and the Journey