Classic Albums (1997–…): Season 6, Episode 2 - Classic Albums: Pink Floyd - The Making of 'The Dark Side of the Moon' - full transcript

*** Subtitles by dylux ***

Dark Side of the Moon
was an expression of

political, philosophical,
humanitarian empathy

that was desperate to get out.

Dark Side, I think... I felt like
the whole band were working together.

It was a very creative time.
We were very open as well.

I think because we still
had a common goal,

which was to become rich and famous.

The ideas that Roger was exploring

apply to every new generation.

They still have very much
the same relevance as they had.



I think one of the successes
of Dark Side is the fact

that actually it's very rich.
There's a... there are a lot of songs,

a lot of ideas all compressed
onto the one record.

I can clearly remember that moment

of sitting and listening to the
whole mix all the way through

and thinking, "My God, we've really...
done something fantastic here.

I think it has the all-time record,

constantly on the charts for nearly
750 weeks, about 14 years.

It was a huge album,

and huge not just in terms of its sales,
but in terms of its influence.

This was where underground music,

progressive rock, whatever,
really went mainstream.

It was a record that had lots
of traditional pop values,

you could sing along
to these songs, but



it also was a kind of thing
that took you places

if you wanted to listen to it
in a darkened room.

It may very will be the
ultimate concept record,

because the concept is there,
the songs are there,

the spaces and the music are there,

but it doesn't take away
any of the imagination.

After Syd went crazy in '68
and Dave joined

we were, all of us, searching,
fumbling around,

looking for, "What are we gonna do now?"

Because here was the guy who
starts producing all these songs,

and was the sort of
heartbeat of the band.

Syd casts a long and
large shadow of events.

I think that the band was
very impressive to keep going,

actually, after loss of
their main creative drive,

I mean it was the first time
you choose, isn't it,

I mean you wouldn't sit around say,
"Okay, let's get rid of our song writer."

After Syd had gone the music became
more kind of soundscapes than songs.

You have to watch your strengths,

and, um, it was a very good thing
that we could not write singles.

We might not have done some of the
very interesting work that we did.

Once Syd was out of the picture,
the Floyd just went glacial.

They just let it all spread out.

When I saw the Floyd for the first time,
it was the summer of '68,

it was actually their first
American tour with David Gilmour,

and they were just extraordinary,
you know, it was

"Let There Be More Light",
"Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun",

it was total space rock.

I started fully out of love with

that, um, some of that...
psychedelic noodling stuff.

We were still then playing a lot of
instrumental work, if you like,

and that would be half the album.

But we were always searching
for a direction.

A fighting a little bit between

wanting to push boundaries
back a little bit

and move forward in an experimental way,

but also to retain melody.

When you get to "Meddle",
quite clearly, and "Echoes"

shows the direction that
we were moving in.

The rest of "Meddle" as I recall was songs,

and so in the flip side
was a 20-minute piece

A) and so was a construct, and

B) it was the beginning of all
the writing about other people.

♪ Strangers passing in the street ♪

♪ by chance two separate glances meet ♪

♪ and I am you and what I see is me ♪

It was the beginning of empathy,
if you like, you know,

"two strangers passing in the street,
by chance two passing glances meet,

and I am you and what I see is me"

is a sort of thread that has gone through
everything for me ever since then...

and had a big, um,
eruption in Dark Side.

You have to remember that
the context of the time.

This was the height of
glam rock. There was,

you know, Marc Bolan, and T. Rex
and David Bowie with

Ziggy Stardust peddling there,
sort of pop fantasies,

and the Floyd came along with an album
that was about these weighty themes.

He created a story, he created a...
basically a theater piece

about what it was like to
live in the modern world.

All four of us were there,
and there was a discussion about

putting the album together
and making it into this "themed",

this... I mean what is now
called a "concept album".

There are a number of things that
impinge upon an individual to...

that color his view of existence.

There are pressures that are capable of
pushing you one direction or another,

and, uh, these are some of them, and,
whether they push you towards

insanity, death, empathy,
greed, um, whatever.

Uh, there's something about the
Newtonian view of that physics

that might be interesting and
may be there could be...

this is what this record is about.

There was one of those
really good moments

that most bands do experience
where everyone is on sight,

and everyone likes the idea, and there's
some sort of agreement as to,

more or less, who's going to do what.

Dark Side of the Moon started in
a rehearsal room in Bermondsey

I think, that belongs... a warehouse
that belongs to The Rolling Stones

where we did some... sort of jamming,
writing, whatever you want to call it.

Not sure how much writing happened there.

You know, let's play in E minor
or in A for an hour or two,

oh that sounds all right,
that will take up 5 minutes.

A lot of the musical ideas just came up

just to the jamming away
in these rehearsal rooms...

obviously the lyrics Roger brought in.

Because he had things to say.

And it was the first time
he wrote all the lyrics.

Roger was all sorts of a
pushing, driving force.

The way Dark Side of the Moon
articulates some sense of

early adult's disenchantment
is absolutely timeless.

I've listened to it again recently,
and, uh, it always amazes me

that I c-- that I got away
with it really, 'cause it was so

lower sixth, and, you know, um...

"Breathe, breathe in the air,
don't be afraid to care."

In fact, I think, within
the context of the music

and within the context
of the pieces at whole.

People are prepared to accept
that simple exultation

to be prepared to
stand your ground and

attempt to live your life
in an authentic way.

I came from jazz basically...
I love it...

That's my favorite...
that's my inspiration.

And the interesting thing about this song is,
we're talking about the jazz,

is this certain chord...
which is...

That is totally down to a chord
I had heard on, actually

Miles Davis album Kind of Blue,

which is a... That chord!
That chord! I just loved!

And when we're doing "Breathe",

we got to G, I got to G,
and how'd you get to E again?

Well, again, normally you go...

but, um, I remember this chord
and I remember

working it out at home listening
to the record, and I just thought...

Dave was brilliant at double tracking vocals.

And we could do machines,
but there's a difference.

There's also a harmony part.

And that's it how it's sung.

Back to the band.

There's two organ parts
which come in now.

They had been performing
this work known as "Eclipse"

um, for a few months I think, before
actually even coming in to Abbey Road

to start the first recordings.

Which meant that the performances were
pretty tight and not so hard to get.

When you're working in a band and
you're performing something, it

willy-nilly, it develops and changes.

In pre-bootlegging days
this of course was

a far more effective and
better way of doing things,

because you went in the
studio and rehearsed up.

We'd been playing it live
that way for quite some time

as a sort of guitar jam,
that sort of a piece.

I think we were none of us
that happy with it as a piece,

and when we also had this synthesizer.

This Synth EA which had a
little built-in keyboard

and had a sequencer, it was
the first sequencer I think.

I just plugged this up and started
playing one sequence on it,

and Roger immediately pricked up his ears
and said, "That sounded good."

And came up, and we started
mucking with it together

and he put in a new sequence of notes,
and all developed out of that.

A series of notes played in slowly.

triggering a noise generator
and oscillators,

and then just speed it up, you know.

You've got it basically...

And that, of course,
immediately sounded

much more exciting than what
we were currently doing.

They were the first band
to really go out

and try to sort of make
music of the future.

We were doing a lot of
things with tape loops

and curious sounds and sound effects...

There wasn't something in 1972
when they put that album together.

But that's basically
what they were doing.

They were, in a sense, they
were giving you a preview

of the sound pictures of the future.

There's some very, very clever

and highly listenable pieces
of sonic experimentation.

So this is the main synthesizer,
it has the high-hat element built in.

Then we treat it with filters and with

other oscillators to get
this sort of vibrato noise.

And we bring in this guitar, which is
a backwards guitar with echo stuff on it,

it's been played with a mike stand leg,
just sliding up.

That was left-to-right across the stereo.
And there's these synthesizers.

Morph synth's, which are creating
sort of futuristic vehicle noises,

which you take the pitch down a little bit,
and pan it at the same time

that creates an artificial Doppler sound.

What looks like ambulance
is whizzing past you,

bringing some footsteps...
and some heartbeats for extra tension...

As you see there's an awful
lot going on this track.

This section in particular,

"The Travel" section or "On the Run" section,

um, I think was pretty complicated.

A lot of hands on deck.

You do always want to put more
things on than you had tracks for,

so tracks would very suddenly change
from one thing to a different thing.

All of us were on the desk,

with our fingers on the faders.

But that's the way
it was, because, uh,

we didn't have automation in those days...

A mix in those days was a performance,

every bit as much as doing a gig.

It's one thing actually that

we've kind of lost in the modern age.

Very, very well engineered,

it was also very, very
carefully constructed.

So there was no, sort of--
everything was well recorded.

Dark Side was really the first

proper engineering job I'd been
given with the Floyd.

So there was pretty much
putting on the deep end.

It was very great musically as well.

He also came up with a
couple of good ideas.

I was commissioned to, um, record
some, um, clocks for sound effects,

record for, um, the very early
days of quadrophony.

And when we were doing "Time"

he suggested we might
like to have these clocks.

My memory of it is just this room
full of tapes rolling around

because it was without
any sort of computer help,

everything had to be done manually.

Getting all the clocks to chime
at the right time, that was a process

of just finding a particular moment
on the multi-track tape

where all the chiming
would happen, and then

back-timing the quarter-inch originals

which contained each of the clocks.

And then the very critical thing of
tapes starting at specific moments,

which was all done with
hand signs and stopwatches.

We got the girls making their
first appearance here...

That's un-processed...

And we actually put this effect
called a "frequency translation" on,

which made them sound like this...

Here is the solo...

This one was probably
taking some shape live

before we ever got to do it,

but, usually, in the studio
on this sort of thing,

you just go out have a player
over it and see what comes,

and it's usually, and mostly,
the first take that's the best one,

and you find yourself repeating
yourself thereafter.

The 1970's was the era of the guitar.

And, um, he had that
sort of very "bluesy" sound

but then also he had that other sound,

that sort of spacey, very crystalline,
almost ethereal quality.

I suddenly realized then, that year,
that life was already happening.

I think it's because my mother
was so obsessed with education

and the idea that childhood
and adolescence and,

well, everything, was about preparing
for a life that was going to start later.

And I suddenly realized that life
wasn't going to start later,

that it is, you know, it starts at "dot"
and it happens all the time, and then,

at any point you can grasp the reins
and start guiding your own destiny.

And that was a big revelation to me,
I mean, it came as quite a shock.

One of the greatest lines I think
on Dark Side of the Moon

is Roger's line about "Hanging on in
quiet desperation is the English way",

which is a sort of line you
could imagine, I don't know,

Evelyn Waugh or Somerset Maugham
or someone writing

as an observation on
the English character.

And I think that character does
permiate the whole record,

and indeed the whole of
Pink Floyd's career.

It expresses my feelings
about things very simply.

And I think that, um, musically,

I think that the music
is to some extent

driven... by that emotional commitment.

The band basically wanted another
4 or 5 minutes of music,

and we thought it could be an instrumental.

I think I just, as I always have done it,
is I sat at the piano

and I, and those first two chords came.

"Us And Them" and
"The Great Gig In The Sky",

you know, are fabulous chord sequences,

are really truly wonderful
pieces of music.

I've no idea whose idea it was to get
somebody as a female singer in

but Alan Parsons knew Clare Torry
and had been working with her,

and said, "Why don't you try her?"

She's just went in there
and improvised over.

And, yeah, that was amazing,
that was fantastic.

That was done while we mixing.

We knew what we wanted,
not exactly musically,

but we knew that we
wanted someone to just...

improvise over this piece.
So we directed her

"Well, think about death,
think about horror,

think whatever, and just go and sing".

And, my memory is, that
she went out in the studio

and did it very very quickly,
and then came back in and said,

"I'm really sorry about this,"
very embarrassed.

And we, in fact, were sitting in the
studio saying, "This is wonderful."

And of course, it's absolutely brilliant,

both Rick's piano and organ work,

and Clare's singing is
just incredibly moving.

In the very end of this, I remember,

we increased the echo slowly.

We always wanted to kind of...

not be on our covers ourselves,
not have pictures.

It is probably the most recognizable
album cover of all time.

It's something that you
can sit and look at

for a long time without
getting fed up with it.

The prism, is, is the logo that
absolutely defines the record.

Dark Side of the Moon prism design
comes from three basic ingredients,

one of which is the light show

that the band put on tour and trying
to represent that and also

one of the themes were
lyrics which was, I think,

about ambition and greed.
And thirdly,

it was an answer to Rick Wright

who said that he wanted something...

Simple and bold, and dramatic.

The presentation, as we call it,

of the design to the band
was a very brief affair.

He just brought in 3 or 4 ideas...

I do remember instantly
seeing the pyramid.

They came in and they looked around,

and they went, "Mmm, that one!"

Everyone immediately went,

"Terrific! Great! Let's do that."

As epitomized by there but it did
choose it so quickly and so easily is,

I just think it is somehow very fitting,

I mean, it's hard to imagine it
without it, isn't it really?

The story in America,
being sort of disaster that

really we hadn't sold records.
And like all good artists

the first thing you do is
blame the record company.

But in this particular case, I think
we might get a few more people to agree

that they hadn't performed properly.

And so they brought in a man
called Bhaskar Menon,

who was absolutely terrific.

And he decided he was going
to make this work

and he was going to make
the American company, um,

sell this record. And he did!

We devised a marketing campaign
for this, which was

far more extensive than anything
that the company had ever done.

It was an album that came after
virtually a year of touring.

There was a tremendous amount
of credible press.

We got by this time without a single
got this album tremendous sales,

close to about a million albums
by that stage,

which was quite remarkable.

And I knew that the time
would come when

we would have to get on
to the next stage,

to get to the next category
or level of audience.

We really would need some
single-like material.

They always say, you know,
you need a hit single

and we had a sort of
hit single with "Money".

You know, I would have remembered

writing "Money" as a sort
of very bluesy thing.

I can't sing that up in
that register of that...

And there's a very kind of transatlantic,

bluesy sort of twang to it all.
Listen to the original demo,

it's not like that at all, it's all
very kind of prissy and... very English.

The one thing about "Money" that

I think people forget is
that it's got the weirdest,

it's one of the biggest hits
with the weirdest time signature.

Very unusual 7/8 time.
Um, good riff.

I'd played in a band with
Dick when we were

sort of teenagers in Cambridge.

Dick was...

was sort of a part of
the Cambridge Mafia.

I didn't know any other sax players

and probably too nervous to ask
anyone that we'd heard of.

He was terrific.

Well, Dick did his sax solo
in the seven-time.

And then we sort of sat and worked out,

um, a different sequence for the guitar solo,

um, probably to make my life easier

so I didn't have to
think about the timing.

I love the fact that it does change.

Let me say that lots
of things happened

on Dark Side that
are kind of magical

without us intentionally
making them happen.

It just happened. And I think
that's one of the great things

about "Money" is that it does
change time signatures.

And that's the thing,
he goes back into the 4/4

and all of a sudden, man,
it's rock city!

"Money" is an amazing single
because it's about

the very thing that it became,
it's about success.

Something certainly did
the trick and it

moved us up into a super league,
I suppose you might say,

which brought with it some great joy,
some pride and some... problems.

Of course it changed our life
and we were now

a big rock-n-roll band
playing at stadiums.

You don't know what you're
in it for anymore.

You know, you're in it to
achieve massive success and

get rich and famous and all these
other things that go along with it.

And, uh, and when they're
all suddenly done

you're going, "Hmm, huh?
Well, why? What next?"

It's not to say we didn't
do some good work,

but the good work we did
was actually all about

a lot of the negative aspects of
what went on after we'd achieved,

um, the goal.

I mean that obviously informed what

turned out to be the
next album quiet deeply

Wish You Were Here.
Because we weren't,

most of us most of the time.

They were a platinum monster

and... it's not a lot of fun.

Sort of amazing to me now that
we had that piece of music

in 1969 when we recorded
the music for Zabriskie Point.

And throughout, I guess,
Atom Heart Mother,

the Obscured By Clouds album,
the Meddle album

we didn't dig it out and use it,
such a lovely piece of music.

Antonioni didn't really
know what he wanted.

He needed desperately to have control.

So even if you did the right thing
and it was perfect,

he couldn't bear to accept it
because there wasn't a choice.

All he really wanted was

"Careful With That Axe, Eugene."

I think we were all getting a bit
frustrated of, "What does he want?"

I think I was just sitting
in the studio and

I was seeing the piano
and they happened

to have this violent sequence up

and I was watching it and, probably I
felt a bit tired, or whatever,

I just started this, the chord sequence.

At the time I think everyone thought,
'This is really good.'

When we thought we'd really got
something brilliant for his movie,

and Antonioni, he would say...

"It's beautiful, but is too sad,"
you know,

"It makes me think of church".

It was obviously waiting to
be reborn in this album.

The lyrics are so direct and linear.

Those fundamental issues
of whether or not

the human race is capable
of being humane.

What's good about the writing of
this song, from my point of view,

is the leaving of the gaps
for the repeat echo.

It's kind of strange hearing it without the,
without the echoes in it.

I find myself with instrumentalists
over the years working with people

having very, very often
as a producer in my capacity

for producing records,
having to say to people,

"Now leave a hole, you know,
now just play for half a bar

and then leave a bar and a half free,
you know, empty."

And that's kind of what that song is,
that's the way it works.

The simplicity of Floyd is really
almost hard to talk about

because it is so simple. Um, Nick Mason
playing very slowly, you know,

exact, without a lot of... overly
frilly percussion flourishes.

Um, Richard's touch on piano
and organ, very gentle,

very soft, but also exact,
and just hitting the notes right.

It was always about leaving space.

I think, Dave and Rick,

their harmony vocals on it
are really very affecting.

Funny enough, they have similar voices,

both their voices are a big factor in

Dark Side of the Moon,
the way, the way they blend.

That's Dave and Rick together.

Then Rick does another
part lower that he did.

And then the girls are also joining in.

"I mean, they're not gonna kill ya,

so if you give 'em a
quick short, sharp shock

they don't do it again. Dig it?
I mean he got off lightly,

'cause I could've given him a thrashing.
I only hit him once!

It was only a difference
of right and wrong, ain't it?

I mean good manners don't
cost nothing, do they, eh?"

It seemed to me really important,
I can't,

I've no idea why to have
voices on this thing.

And so the only thing that
was clever about it at all

was how to do it, so not
to have an interview.

Devised probably in the canteen

and done later that evening.

So I wrote a bunch of cards

with the questions on them.

I think what the voices did
on the record was

they actually brought out
the dark side,

they were in a way the
dark side of the record.

First, we used a number of people

who worked in the studio with us,

so we used 3 or 4 of our road crew.

"I ain't frightened of dying at all,

'cause when you gotta go, you gotta go."

The Irish doorman here, Gerry,

"Why should I be frightened of dying?

There's no reason for it,
you gotta go some time".

"Wings" were recording in here
at the same time

so we actually used Paul and Linda,
Henry McCullough,

"I don't know, I was really
drunk at the time".

It's the people who are not used
to being interviewed,

who come up with the stuff.

I think they started off with

"what's your favorite color?"
and "your favorite food?"

And when none of which was
just to get people there.

And then they went into "when was
the last time you were violent?"

This was the good bit, "when was
the last time you were violent?"

and then you'd take-- you'd answer it
and take the next card,

the next card said,
"were you in the right?"

"Yeah, heh heh, I was in the right."

"Yes, absolutely in the right!"

"I certainly was in the right!"

"Yeah, I was definitely in the right,

that geezer was cruising for a bruising."

And this remarkable roadie
called "Roger the Hat",

"If I participate in this fucking effort,
I hope I'm gonna get

my gold disc at the end of it.
Imagine that, uh!

They were trying to track
him down to do the cards

and by the time they got
ahold them, somebody...

the cards had gone missing,
I don't know where they'd gone.

So, uh, Roger Waters actually
ended up doing it,

he actually did that one
as an interview.

Do you ever think you're going mad, Roger?

And... I once reached a stage in my life
where I was completely convinced

that I'd gone over the brink, or, well,
that's what I'd care to call it.

It was obviously a bit
to do with Syd, and...

I think it's about... defending
the notion of being different.

The fundamental question
that's facing us all is

whether or not we're capable of dealing

with the whole question of "Us and Them"

What he was feeling as an individual

mirrored almost exactly
what a lot of other people

were feeling at the time
of their own lives.

There's no question in my mind that

Dark Side of the Moon
was one of the most important

artistic statements of the
last fifty years, probably.

It touched very many people
all over the world

in ways that could not simply
be put down the fact that,

"Oh, the nice tunes" and
"Oh, I like that bit at the end."

I mean, this was a complete experience.

It was actually a really grim time,

and he wrote a very grim record
but did it with music

that was extremely uplifting and
compelling and bewitching.

I think it was a ,very happy and creative

and enjoyable time when
we made this album.

It was probably the most focused
moment in our career

in terms of all of us working
together as a band.

I'd love to have been a person who could
sit back with his headphones on,

listen to that the whole way
through for the first time,

I mean, I had never
had this experience,

But, uh, it would've been nice.

The thing that's often missed
is the fact

that basically people
respond to that on the

emotional level, and that's
what makes great records.

It is driven by emotion.

There's nothing plastic
about it, you know.

There's nothing contrived about it.

And, I think that's what
is giving it its,

or maybe one of the things
that's given it its longevity.

But that's not to say that potential for
the sun to shine doesn't exist.

You know, walk down the
path towards the light

rather than walking into the darkness.

There is no dark side on the moon really,

matter of fact, it's all dark.