PINK FLOYD’S DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

Thirty nine years ago this month Pink Floyd released Dark Side of the Moon and began to ascend up a unique, near gravity defying musical arc of fame, success and unique musical accomplishment, unlike any artist before or since.  

Where Floyd went with their music, others did not follow. For them, no lurid tales of rock star excess or well worn and formulaic songs about the normal tired old themes.  Pink Floyd were very, very different. With a near disdainful remoteness from the world of rock, pop and fandom, they inhabited a distant, cold and refined realm, quietly removed from Rock's vulgarities in a distinctly polite, slightly disapproving, rather English sort of way.  

Starting off in the late 1960s, Pink Floyd’s first 2 albums were a startling psychedelic juxtaposition between childhood nursery rhymes, madness and LSD; those 2 albums being more or less kaleidoscopic windows into Syd Barrett’s state of mind, even though by the second album he was almost out of the band, contributing only one song, the last two, whispered lines of which remain a haunting refrain to a life that went forever out of control

“and what exactly is a dream

And what exactly is a joke……”

Barrett never recovered from Pink Floyd or the 60s drug scene and after Floyd, was never able to perform as a serious artist again, dying a recluse, in Cambridge, in 2006.

Barrett was replaced by guitarist David Gilmour, whose arrival, with his lucid, soaring signature guitar sound, signalled the start of the endless rise of Pink Floyd. The first few Gilmour years saw a couple of good releases that foreshadowed what was to come; from the dreamy soundscapes of Meddle to the strange, semi disturbing images of More to the overlengthy, ramblings of Atom Heart Mother.

However, it was with 1973’s Dark Side of the Moon that Pink Floyd went from being just another really good rock band to something far greater.  Dark Side was the first of a series of almost unbelievable Pink Floyd releases that launched them on their own private trajectory across the rock ’n roll sky. Dark Side was a simply stunning soundtrack to the lurking madness within each of us, set against the thin transience of life and the quiet and measured pointlessness to it all.

 

Every year is getting shorter; never seem to find the time

Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I’d something more to say

Striking a magical balance between sleek yet pounding music and lyrical madness, and recorded almost 40 years ago now, Dark side, like its concepts, remains timeless, neither in nor out of vogue. Standing beyond the fickle tides of easy fashion and bland popularity, it marks the cold juncture between the simple yet comforting illusions we use to comfort our passage through this life with the cold starkness we must all ultimately face.

“For long you live and high you fly

But only if you ride the tide
And balanced on the biggest wave
You race toward an early grave”

Quite simply, it is a remarkable piece of music and set an almost impossibly high standard for future Floyd releases. Floyd’s greatness is not just because of Dark Side, it’s also because of the music they then went on to create in its enormous wake. Dark Side was only the beginning of a journey unique to modern music….

It was followed by Wish You Were here in 1975.  For me, this album was icy in its remoteness, its haunted emptiness served as a soundtrack to the collective despair of the human condition, epitomised by its art work and title track. The stark isolation of each soul trapped in a harsh, jeering world, inhabits songs like Welcome to the Machine:

“Welcome my son, welcome to the machine.

Where have you been? it’s alright we know where you’ve been”.

 There was the mocking illusion of corporate success and the empty ambitions of society in “Have a Cigar”, where eventually all our dreams and achievements wither and fade. Ultimately, we are no more than pawns on someone else’s chess board. Wish You Were Here reminds us that, set against the tides of time, the mark we leave in this world is a small, vapourish thing of little worth.

From here Floyd moved on to Animals in 1977, an altogether heavier album, but which evolved the same themes of despair, but with a sharper, savager edge. Coming to the fore now was Waters lacerating cynicism and anger at the world, howling out of song like Dogs:

“You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to

So that when they turn their backs on you
You’ll get the chance to put the knife in.”

Elsewhere he turns on the fate of the mindless masses and the isolation of the individual in an overcrowded world. Each of us imprisoned in our small controlled and contrived lives, blinded, cajoled and manipulated by authority in all its forms. And, ultimately, led like sheep through the over-managed years of a short futile existence towards that final rendezvous with a blank cold doom.

“What do you get for pretending the dangers not real?
Meek and obedient you follow the leader
Down well-trodden corridors into the valley of steel”.

After Animals it became more and more the Rogers Waters show. Yes, The Wall was great, but for me at least, it was not quite the same. After the Wall came “The Final Cut” practically a Waters’ solo piece. The Final Cut remains to this day quite possibly the world’s bleakest record, by the world’s most miserable man. A work of art? I guess so, yes, but a particularly unenjoyably 45 minute listen.

The rest is history – Floyd broke up, then were reformed by Gilmour a few years later (absent a furious Waters) , law suits, acrimony and disillusion followed as they lived out the lyrical cynicism of their past. Gilmour did manage  2 more (very good) albums before a final calling it of a day 1994 in the face of a still overwhelming demand for more of Floyd’s music, which is unabated to this day. There was a strangely uncomfortable one-off reunion in the mid 2000s that only served to taunt several trillion fans with the flashbacks of what was and the illusions of what might have been. Such is the ethereal, tantalising magic of Pink Floyd, which like its dark moon, is seemingly always, just, there, but out of reach….

Yet Floyd’s Dark Moon still casts its shadow down the decades and across the myriad landscapes of modern music. It’s very unlikely there will ever be another release that sends its incedible, echoing sonic shockwaves out so far and for so long. Likewise with the slowly distancing Floyd, of the five who at one time or another constituted the band, only three now remain alive. The ghosts of rumours of reformations surface from time to time. The London 2012 Olympics is perhaps last great chance, but as time continues and Waters and Gilmour age, so the likelihood recedes……and there are unlikely to be any pretenders to their frozen, shimmering crown.

“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 LONG SHADOW OF THE DARK AGES

In the Middle Ages, and long before that, certain “facts” held indisputable sway in the minds of our  ancestors.  It was taken as fact, for instance, that the earth was flat (and you could actually fall of it), devils really existed, as did witches who could fly and change shape (like the characters in True Blood). Our ancestors believed the stars and the sun all revolved around our planet and the northern lights, they were sure, were the spirits of their dead ancestors. The list goes on and on…..

Science has gradually rolled back most of these beliefs, with  demonstrable fact and proof replacing superstition and cult belief.  Whilst there was a certain delightful logic to the assumption that, if the earth was in fact as flat as a table, then you probably could have sailed off its edge, it is one of those hilariously quaint assumptions relegated to history. However, some of these equally implausible, yet more unpleasant beliefs from the dark ages have been curiously resistant to the tides of civilisation, logic and common sense.

In the USA, Presidential hopeful Rick Santorum really seems to believe, not only that a physical entity called Satan exists, but that he has taken a personal decision to attack America via its academics (one could be forgiven for wondering if Wall Street’s denizens might not have made a more plausible target of Mr Satan…). How Mr Santorum actually "knows" this is not clear, however its incongruous to hear such beliefs espoused from someone who would be expected to deal with incredibly complex economic, financial and international / diplomatic challenges if he became President and from whom a balanced, reasoned and enlighten outlook on the world is essential. Not so apparently with Mr Santorum.

In London witchcraft murders by children of children have taken place giving expression to beliefs of terrifying and primitive barbarity in the world’s capital of Finance. A grisly and blood curdling tale of torture and murder of a child emerged in court, followed by the police confirming that this sort of thing took place more often that generally acknowledged....

Elsewhere in the UK right now men of the cloth (no women please) are turning various bright and bilious hues at the thought of gay people getting married. Indeed, Archbishop Rowan Williams has hurried off, beard in tow, to see his counterpart in the Vatican to confer, amongst other things, about this dreadful state of affairs. Given the Vatican’s seeming near tolerance of child abuse amongst its own clergy, one might have assumed the good Archbishop could have found a more appropriate figure with which to confer over this delicate matter. Setting that to one side however, why is there this reluctance to finally let go of a mind-set of deeply ingrained prejudices that stretches back centuries.

Elsewhere, in the Middle East, Iran’s President Ahmadinejad believes that, a few years ago, he had a paranormal experience whilst addressing the United Nations, and that he was bathed in light from heaven whilst all the other leaders of the world were frozen before him during his speech (perhaps it was just incredibly dull, but, somehow, I doubt it). He is convinced his main mission in life is to pave the way for the return of his messiah. Ahmadinejad believes that when this happens it will be the end of the world – a sort of glorious conflagration.  This man is seeking to build a nuclear bomb. Along with the Mullahs and Ayatollahs, amongst whom he counts as a moderate, they harbour a world view (and sense of fashion) hardly changed since the time of the crusades and before. They are considerably less enlightened than Saladin who in fact battled the Crusaders about 900 years ago and who was much admired as a cultured and chivalrous man, which cannot be said for all his heirs. It’s as if we are regressing and we rush forward.

How is it in an era of near unbelievable progress where humans are making incredible and wonderful strides in science, medicine and technology, that the black shadow of these often near primitive and deeply unpleasant beliefs and prejudices still fall about us? Perhaps these and other belief systems run on some form of “ancient program” in the human mind that, having evolved with us over millennia, predisposes the human condition to this kind of way of thinking? That’s probably a question for someone like Steven Pinker (unless Satan’s got him), but how else is it explicable that obviously intelligent and well educated people hold onto beliefs that are as misplaced today as a belief in a flat earth was in the dark ages and before?