7: Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon enters the charts in 1973 and stays there for 741 weeks
The Dark Side of the Moon is widely hailed by many critics and fans as Pink Floyd’s definitive album. Exploring the nature of the human experience, the lyrics deal with topics such as aging and the overwhelmingly fast approach of death, materialism, and the belief that a person’s self is “always in the right.”
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 music at that time. Along with the conventional rock band instrumentation, Pink Floyd added prominent synthesizers 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 songs “Time” and “On the Run” have the low thudding underneath the rest.
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.
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.
The Dark Side of the Moon spent 741 consecutive weeks on the USA-based Billboard 200 album chart, the longest duration in history. It is also the fifth-highest selling album globally of all time, selling more than 40 million copies.
Though it held the #1 spot in America for only one week, it spent a total of 741 consecutive weeks, approximately 14 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. 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 40 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.
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.
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It was the summer of ‘73 and we went to the Pink Floyd Dark side of The Moon tour at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh. A surreal experience as they came out, played a stellar performance, uttered the only words, “We are going to take a short break”, came back out and gave an even superior performance. It was the first time I ever heard four channel sound with upper and lower levels as they buzzed the audience with an airplane sound with everyone ducking their heads! After the intermission, they opened up the roof to the Civic Arena, (which they rarely did and NEVER for a rock concert) which revealed to us a Full Moon over the city AND released all of the smoke out and fresh air in! Truely a most memorable experience!
October 19th, 2007 at 12:15 pmYou blew it, XPN!
I cannot believe the Wall concert PF performed in Berlin as they were tearing down the Berlin Wall did not make the list. Bad form!
October 19th, 2007 at 3:43 pmSomehow, in the 1970s, Pink Floyd flew under my radar screen. This is hard to believe since I have always been passionate about progressive music. Fast-forward to the late 90s, when my then-teenaged son Julian introduced me to the full splendor of Floyd, including sitting with me through The Wall (the film). I became instantly hooked. He and I went to see Roger Waters this past June, with my friend Pam, and it was a surreal experience. I felt like I was back in the Sixties, but with my son along for the ride.
October 21st, 2007 at 12:37 amDuring the last day of the countdown, I wore my old Sony Walkman into Center City for a doctor’s appt. I listened continuously on the train and after my appt. I found myself upstairs in the Market Street East train station, trying to find a spot where the reception was decent. All of sudden, Helen began playing Dark Side of the Moon and there I was, swaying and singing along. It was utter bliss to hear the five songs she played. And the feelings that went through me then were as powerful as the first time I heard DSOTM.
i saw pink floyd in June, 1973 at the Veterans Coliseum in Jacksonville, Florida. The Vietnam war had ended ingnominiously (with Vietnamese still dying for US political strategies for another two plus years). I remember watching from our seats, at the back right of the stage, wondering if other veterans felt this to be an extremely appropriate use of a facility named for veterans.
Later that night, in my Riverside apartment, I wrote, “The alternative culture has been absorbed into the Madison Avenue philosophies. Freaks are putting on ties, cutting their hair and starting to look at homes in the suburbs. Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon,” however, reminds me that living counterculturally can be done in the middle of the street. Being alive means we never quit changing… challenging… and living poetically… on purpose. “The lunatics are in the hall… the lunatics are in my hall.”
October 21st, 2007 at 10:46 am