The Pink Floyd album David Gilmour preferred over ‘Dark Side of the Moon’: “I think it’s better for me”
No one should be forced to live in the shadow of one album for the rest of their lives. Even if they created the spiritual successor to a Beatles classic, that shouldn’t mean any band should stop after they’ve clearly made something perfect. Although Pink Floyd already had their work cut out for them following the release of Dark Side of the Moon, David Gilmour knew there was still some ground that could be covered that the prog legends hadn’t touched on before.
Then again, it was already a small miracle that they were able to make something as gripping as their magnum opus. Despite being known as much for its iconic cover art today as for the music within, Dark Side of the Moon was the culmination of years of hard work. Every member of the group finally realised that the best way for them to work together was to combine all of their strengths under one roof, all tied together with Roger Waters’s lyrics about the human condition.
Whenever a band makes an album that becomes a mainstay of households around the world, though, there comes a point where they start asking questions. It’s every musician’s dream to play the best shows they can and sell the most albums, but when all those dreams are finally realised, there’s no real rulebook on where to go next. But Waters knew how to move on, and that meant taking aim squarely at the record industry.
Although Wish You Were Here did have the distinction of being one glorious tribute to the band’s former frontman, Syd Barrett, the core pieces of the record are also a warning about what the industry can do to someone. ‘Have A Cigar’ is already a punk-tinged statement about how nasty the suits could be, and ‘Welcome to the Machine’ is practically a rock and roll song written by George Orwell, talking about the dangers of what happens when people sink their teeth into you.
But the best part of Wish You Were Here is its ability to take its time. Since Dark Side of the Moon worked as one continuous piece throughout its runtime, a lot of Wish You Were Here has more wiggle room with both halves of ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’. There are tunes like the title track that offer “hit” material, but having the album’s epic be so lovingly crafted is exactly what they needed to do to make Barrett proud, especially the callback to ‘See Emily Play’ in the final moments of the record.
Although the songs weren’t as individualised this time around, Gilmour thought that Wish You Were Here managed to hold its own next to their magnum opus, saying, “I like the balance of music to words on Wish You Were Here, and I think we took a step back towards Meddle, if you like, and had a better balance of music to lyrics, and I think it’s…better – for me, better balanced than Dark Side of the Moon. I still think that the balance, moving back towards sort of more instrumental passages and some of those spacier things was a good thing to do.”
If Wish You Were Here struck that balance better, though, Animals may have been the moment they went too far over the line. Every song was way too long to be a single, but even when they leaned towards individual tracks on The Wall, their whole approach felt a little bit cheap, especially when spending an entire track on a scene like ‘Don’t Leave Me Now.’
While Pink Floyd always struggled to balance the music and conceptual pieces of its sound, Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here are ideal representations of what both sides of its sound are supposed to be. It’s not exactly radio-friendly, but after taking the plunge, most people realise what they have been missing all those years.
