The Pink Floyd album David Gilmour called a quantum leap: “It was very difficult”
Most bands aren’t normally ready for the big time when they release their magnum opus. Even though it’s one thing for bands to have a gradual career that keeps building momentum, it often ends up that an act was bubbling up from the underground one day, and the next day, they are one of the biggest names in music without even trying that hard. Pink Floyd had already been building steam as a progressive rock band, but David Gilmour thought Dark Side of the Moon was a jump that none of them had anticipated.
When you really think about it, a band like Pink Floyd didn’t even seem like they belonged on the charts to begin with. Although they had some great tunes and could play their asses off in every club that they filled, was anyone really clamouring to hear songs like ‘Echoes’ being played on the radio?
That answer is probably no, but ‘Echoes’ was actually a far more important song than anybody had thought. Spanning over 20 minutes, the band finally found their sound on the piece, with Roger Waters later recalling that it was the beginning of his trying to relate to an audience more profoundly than before.
As the band took to the road for the next album, they started testing the material that would eventually appear on Dark Side of the Moon. While they may have been under different titles, tracks like ‘On the Run’ were already in place when they came into the studio, only to be twisted into different shapes and dominated by a sequencer instead of a blues-infused jam.
Not wanting to skimp out on the promotion for their latest record, the band’s record company went all out in giving them proper treatment in the public eye, which ended up turning songs like ‘Money’ into one of the biggest hits of the 1970s. The band could have hardly asked for a better boost, especially with an album as conceptual as this.
As Waters tells the story of people working their way through life and trying to hold onto their humanity, the audience saw pieces of themselves in almost every track. While that everyman mentality eventually turned the group into one of the biggest success stories in progressive rock, Gilmour admitted to not being entirely comfortable with it.
When discussing the album later, Gilmour was thrown for a loop by the album’s popularity, saying, “We knew that it was gonna do a lot better than anything previously, but I, for one, didn’t quite foresee the quantum leap that was made in popularity. It was a very difficult period. You’ve sort of achieved all your childhood’s rock and roll dreams, and when you’ve reached that sort of pinnacle, you have to really ask yourself what you’re still in it for.”
Anyone would have been desensitised, but Pink Floyd’s decision to write based on those feelings resulted in their best material on albums like Animals and Wish You Were Here. But Dark Side of the Moon has always remained their most classic work for a damn good reason. No matter how much people try to separate themselves from it, the themes of time, money, and what drives someone mad are something that every one of us is going to have to grapple with at least once in our lives.
