Why Paul McCartney was cut from Pink Floyd album ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’
As the 1970s were dawning, Pink Floyd slowly started picking up the pieces of their band. After Syd Barrett fell prey to his internal delusions, Roger Waters and David Gilmour began steering the band towards a more progressive territory, far from the space rock that happened on albums like Piper at The Gates of Dawn. Although glam rock and hard rock were having their time in the spotlight, The Dark Side of the Moon marked a turning point for music as a whole.
Looking to create something about the nature of existence, each sequence of the album features different pieces of what makes the members of Floyd human, from the ringing registers of ‘Money’ to talking about life slowly passing them by on ‘Time’. Then again, the band were looking to use more than just instruments and lyrics to tell the story of the album.
Between recording the bed tracks for each of the songs, the band would ask different people at the studio questions about existence, including phrases like ‘When was the last time you were violent?’ or ‘Are you afraid of dying?’. While some of these interview clips were used in the final product, one music legend was left conspicuously absent.
Of the many people coming in and out of Abbey Road Studios was Paul McCartney, who had been putting the finishing touches on Wings’ Red Rose Speedway when Floyd was working on the album. Though Macca was happy to participate in the sessions, Waters didn’t think his answers to the questions suited the tone of the album.
Although McCartney’s answers remain a mystery, Waters thought that the recording of his voice wasn’t worth it, telling biographer John Harris: “He was the only one who found it necessary to perform, which was useless. 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.”
It’s easy to see where Waters is coming from when listening to the other answers that the interviewees gave at the time. From the doorman at the studio to some of the road crew roaming around the studio floor, the dry wit and drab tone of voice help put the listener in the world of the album, as if these disembodied voices are casually passing by their head as the rest of the song plays out.
Granted, The Beatles would find a way to make it onto the final version of the album anyway. Towards the end of the project, as the song ‘Eclipse’ is fading out, fans are treated to one more comment from the doorman saying that there’s no such thing as the dark side of the moon because it’s all dark. As this piece was being recorded, there were the faint sounds of an orchestra performing off to the side, in the midst of recording a classical version of The Beatles’ song ‘Ticket to Ride’.
Although McCartney’s contributions were rejected, he did stay on good terms with the members of the band, with David Gilmour even guesting on his album of covers Run Devil Run in 1999. There’s no doubting McCartney’s ability behind a microphone, but his peppy spirit is the exact opposite of what Pink Floyd was all about.
