How The Beatles mystically came to feature on Pink Floyd album ‘Dark Side of the Moon’
Music can change the world, which makes how much of it is left to happenstance all the more fascinating. David Bowie got his iconic ‘ding-dang-dong’ riff for ‘Ashes to Ashes’ from Roy Bittan simply after bumping into the E-Street Band instrumentalist in the communal lounge area at The Power Station studios, a mere traffic jam brought Buffalo Springsteen together, and The Jacksons came upon ‘Blame It on the Boogie’ after their manager saw the songwriter’s name Mick Jackson at a music fare and became curious. The mystic collision of The Beatles and Pink Floyd is no different.
If you squint your ears amid the final throes of ‘Eclipse’ that closes Pink Floyd’s 1973 record-breaker Dark Side of the Moon, you will hear an orchestral version of ‘Ticket to Ride’ by The Beatles lingering in the background. Without amplification and clarity, this can barely be heard unless you lend Spinal Tap’s speakers. Alas, it is there.
And there is even an explanation as to why. As ever, Pink Floyd were keen to fill their effort with artistic fodder—the little soundbites, collages of field recordings and soundscapes that almost make their tracks too long and lagged for the hectic pace of modern life. Like Simon & Garfunkel before them on their record Bookends, the band sought to litter the album with resonant little interview snippets they had gathered up.
While recording the album at Abbey Road Studios, the band interviewed several members of staff there. One of which was the doorman, Gerry O’Driscoll, whose chair just so happened to be stationed adjacent to an open door through which an orchestral version of ‘Ticket to Ride’ was being mixed in one of the many studios. Thus, as he mumbles away in response to whatever obscure question the Floyd put before him, you can faintly hear the ‘Fab Four’ in a fittingly mystic mark of their cultural transcendence.
As it happens, the band were initially meant to feature in a much more direct way, but this rather more happenstance inclusion surely signifies their inescapable ubiquity than the Paul McCartney interview clip that Roger Waters cut. You see, ‘Macca’ was also present in Abbey Road when the Dark Side of the Moon was being made — he was in another studio cutting Red Rose Speedway. So, Waters thrust a microphone under his nose in a spare moment.
“He was the only person who found it necessary to perform, which was useless, of course,” Waters told Pink Floyd biographer John Harris. Therefore, he cut the snippet because it went against the naturalistic grain of what the band were hoping to achieve with the interviews. “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,” Waters added.
This makes it all the more eerie that as O’Driscoll was uttering the fateful line, “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,” McCartney’s last laugh was ringing out in the background. When you add to the fact that The Beatles pretty much brought ‘sound collage’ to prominence with Sgt. Pepper’s, you have yourself a real mind-bending quirk of the musical universe.
You can hear the whole thing unfurl in the clip below (turn your volume up).
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Beatles Newsletter
All the latest stories about The Beatles from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.