The songwriting dispute at the start of a classic Pink Floyd album
The Dark Side of the Moon sets its tone with a dark and mysterious opening collage of sounds called ‘Speak to Me’. Incorporating a drum meant to sound like a heartbeat, some of the sound effects from ‘Money’ and ‘Time’, snippets of interviews, reversed piano, additional tape loops, maniacal laughter, and some of Clare Torry’s hysterical screaming from ‘The Great Gig in the Sky’, ‘Speak to Me’ is perfect opening setpiece for what Pink Floyd would unfurl over the next nine tracks of The Dark Side of the Moon.
It’s also barely a song: at just one minute long, there’s no real music in ‘Speak to Me’ – just noises and mood that act as a great intro for both ‘Breathe’ and the album as a whole. It’s an overture for what’s to come, but since the band decided to list it as a separate track, somebody had to take songwriting credit for the song. That went to drummer Nick Mason, giving him a rare solo songwriting credit in the Pink Floyd discography.
For his part, Mason claims to have composed and arranged the tape loops into the final product, fully justifying his solo credit. “It was an assembly that I did with existing music,” Mason told Uncut Magazine in 2003. “You could say there’s no original material there, or you could say it’s an entirely original assembly.” However, some of his bandmates remember it differently.
In the same article, Richard Wright recalls that the credit on ‘Speak to Me’ was meant to give Mason some additional songwriting income. “Nick gets credited on ‘Speak To Me’, when, in fact, that was just us giving him some publishing,” Wright explained. Up to that point, Mason had been given songwriting credits in group instrumental compositions and received a solo credit for the experimental collage ‘The Grand Vizier’s Garden Party’ from Ummagumma.
For his part, Roger Waters recalled being the principal composer of the song. “I thought the album needed some kind of overture and I fiddled around with the heartbeat, the sound effects and Clare Torry screaming until it sounded right,” Waters told Peter Henderson in a track-by-track analysis for the album’s 25th anniversary.
“God, I resent giving that to him now,” Waters would later claim. “’Cause he had nothing to do with it… It was like a gift. It was all right at the time.” In the album’s credits, Mason and Waters are both credited for tape loops. Perhaps it was the sole work of one or the other, or perhaps it was a collaboration. We may never know, but the only thing we can truly cite is the credits as they appear. That makes Mason the sole author, whether his bandmates want to remember it that way or not.
Check out ‘Speak to Me’ down below.
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