Fascinating Facts You Didn't Know About Pink Floyd's 'The Dark Side Of The Moon'
Many consider it Pink Floyd's masterpiece and one of rock music's most influential albums, but 1973's The Dark Side of the Moon is legendary for more than musical reasons. It has a rumored connection to The Wizard of Oz and features the groundbreaking use of segues comprising audio recordings.
There's much to Dark Side unknown to the majority of listeners, but the surprising facts add intrigue to the beloved album.Â
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You Can Hear A Beatles Song Playing At The End Of 'Eclipse'
Photo: United ArtistsThere is a Beatles contribution in the Dark Side album - albeit accidentally. At the same moment the producers were in the process of recording Abbey Road's doorman, Gerry O'Driscoll, for the DSotM album, an orchestral version of "Ticket to Ride" played in the background.
O'Driscoll delivered a famous line during this unique moment as well: "There is no dark side of the moon, really. Matter of fact, it's all dark. The only thing that makes it look light is the sun."
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The Band Helped Make Monty Python's 'Holy Grail' With Money From Album Sales
Photo: EMI FilmsAs die-hard Monty Python fans, the band assisted the legendary British comedy troupe with raising capital for their film Monty Python and the Holy Grail using some of the money from sales of Dark Side.
Director Terry Gilliam explained why artists like Floyd, Led Zeppelin, and Elton John all chipped in to make the now-classic film come to life.
Gilliam told The Guardian:
There was no studio interference because there was no studio; none of them would give us any money. This was at the time [British] income tax was running as high as 90%, so we turned to rock stars for finance. Elton John, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin - they all had money, they knew our work, and we seemed a good tax write-off. Except, of course, we weren't. It was like The Producers.
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The Band Recorded The Money Sounds On 'Money' At Home
Photo: IRPC / flickr / CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0The famous intro to the song "Money" consists of cash register sounds and clanging change - and the recordings mainly took place at the band members' homes.
"I had drilled holes in old pennies and then threaded them onto strings," Nick Mason recalled in his autobiography, Inside Out. Mason continued: "They gave one sound on the loop of seven. Roger had recorded coins swirling around in the mixing bowl [his wife] Judy used for her pottery.
Each sound was measured out on the tape with a ruler before being cut to the same length and then carefully spliced together."
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Session Singer Clare Torry Got Royalties For Her Work More Than 30 Years Later
Photo: Easy Star/Clare Torry / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0In 2005 session vocalist Clare Torry sued the band for lost earnings - she claimed they owed her royalties for her improvised contributions on "The Great Gig in the Sky." Torry won the suit against the band and their publisher, garnering 50% ownership of the song and 50% of the royalties. The settlement was reportedly worth millions of dollars.
"Clare came into the studio one day, and we said, 'There's no lyrics. It's about dying - have a bit of a sing on that, girl.' I think she only did one take. And we all said, 'Wow, that's that; done. Here's your 60 quid,'" Waters later recalled.
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Naomi Watts's Father Has A Cameo
Photo: Eva Rinaldi/Naomi Watts / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0Actress Naomi Watts has a connection to the band and their groundbreaking album, thanks to her late father, Peter Watts, formerly Pink Floyd's tour manager. Peter's laughter appears on two songs: "Brain Damage" and "Speak to Me."
Peter died of a drug overdose when his daughter was 8 years old. He was also on the album art for Pink Floyd's Ummagumma.
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'Brain Damage' Was About Syd Barrett
The Dark Side classic "Brain Damage" was, unbeknownst to many, about Floyd's founding member Syd Barrett, whose dismissal from the band in 1968 was due in part to his drug abuse and worsening mental illness.
"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 said of the song lyrics.
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A Bootleg Leaked A Year Early
Photo: TimDuncan / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 3.0Pink Floyd began playing Dark Side of the Moon songs in concert around 1972, a year before the album's official release. To the band's horror, someone publicly released a bootleg recording of the entire album sequence from a London show and sold it in record stores.
Though the band feared the bootleg would hurt album sales, it didn't - Dark Side has sold more than 15 million copies in the US, becoming one of the most successful albums of all time and holding the record for the most weeks spent on the Billboard 200 chart.
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The Band Played 'Money' In 7/4 Time
Photo: 4TheWynne / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0Songs played in a 7/4 time signature don't often gain notoriety - except for Pink Floyd's "Money." According to Waters, David Gilmour became frustrated over the song's time signature during recording:
I would do things, and Dave would say, "No, that's wrong. There should be another beat. That's only seven."
I'd say, "Well, that's how it is." A number of my songs have bars of odd length.
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The Album Led To A Falling-Out With Engineer Alan Parsons
Photo: ESO / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 3.0Alan Parsons was an engineer on Dark Side who ultimately had success with his band, the Alan Parsons Project, but he had a falling-out with Pink Floyd members following the immense success of the album. He attributed this to how the public perceived him as having "hung his hat" on his connection to the record.
"I still wake up occasionally, frustrated about the fact that they made untold millions and a lot of the people involved in the record didn't," Parsons said. In a separate interview with Goldmine, he explained why he didn't ultimately get a cut of the album's profits:
I did The Dark Side of the Moon as a staff engineer - which explains why I didn't get rich. Engineers were considered unimportant in those days. It was only in the immediate years after that where they were recognized for their contributions to recording. It was very much a "do what you are told" type of job before that. I didn't get any production credits for Dark Side, but I am happy with what I did contribute to it. I was there.
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Paul McCartney Almost Featured On The Album
Photo: Corwin / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0During the production of Dark Side, Roger Waters suggested recording a Q&A audio of staffers at Abbey Road Studios - where tracking took place - as well as any willing contributors, including friends and family members. One of the interview subjects was Paul McCartney of the Beatles - but the producers ultimately did not use McCartney's audio.
"He was the only person who found it necessary to perform, which was useless, of course," Waters recalled to Rolling Stone. "I thought it was really interesting that he would do that. He was trying to be funny, which wasn't what we wanted at all."
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Jazz Influenced 'Us And Them'
Pink Floyd wrote "Us and Them" for a film soundtrack a few years before the Dark Side recording. It featured prominent jazz influences. It was, as keyboardist Richard Wright explained, an unusual song for pop music at the time.
"It has quite a simple chord sequence, except for the rather strange third chord, influenced by jazz," Wright said of the song. "It was an augmented chord, hardly ever used in pop music then."
For the version on the soundtrack to Zabriskie Point, there was much less there than what made it to Dark Side. The band recycled and reworked the music, which had the working title "The Violence Sequence," into "Us and Them." Wright also wrote the song's bridge for the album's reassembled version.
"We needed a middle-eight. I came up with the chords for that," Wright explained. "It's very flowing and sweet if you look at the verse, then there's the contrast - this big, harder chorus. With the lyrics about the war and the general sitting back - it worked so well."
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'The Dark Side Of The Moon' Featured The Band's First Top 20 Hit In The US
Photo: Erik Calonius/US National Archives and Records Administration / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain"Money," one of the band's most noteworthy songs, was not only their first hit since 1967, but it was also the band's first Top 20 hit in the US. The song, stylistically different for Floyd, drew influence from Booker T and the MGs.
David Gilmour spoke to the Booker T influence in an interview with Rolling Stone:
Getting specific about how and what influenced what is always difficult, but I was a big Booker T fan. I had the Green Onions album when I was a teenager. And in my previous band, we were going for two or three years, and we went through Beatles and Beach Boys, on to all the Stax and soul stuff.
