Long before mental health finally found a place in the planet’s media and government agendas, Pink Floyd turned this matter into the substrate of their most ambitious album, “The Dark Side Of The Moon”, which celebrates half a century as a beacon not only for music, but also for life.
According to the source consulted, the date of its publication diverges between March 1, 23 or 24, 1973. Warner Music, owner of its catalogue, comes to solve the dilemma with the edition this Friday of a “deluxe” box that, among other attractions, includes the live show that the band offered in London in 1974 at Wembley Empire Pool, which will be available on vinyl for the first time.
Its dimension in the history of music is already supported by parameters as obvious as commercials: it is one of the best-selling albums in the world, with 50 million copies shipped. Then formed by Roger Waters (bass, vocals), David Gilmour (vocals, guitars), Nick Mason (drums, percussion) and Richard Wright (organ, piano, synthesizers), Pink Floyd filled their coffers thanks to that album, which also gave them their greatest leap to international fame after seven previous albums.
The British band had suffered in 1968 the forced departure of its hitherto leader, Syd Barrett, afflicted by a mental deterioration that the frequent use of hallucinogens made more severe and that even today continues without a firm diagnosis. That marked the drift of Pink Floyd, who hired Gilmour as a full member to replace him on guitar and who saw how Roger Waters progressively assumed the baton of the group.
His was the idea to dedicate his eighth album to the ravages that modern life meant for man, heavily influenced by Barrett’s personal experience.
title and cover
Its very title does not allude to the moon as a satellite, but to the lunatic nature of people. Another peculiarity was that the songs were presented live before being recorded, so they grew live until they were immortalized in the Abbey Road studios in London.. They counted as a producer with whom he had been an engineer on the Beatles’ albums “Abbey Road” and “Let It Be” and who would end up becoming a music star himself when three years later he undertook his own project: Alan Parsons .
The technical possibilities of the place undoubtedly contributed to the exquisite result, where they had a 16-track mixing desk that allowed them to treat not only each of the instruments with care, but also the numerous extra-musical resources that they added, from the heartbeat with which the album ends and begins to the emblematic “Money” coins.
That denunciation of ambition was the most successful cut of the album and of Pink Floyd’s entire career, in an album of ten intertwined songs until adding just 42 minutes that make their eListening is a very enjoyable experience, in contrast to the density often attributed to progressive rock. It only remained to model the last of the elements that have made “Dark Side Of The Moon” something iconic in popular culture: its cover.
Designed by Storm Thorgerson, from the Hipgnosis collective, and drawn by George Hardie, the premise was to seek clarity and conciseness by reflecting the light of Pink Floyd shows and their broad spectrum of themes. This is how the idea of the cover in black was arrived at and the beam that, when filtered through a prism that occupies the central position, comes out refracted in the shape of a rainbow.
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