ShareThisBy SCOTT MERVIS
Sunday, November 05, 2006
It begins with a simple, soothing request _ "Breathe ... breathe in the air" _ and then proceeds to blow your mind.
Pink Floyd's "The Dark Side of the Moon," released in the post-hippie haze of 1973, is a staggering work that helped define a new era of high fidelity rock while also acting as an essential rite of passage for teenagers experimenting with things to breathe in other than air.
Spawned by a band with an acute identity crisis and only modest prior success, it became a monster, lingering on the Billboard Top 200 for 741 consecutive weeks, the longest of any record in history. It has sold more than 40 million copies worldwide and continues to move about 10,000 copies per week.
It placed at No. 43 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the Top 500 Albums of All Time. Reader polls in magazine's like Q and Guitar World generally place it in the Top 10.
To the chagrin of Floyd fans worldwide, the life of the "Dark Side" has far exceeded the band. All of the members who worked on it are still living _ they just don't talk much. In fact, they hadn't played together since 1985 before the brief one-off reunion last summer for the benefit of Live 8.
But with Pink Floyd in storage, Roger Waters, Floyd's bassist and visionary, is on a North American tour unleashing Pink Floyd classics, solo work and, for the second set, "The Dark Side of the Moon" in its entirety. The music is enhanced by video projections, theatrical staging, 360-degree quadraphonic sound and the flying pink pig, now sporting the words "Impeach Bush Now."
Pink Floyd did not begin as the kind of band that would generate a "Dark Side of the Moon." Its roots go back to 1964 and a London outfit called Sigma 6 that included Waters, drummer Nick Mason and keyboardist Richard Wright. They became T-set, the Megadeaths and the Abdabs before the newest member, mercurial singer-songwriter Syd Barrett, dubbed them The Pink Floyd Sound in tribute to blues singers Pink Anderson and Floyd Council.
This new band, establishing itself at the UFO club in late 1965, was known for infusing rockers like "Louie Louie" and "Roadrunner" with weird psychedelic jams, designed partially to fill out the set. Eventually the covers were augmented by Barrett's fanciful originals, and Pink Floyd charted with "Arnold Layne," a whimsical tale of a transvestite, in March 1967.
The still-loved single "See Emily Play" went to No. 6 in England, advancing the band's drug-inspired psychedelic-pop debut, "Piper at the Gates of Dawn," a record that a certain cult following still swears to be the best of Pink Floyd. It would be the first and last Floyd album helmed by Barrett, who was experiencing a dangerous mix of schizophrenia and LSD.
With Barrett falling apart _ he would occasionally show up at gigs and just strum one chord _ the band recruited guitarist-singer David Gilmour and became a five-piece for a short time in 1968, before finally dismissing its leader. (Barrett's sad history of "unfinished genius" ended when he died this summer.)
With Barrett exiled, the band went through a long transitional phase. But clearly, under Waters, the strongest personality of the bunch and a non-drug user, the tone began to harden.
In "The Dark Side of the Moon: The Making of the Pink Floyd Masterpiece," John Harris writes, "Barrett's '67-era personality was detached, non-materialistic, increasingly astral; Waters, by contrast, affected a hard-headed drive." Harris contrasts Barrett's idyllic upbringing with that of architecture student Waters, a darker soul whose father died in Italy fighting for the British during World War II when Roger was only 5 months old.
After a few successes, Waters came to the table _ Mason's kitchen table, in fact _ with an idea for a concept record. There would be no story line a la "Tommy," just a couple light themes like aging, death, greed and war, and a dissertation on the ways modern society can deliver one to madness. "If there's any central message," Waters says in the Harris book, "it's this: (life) is not a rehearsal. ...We all make a small mark on the painting of life."
The music, of course, manages to be cosmic, futuristic and soulful with the flowing qualities of Gilmour, the aggressive bass lines of Waters and the wondrous playing of Wright. Waters' words are poetic but tangible, a long way from the surrealism of the past. The mournful "Time" looks at how life can slip away while you're not paying attention. Waters, raised a socialist, scolds the upper crust on "Money." The echoe-y "Us and Them" is a beautifully understated anti-war song dealing with the timeless issue of the poor fighting the rich man's battle.
"The Dark Side of the Moon" hit No. 4 in England and then debuted at No. 95 in the United States in March 1973. But the buzz built and the U.S. tour, complete with a plane crashing into the stage, pushed it to the top of the charts by the end of April.
Unfortunately, long-standing tensions between Waters and Gilmour became a communication breakdown by 1985, and Waters left, calling Pink Floyd "a spent force creatively."
When the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996, Waters was a no-show. Although he had said he would never work again with Gilmour, he relented last summer for the Live 8 benefit concert in London. Despite relations between them now reportedly being "amicable," there are no plans for a Pink Floyd reunion, with or without Waters.
(Contact Scott Mervis at smervis(at)post-gazette.com.)
