The Making of The Dark Side of The Moon - A Pink Floyd Music Doc

►CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
01:15 The Experimental Phase
05:24 Writing Dark Side
08:10 Recording
13:33 Obscured by Clouds
15:48 Finishing Touches
21:03 Packaging
22:58 Release
25:59 Legacy / Final Thoughts
916-C W. Burbank Blvd 176
Burbank, CA 91506
USA

►WORKS CITED

Blake, Mark. Comfortably Numb: The Inside Story of Pink Floyd. Hachette Books, 2008.
Broackes, Victoria, and Anna Landreth Strong, editors. Pink Floyd: Their Mortal Remains. Harry N. Abrams, 2017.

Margotin, Philippe, and Jean-Michel Guesdon. Pink Floyd All the Songs: The Story Behind Every Track. Kindle ed., Running Press, 2017. Accessed 2 December 2022.

Mason, Nick. Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd (Reading Edition): (Rock and Roll Book, Biography of Pink Floyd, Music Book). Edited by Philip Dodd, Chronicle Books, 2017.

Povey, Glenn. Echoes: The Complete History of Pink Floyd. Chicago Review Press, 2010.

Rodley, Chris, director. The Pink Floyd Story: Which One Is Pink? BBC, 2007.

Schaffner, Nicholas. Saucerful of Secrets: The Pink Floyd Odyssey. Dell, 1992.

Uncut Magazine. The History of Rock 1973. Time Inc.

Vinyl Rewind is your home for vinyl related content on YouTube. New uploads feature vinyl-based music reviews, video essays, artist interviews, and collecting tips, for both the novice and expert vinyl enthusiast. Vinyl Rewind is dedicated to preserving an analogue lifestyle in the digital age. Watch-Listen-Learn

[garysalisbury]

Just amazing that they churned out Obscured By Clouds, which is a good album, on the side while recording and touring Dark Side. Such a prolific period.

[BangBang-hkrg]

I can’t really say anything about this album that hasn’t already been said. It’s simply musical perfection.

[bjornboi]

Babe wake up, vinyl rewind is about to drop a banger

[TheCountofToulouse]

You know it's good when it's timeless. People do reaction videos to the songs and they're blown away. Just a few years ago, a younger dude I was playing guitar with heard me talking about it, so he bought a CD and just let it play. He said I couldn't believe that someone was able to even DO that. I first had a tape cassette and later a CD of the album. The curious thing about Floyd is that when you discover them, you have this "why didn't I KNOW about this?" feeling as you listen to it.

[andrewpappas]

Every time I listen to Dark Side I’m still just blown away by the production and the overall sound, still one of my absolute favourite albums and undoubtedly one of the greatest rock (and generally overall) records of all time

[thezenitsufan]

I think it's great that you're revisiting this album to do it better justice

[dont_follow]

I never get tired of learning new things about my favorite album.

[BillMueller]

On March 5th 1973, Pink Floyd played Cobo Hall in Detroit, just five days after the release of Dark Side of the Moon. About half way into the show, with the PA at full volume and Alan Parsons at the FOH console, a ballast weight fell from the rafters into a flash pot (a canister filled with pyrotechnic chemicals) and caused a massive explosion on stage.

The weight itself was blasted into small chunks of flying shrapnel. According to what I was told by the crew at the time, the explosion ripped a hole in the stage and threw chunks of wood 30 rows into the audience. Roger and Alan Parsons told me separately, that one man was hit in the chest by a chunk of plywood and critically injured. It was a miracle that none of the band or crew were killed.

The force of the explosion blew every single driver in every single cabinet in the PA system! Let that sink in for a moment. This was one of the largest PA systems ever constructed to that time, and according to the crew, chunks of drivers showered down on the first ten rows of the audience. I can't imagine their shock.

Something that I didn't know until 2015 when I met Roger after all those years, was that immediately after the explosion, the PA crew scrounged together some spare cabinets and built a tiny system, one cabinet per band member, and they finished the freakin' show! That was the beginning of a heroic effort on the part of two sound crews.

I was a roadie for Heil Sound at the time. Heil Sound was one of the largest PA companies in the US with two large systems, one for Humble Pie and one for The Who along with lots of other gear to put together smaller one-off systems. We were also one of the only JBL speaker rebuilding companies in the mid west. It turned out that Bob had met Pink Floyd some months earlier when he flew to London to purchase a Mavis console for the two big systems. So Bob knew who Pink Floyd was, but most of us on the crew had no idea. At least I had no idea who they were.

The night of March 5th, someone from Pink Floyd, somehow got Bob's home phone number (communication was NOTHING like it is today!) and told him of their plight. Bob rallied a crew, me included, and the next morning at dawn we loaded up a straight bed truck with piles of 18" and 15" JBL speakers, boxes and boxes of mid range and tweeter drivers, hundreds of drivers in all and headed for Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis, Pink Floyds next stop on the tour.

We met the Floyd crew at the stage door and formed a plan. They would bring in the cabinets and begin constructing the system as planned and as they built the massive stacked system, we would remove the backs from the cabinets and replace the blown drivers with brand new JBLs. If I recall there were only four or five of us Heil roadies on the gig, so the idea of replacing an entire sound systems driver contingent was really really a tall hill to climb. We actually had to make TWO trips back and forth from Marissa to St Louis to get more speakers!

My job was a little different from the others. Pink Floyd had decided to take the opportunity to either set up their first quadraphonic system for the rest of the tour, or to replace the one they had. That was my job. I had to run thousands of feet of speaker wire and set up a Heil Sound quad speakers that Pink Floyd used for the rest of the tour and assist some guy named Alan Parsons to set up and run a little TEAC 2340 quad tape machine. (Examples of the Heil speakers are coincidentally in the Rock Hall of Fame, but not because they were used on the Dark Side of the Moon tour, but just because Bob is Bob.)

We went to work as quick as we could repairing and setting up the new systems and worked right on through the day without a break. No lunch, no nothing. Just get the job done. Five O'clock came and the band came out to do a sound check, except there was no functioning PA yet, so they just played with their amps on stage and maybe a little bit of monitor. Nothing out front.

I had no idea who Pink Floyd was and from my perspective at the front of house console, I thought they sounded kind of like a sleepy blues band. Ha! Was I wrong.

Showtime came and went and the PA wasn't ready. A half hour later and we still didn't have the system put together yet. Around an hour after showtime, someone made the call to open the doors and people streamed in, excited to hear some band I had never heard of. I still had no idea.

Around 9:30PM the house lights went down and a few seconds later, the curtain started to climb up out of the darkness and the PA EXPLODED again, but this time with some of the wildest avant-garde music I had ever heard. That got my attention! After about a half hour the band took a break and we continued to work. When they came back just a few minutes later, the first strains of Dark Side of the Moon erupted from the most amazing sounding PA I had ever heard! OMG. All of the tweeters were not yet replaced and we still had a crew member standing on each stack, screwing the backs on cabinets, but the sound was literally breathtaking. The scene was epic. Like a scene from King Kong.

Then it was time for my quad system to make itself known. I found myself standing next to Alan Parsons, while he smoothly swung back and forth between the FOH console and the little TEAC tape machine. He had gobs of white leader between each sound effect and in near total darkness, would fast forward the tape to the next SFX and cue it up. Then back to the console for a vocal ride or guitar ride and then back to the play button on the little tape machine.

I say I found myself because at the first notes of the first song, I began to have an out of body experience like I had never experienced before. I had no idea who Pink Floyd was and was in no way expecting the sonic feast I was experiencing. I was an audio snob up to that point, and believed I knew how sound systems should sound. Oh no, I had no freakin' idea how sound systems should sound. That much was clear.

The PA, with brand new JBL speakers and drivers, and The Dark Side of the Moon flowing from it, was unlike any I had ever heard or have heard since. I was standing right in Alan Parsons sweet spot and the balance of the quad system was unbelievable. There were voices in my head. There were bells sweeping through my body and out the other side. At one point, a combination of exhaustion and elation almost cause me to lose my balance and I had to lean on the table, still being careful not to get anywhere near that tiny little player.

When the show was over, I gathered myself and we Heil crew loaded our truck with our tools. I shook Alan's hand, got a hug from a Floyd roadie as we all clapped each other on the backs backstage and almost without a word, we drove off into the night, only suspecting the profound musical event we had just witnessed and helped rescue. With every passing day, the events of March 6th, 1973 have become more profound to me. Kiehl Auditorium is long gone, Many of us on the two crews are also gone. But the memories are as vivid as last nights sunset.

In 2015, I was working at Omega Recordings in Rockville MD, (I now work at Sheffield Recordings LTD in Baltimore County MD) when Roger came through to do a rehearsal for an upcoming Wounded Warriors concert. I only had a short time to talk to Roger, but we talked about the show and the rescue, all those years ago. He filled me in on some of the things I didn't know about the accident and the systems.

They used our Heil quadraphonic system for the rest of the American tour.

Bill Mueller

[Danjoker.]

I never knew that John Lennon's first solo album was an inspiration for Roger Waters. Very cool.

[lesterpaul]

Pink Floyd just released a lot of the dark side tour recordings from 72 on Spotify.
In one of these shows my dad was in the audience and I can' t tell why this is a special feeling for me to know that he was there in this venue before I was born.

Dark side always was one of my absolute favorite albums since my dad introduced it to me.
Now he' s gone and what a pity it is he couldn' t listen to this concert once again.

[MichaM]

Every time David Gilmour plays his solos I feel like he's hitting me with some philosophical question and I just can't find the answer 🤘🏻

Two things. Goosebumps and tears. That's what this album is all about.

[kevinmcgrath]

I have my half-brother to thank for introducing me to Floyd when I was only 12 (he was 17 ) and I’ve been nuts about them ever since, I’m now 47 and even though my musical tastes have changed in a lot of ways elsewhere, I can always stick Darkside or Animals on and they just never get old, Anything of theirs in fact.Just amazing music that I can’t find a rival for .

[xsm]

Even though The Wall is the undisputed masterpiece from the Floyd, I still like darkside now and again, it has that wooly blanket vibe to it.

[colliemac]

I’m 71 & I LOVE Dark Side.. every song is brilliant.. I can put this album on any time & love it, my daughter is 25 she loves it too. Clare Tory should have got more recognition she made Big Gig her own.

[michaelbartholomew]

Perfect record! I remember listening to this while watching "The wizard of Oz" and being mind blown at how many things actually sync up. An act of sheer genius. If it wasn't intentional then it's one hell of a cosmic coincidence!

[SpeedOfThought]

i think that's very interesting how david and roger wanted it to sound differently and had a mediator making compromises throughout the whole thing. i feel like that's actually a really unique and smart way to do it that's probably extremely rare in all music.

[commanderstraker]

Great video !
The voice saying "I don't know, I was really drunk at the time" at the beginning of the track"Us And Them" was spoken by Paul McCartney and Wings guitarist Henry McCullough.

[radiomindchatter]

Excellent and concise episode on Pink Floyd. Only a fan could pull that off.

[ManzaMediaTV]

This was the most concise and easy to understand breakdown of how this legendary album came to light. Such a great record! Thanks, Eric!