(Credits: Far Out / Pink Floyd)
There’s no set structure to what constitutes a good Pink Floyd song. If there were to be one written formula as to how to capture their essence, chances are that David Gilmour and Roger Waters would be off on their own solo careers trying to make their successors their masterpieces to this day. From where Richard Wright stood, he thought that Dark Side of the Moon encompassed everything the band was about in their prime.
When they first got started with Gilmour, there seemed to be no rhyme or reason for anything they did. Their zany leader Syd Barrett was gone, and the studio seemed to be the optimal place for everyone to get weird with sounds no matter what they thought of, leading to some songs that went in strange directions like ‘A Saucerful of Secrets’.
Every album was a new challenge, though, and Meddle was the first time that they started to talk to each other through music. Whereas ‘One of These Days’ and ‘San Tropez’ showed a glimpse at the rock side of the band’s sound, ‘Echoes’ was a much different beast, combining different soundscapes and song structures to create this long, expansive piece.
Atom Heart Mother may have started this kind of grandiose piece, but since no one in the group really cared for the final product of their previous effort, ‘Echoes’ was something that every band member brought their all to. Now, just imagine if they could find a concept that combined all those ideas…
Looking to push themselves further after the soundtrack Obscured By Clouds, The Dark Side of the Moon started off as a concept by Waters about what makes people go insane. Meant to be taken in as one long piece, the entire project showed the world what progressive rock could sound like without having to compromise its complexity.
For Wright, this was what Pink Floyd was always working towards, recalling while talking to John Edginton, “Dark Side of The Moon was (the one) we were working on together. Now, I always believed that’s the best Floyd music. When it was a combination of Dave, me and Roger, let’s say the three of us writing together. Obviously, there’s individual songs which I didn’t write or Dave didn’t write. But basically just being in the studio playing together.”
They even had their sound down to a science before they had recorded the thing. When cutting their teeth on the road, the band would run through various drafts of the songs, including bits and pieces of what would become sections like ‘Breathe’ and ‘On the Run’ later.
Although everyone had their own instrument, the most important instrument in the final product was the studio itself. Utilising everything they could at Abbey Road Studios, the use of various clocks on ‘Time’ as well as Clare Torry’s amazing vocal solo on the song ‘The Great Gig in the Sky’ would become synonymous with 1970s rock and roll. The rest of Pink Floyd’s career may have seen the band getting more divided as they went along, but if The Dark Side of the Moon taught them anything, it’s that they always worked better off each other than apart.