

1973: Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” album cover featuring refracting prism.

1993: Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” 20th anniversary album cover.

2003: Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” 30th anniversary album cover.

A 1973 album of progressive rock music named The Dark Side of the Moon, by the British group Pink Floyd, has distinguished itself on several fronts in the annals of modern music. For starters, it stayed on Billboard’s top 200 albums sales chart for 741 consecutive weeks — from March 1973 to April 1988. That’s a total period of 14 years — a longer popular presence on the music charts than any other album in the history of modern music charting.

Dark Side’s 1973-1988 chart run, in fact, survived four U.S. presidents – Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan. Four World Cup soccer championships were played during that time, as were a dozen Super Bowls and World Series. A child that began elementary school in the fall of 1973, would have graduated high school and gone into the work world or on to college as Dark Side continued its “consecutive weeks” chart run. But there’s still more.

By May 1991, after Billboard started using its Top Pop Catalog Albums chart – a fifty-position weekly chart for older albums more than 18 months old, but falling below No. 100 on the Billboard 200 – Pink Floyd’s Dark Side held forth there as well. In fact, as of February 2019, Dark Side held the “total weeks” longevity record at something north of 1,630 total weeks — i.e., weeks on both the Billboard 200 and the Top Pop Catalog charts.

Still, the album’s Billboard heroics is less than half the story, as Dark Side of the Moon, to this day — now past its 45th anniversary year (2018) — continues to be popular. Even when it came off its consecutive weeks run of 14 years in 1988, it remained a very lucrative money machine through the 1990s and beyond.

By April 1998, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) certified that Dark Side had sold 15 million copies in the U.S. alone. By 2002, it was still selling – 400,000 copies annually in the U.S., placing it among that year’s 200 best-selling albums. By 2004, it was selling an average of 7,000-to-8,000 copies per week in the U.S. with cumulative sales worldwide then totaling over 40 million. By December 2006, the New York Times reported that the Dark Side of the Moon was still selling “nearly 10,000 copies a week.”

As of 2012, the album had sold an estimated 50 million copies worldwide. At a $10-an-album “ball park” estimate, that’s roughly $500 million in gross revenue, a respectable sum that many corporations would envy. And that of course does not include Dark Side’s “share” of Pink Floyd’s concert and touring revenue.

In any case, The Dark Side of the Moon album helped make the members of Pink Floyd very rich. And as their fans well know, that’s only part of the story, as the group had other hit albums beyond Dark Side, including The Wall of 1979, which was also a giant hit and major money-maker.

Pink Floyd recorded The Dark Side of the Moon between May 1972 and January 1973 at Abbey Road studios in London. The group’s principal musicians at the time consisted of Roger Waters (bass, synthesizer, vocals), Nick Mason (drums), Richard Wright (keyboards, synthesizers), and David Gilmour (guitar, vocals). The title of the album is an allusion to mental illness rather than astronomy, though Pink Floyd’s music is sometimes called “space rock.”



Early 1970s: Pink Floyd members, from left: Rick Wright, Roger Waters, Nick Mason, and David Gilmour.

Dark Side was Pink Floyd’s eight studio album, the group having originally formed in the mid-1960s, though parting ways with earlier frontman, Syd Barrett, due to drugs and mental illness.

Released in March 1973, Dark Side became an instant chart success in the U.K., Western Europe, and the U.S. It rose to No.1 on the Billboard chart on April 28, 1973 beginning its record-breaking 741 weeks on Billboard’s Top 200 album chart. The album was a key breakthrough for the group.

“With the release of Dark Side of the Moon,” reported one Rolling Stone profile, “Pink Floyd abruptly went from a moderately successful acid-rock band to one of rock music’s biggest acts.”

In May 1973, when the album first came out, Rolling Stone reviewer Lloyd Grossman described it as “a fine album with a textural and conceptual richness.” He added: “there is a certain grandeur here that exceeds mere musical melodramatics and is rarely attempted in rock. The Dark Side of the Moon has flash – the true flash that comes from the excellence of a superb performance.”

In Pink Floyd’s Rock ’n Roll Hall of Fame description (they were inducted in 1996) it is noted: “The group carried rock and roll into a dimension that was more cerebral and conceptual than what preceded it.“…What George Orwell and Ray Bradbury were to literature, Pink Floyd is to popular music…”

– Rock `n Roll Hall of Fame What George Orwell and Ray Bradbury were to literature, Pink Floyd is to popular music, forging an unsettling but provocative combination of science fiction and social commentary….” Describing the group’s Dark Side of the Moon, the Rock Hall added: “The album signaled rock’s willingness to move from adolescence into adulthood, conceptually addressing such subjects as aging, madness, money and time. From its prismatic cover artwork to the music therein, Dark Side of the Moon is a classic-rock milestone.” Others found Dark Side’s themes to be quite bleak, covering alienation, paranoia, and schizophrenia. “[T]he music was at once sterile and doomy,” wrote a reviewer for The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock `n Roll. But in the U.S., the Pink Floyd concert tours through the 1970s and beyond helped boost the group’s notice and album sales. One New York Times concert reviewer in 1987 wrote: “…Pink Floyd earned a singular renown in the 1970’s. The band transmuted gloom and cynicism into sumptuous anthems, taking ordinary rock tunes at s-l-o-w tempos and using long instrumental interludes for somber atmosphere…”

Head Music. In the 1970s, Pink Floyd tunes became a favorite of pot smokers and drug users, and even into the 2000s the band’s music was still drawing that association. “As long as there are potheads, water beds and freshman philosophy majors,” wrote New York Times reporter Sia Michel in a 2006 review of a Roger Waters/Pink Floyd concert, “it [Dark Side of the Moon] will continue to sell thousands of copies every month.” Part of the eternal appeal of the album “is its trippy, vague seriousness,” wrote Michel. “It seems to be a concept album about the difficulties of staying sane in a corrupt modern world. It seems to encourage people to rebel. It seems to encourage people to maintain a childlike state of purity. It seems to address issues like mortality (“Time”), greed (“Money”), war (“Us and Them”) and madness (“Brain Damage”). In short, it sounds really deep when one is zonked out on drugs at 3 a.m. ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ helped create the template for what a Great Album is conventionally supposed to be: a thematic, sonically adventurous social critique with brain-frying cover art.”



Record label for shortened version (3:15) of Pink Floyd’s “Us & Them,” released as a single in March 1974.

“Us & Them”

One of the songs on Dark Side – the seventh track on the album – is titled “Us & Them,” a song that runs nearly eight minutes and is regarded by many as an anti-war song. It was written by Richard Wright with lyrics by Roger Waters and it is sung by David Gilmour, with harmonies by Wright. “Us and Them” was also released as a single and for a time in March 1974, it charted just under the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 101.

The song’s origins date to 1969 as a piano and bass piece that Wright had come up with while working on a song for the soundtrack of the 1970 movie Zabriskie Point. It was then entirely instrumental, but film director Michelangelo Antonioni rejected the piece, calling it “beautiful, but too sad… it makes me think of church.” Antonioni was looking for a more raucous piece for a violent sequence in the film, and would later use another Pink Floyd song adapted for that purpose which did appear on the Zabriskie Point soundtrack and at the film’s cataclysmic ending.

Wright’s original piece, meanwhile, was resurrected and re-worked during the Dark Side Of The Moon recording sessions and it became the basis for “Us and Them,” with Waters adding lyrics. The finished version has hymnal organ qualities, rising choruses, and a couple of saxophone solos; one at the beginning and another toward the end of the song. “Us and Them” is one of the first times Pink Floyd made use of female backup singers – in this case, Liza Strike, Leslie Duncan and Doris Troy to sing background harmonies. The saxophone sections are played by Dick Parry. In December 2012, Roger Waters performed “Us and Them” during his set for the live U.S. hurricane benefit TV concert, “12-12-12: The Concert for Sandy Relief.”

“Us and Them”

Pink Floyd (7:51)

1973 Us, and them

And after all we’re only ordinary men.

Me, and you.

God only knows it’s not

what we would choose to do. Forward he cried from the rear

and the front rank died.

And the general sat and the lines on the map

moved from side to side. Black and blue

And who knows which is which and who is who.

Up and down.

And in the end it’s only round and round. Haven’t you heard it’s a battle of words

The poster bearer cried.

Listen son, said the man with the gun

There’s room for you inside. […piano with spoken word sequence….] Down and out

It can’t be helped, but there’s a lot of it about.

With, without.

And who’ll deny it’s what the fighting’s all about? Out of the way, it’s a busy day

I’ve got things on my mind.

For the want of the price of tea and a slice

The old man died.

Music Player

“Us and Them” – Pink Floyd

https://www.pophistorydig.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Pink-Floyd-Us-Them.mp3

Over the years, “Us and Them,” like other songs of this type, has brought varying listener reactions and interpretations. “Steven,” writing from Sparks, Nevada, offered this view at SongFacts.com:

“To assume that ‘Us and Them’ is solely about war is to draw a superficial conclusion. Yes, ‘War’ serves as a metaphor for the separative mentality that modern day people have. But the ‘Down and Out’ stanza is about our refusal to help others in need, because we have ‘things to do.’ Pink Floyd is saying that for the money it would cost for ‘tea and a slice,’ an old man died. This song is about closed-mindedness and the majority of peoples’ inability to empathize with another’s plight, and to furthermore act on this inability, i.e. the general who doesn’t fight alongside his men.”

Another SongFacts.com writer – Aya, from Cairo, Egypt, writes:

“I believe the song describes the tendency of people to partition themselves from those who are different, in cases such as war, politics, and social class. It’s definitely about war but I believe it also encompasses different races and social classes. It’s also alleged that the song was influenced by Roger Waters’ father dying in World War II…”

And “Shane,” from Sandy, Utah, adding his point of view to the SongFacts.com forum on the song, writes:

“Definitely one of the most emotional pieces on Dark Side. The sax does a lot. The lyrics are simple, but sad, powerful, and relatable. This song gives me chills.”

The final song on Dark Side – or rather, the last two songs that run together – are titled “Brain “Damage” and “Eclipse.” The lyrics of the first song have a repeating refrain that includes the album title, “I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon,” which is a reference to insanity.

“Brain Damage”/ “Eclipse”

Dark Side Album: Ending Songs (5:54)

Pink Floyd, 1973 Brain Damage

The lunatic is on the grass

The lunatic is on the grass

remembering games and daisy chains and laughs

got to keep the loonies on the path The lunatic is in the hall

the lunatics are in the hall

the paper holds their folded faces to the floor

and every day the paper boy brings more And if the dam breaks open many years too soon

and if there is no room upon the hill

and if your head explodes with dark forebodings too

I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon The lunatic is in my head

The lunatic is in my head

you raise the blade, you make the change

you rearrange me ‘ till I’m sane

you lock the door

and throw away the key

there’s someone in my head but it’s not me And if the cloud bursts, thunder in your ear

you shout and no one seems to hear

and if the band you’re in starts playing different tunes

I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon. Eclipse

All that you touch and all that you see

all that you taste, all you feel

and all that you love and all that you hate

all you distrust, all you save

and all that you give and all that you deal

and all that you buy, beg, borrow or steal

and all you create and all you destroy

and all that you do and all that you say

and all that you eat and everyone you meet

and all that you slight and everyone you fight

and all that is now and all that is gone

and all that’s to come

and everything under the sun is in tune

but the sun is eclipsed by the moon

[ending: sound of a beating heart…]

Roger Waters, who wrote the song, noted in a 2005 interview: “When I say, ‘I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon’… what I mean [is]… If you feel that you’re the only one…that you seem crazy [because] you think everything is crazy, you’re not alone.”

Waters has also stated that the insanity-themed lyrics are based in part on former Pink Floyd frontman, Syd Barrett’s mental difficulties, as when Barrett lost his place during performances – noted in the line “if the band you’re in starts playing different tunes” – as Barrett suffered a breakdown and eventually left the group.

Sometime in 1971, Waters had worked up a prototype version of the song when it was called “The Dark Side of the Moon.” Eventually this title would be used for the album itself. The band had also called the “Brain Damage” track “Lunatic” during live performances, some recording sessions, and also when they had recorded a new suite entitled, “A Piece for Assorted Lunatics.”

The Real Insanity…

The opening line of the song – “The lunatic is on the grass” – was inspired by one of those “keep-off-the-grass” signs sometimes found at public places and well-manicured estates. Waters has said that the particular sign and patch of grass that fueled his using the phrase was at King’s College, Cambridge.

The ostensible suggestion in the tune is that those ignoring the signs and encroaching on the grass might indicate insanity, though as Waters has stated and the tune implies, the real insanity is not letting people on the grass.

Author Jere O’Neill Surber has compared the lyrics of Dark Side’s “Brain Damage” with Karl Marx’s theory of self-alienation; “there’s someone in my head, but it’s not me.”

Waters’ lyrics throughout Dark Side deal with the pressures of modern life and how those pressures can sometimes cause insanity. He is reported to have viewed the album’s exploration of mental illness as one illuminating a universal condition. Waters also indicated that he wanted the album to be a positive force – “an exhortation… to embrace the positive and reject the negative.”

In the 1987 book, Pink Floyd: Bricks in The Wall, by Karl Dallas, Roger Waters explained the meaning of the final words in the “Eclipse” portion of the song – “and everything under the sun is in tune, but the sun is eclipsed by the moon” – with the following:

I don’t see it as a riddle. The album uses the sun and the moon as symbols; the light and the dark; the good and the bad; the life force as opposed to the death force. I think it’s a very simple statement saying that all the good things life can offer are there for us to grasp, but that the influence of some dark force in our natures prevents us from seizing them. The song addresses the listener and says that if you, the listener, are affected by that force, and if that force is a worry to you, well I feel exactly the same too. The line ‘I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon’ is me speaking to the listener, saying, ‘I know you have these bad feelings and impulses because I do too, and one of the ways I can make direct contact with you is to share with you the fact that I feel bad sometimes.’



A lyrics poster excerpting from Pink Floyd’s “Brain Damage” on the “Dark Side” album.