“That wasn’t pretty”: Pink Floyd’s failed first performance of ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’
Imagine working tirelessly on what you consider your masterpiece, slowly edging towards the day when you can show it off to your fans, eagerly anticipating something new to digest and perhaps fall in love with. The excitement is palpable from all angles, and you’ve been looking forward to the occasion after having kept things under wraps for months, perhaps years, on end. Having tried and been unsuccessful on previous occasions to bring together an entire album of songs unified by a single concept, Pink Floyd felt as though they’d finally got the formula right when it came to showcasing their new project, tentatively titled The Dark Side of the Moon.
However, when it came to premiering the new music they’d been busy working away at since finishing Meddle in late 1971, their debut performance of the new song suite at Brighton Dome didn’t exactly shine in the way they might have hoped it would. They had largely been performing older material at their live shows, and fans were champing at the bit to get a taste of new stuff, but instead, they were treated to something that ultimately left attendees in a state of confusion.
The Dome had been a regular stop on Pink Floyd’s tours since they first performed there in 1967 when founding member Syd Barrett still fronted them, and its palatial splendour seemed like the perfect spot to debut Dark Side at the beginning of their 1972 tour. Drummer Nick Mason was in particularly good spirits ahead of the occasion, saying that “all of us feel more excited than we have for ages because we have new material and new equipment.” The stage was, by all accounts, set for the band to stun their audience.
With the swelling organs and the iconic pulse beating around the hall, the band opened their set with ‘Speak to Me/Breathe’ in a fashion that dazzled the crowd, but things didn’t seem to be playing out in the way that they’d expected. The songs were a little jazzier than they had been in the past, rather than setting out on lengthy psychedelic odysseys, but that didn’t matter to the audience.
All sorts of disorienting bursts of noise were blaring out of the quadrophonic sound system at the venue, and while the band had maybe intended for it to send people into raptures and deliver a profound experience, certain vital elements, such as the interweaving vocal harmonies, were being quashed by an overwhelming drone sound. The hissing noises also swallowed up the samples of spoken Biblical passages and began to lose all impact.
It wasn’t until David Gilmour and Roger Waters entered into ‘Money’ that things got too much, and in a fit of frustration, the band abandoned the performance around two-thirds of the way through the set. “That wasn’t pretty,” Waters said to the audience. “We’ll fix that.”
The group eventually returned to the stage, but not to complete their rendition of Dark Side. Finishing off with five older numbers, including an overly lengthy rendition of ‘Echoes’ that supposedly dampened the mood of an audience who had already been disappointed by the abrupt end to the proposed performance. Mason explained to a reporter after the show that “basically what happened was the most incredible tone started rushing through the PA. The new lighting system is run off a seperate circuit, and due to some power failure somewhere we had to double up on the circuit.”
Were the band disappointed by the failed first run-through of the new project? Of course, they were – they were aiming for nothing but perfection. However, ever the professional, Mason shed some light on their thought process behind returning to the stage. “I think, in that situation, you have to decide whether the show must go on, or whether it’s better to stop the show and sort things out – which is what we decided to do.”
He continued, trying to remain the most upbeat member of the band about the botched performance. “Frankly, I thought some of tonight was fantastic,” he said. “There’s all sorts of cueing things that we have to sort out, but the lighting system is amazing. It’s a new start.”
The performance would be attempted again the following night at Portsmouth Guildhall, but on that occasion, things went considerably better than they had in Brighton. The new start, after stalling once, was kicking into gear.
