David Gilmour denies Pink Floyd conspiracy surrounding ‘The Wizard of Oz’
David Gilmour has debunked the story that Pink Floyd deliberately ensured their seminal album, The Dark Side of the Moon, matches up with the classic movie, The Wizard of Oz.
The urban myth was born in 1995 when Charles Savage first brought it to the masses’ attention in an article for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette. Bizarrely, the album perfectly matches the movie, which has made many people believe Pink Floyd cleverly created this on purpose.
Significantly, when the album is played at the same time as the film, Dorothy starts to run after in The Wizard of Oz following the line in ‘Time’ that reads “no one told you where to run”. Furthermore, when Gilmour sings the line “home, home again” in ‘Breathe’, the fortune teller is advising Dorothy to return to Kansas in the film.
Additionally, ‘The Great Gig in the Sky’ kicks in just as the tornado hits Dorothy. The coincidences don’t end there. As the protagonist opens the door to the Technicolour dream of the Munchkinland, ‘Money’ effortlessly soundtracks the events.
While this sounds like it must have been a conscious act on behalf of Pink Floyd, those connected to their camp have always denied this, and now, Gilmour is the latest individual to put the rumours to bed.
During an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on November 7th, Gilmour was asked by the host to deliver a definitive answer on the subject and proceeded to joke, “Well, of course it was.”
However, despite his initial light-hearted response, Gilmore has enjoyed the spectacle of listening to the record while watching The Wizard of Oz, revealing, “We listened to it Polly (Samson) and I, years ago. Somebody said you put the needle on and on the third roar of the MGM lion, you put the needle on for the beginning of Dark Side and there’s these strange synchronicities that happen.”
Although Gilmour concedes that the two pieces of media spookily complement one another exceptionally, this was not done intentionally by Pink Floyd. Instead, the singer-songwriter labelled them “strange coincidences”
Previously, The Dark Side of the Moon‘s engineer, Alan Parsons, has strenuously denied the theory, once remarking, “There simply wasn’t mechanics to do it, we had no means of playing videotapes in the room at all. I don’t think VHS had come along by ’72, had it?”
Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason has also been asked about the subject, which he described as “absolute nonsense.”
Gilmour’s recent remarks on Pink Floyd’s last album
While in the United States on his current tour in support of his new album, Luck and Strange, Gilmour also declared that he was “bullied” into making the final album with the band, 2014’s The Endless River.
Having arrived 20 years after the band’s previous swan song, The Division Bell, their final studio outing as a band received a lukewarm reception from fans, who largely felt that it was not up to scratch with the rest of their back catalogue.
“My mistake, I suppose,” said Gilmour to the Los Angeles Times, “was in being bullied by the record company to have it out as a properly paid-for Pink Floyd record. It should have been clear what it was — it was never intended to be the follow-up to The Division Bell.”
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