After 42 minutes and 53 seconds, when Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon finally concludes, after the euphoric organ note of ‘Eclipse’ spends 30 seconds fading out, there is no denying that what you have just listened to was a musical masterpiece.
It had rich storytelling, a never-ending rabbit hole of sonic textures to discover and mindbending interludes to make it perhaps one of the most immersive musical listens of all time. It was the culmination of nearly a decade’s worth of work for the musicians, pushing past inter-band adversity and creative dead ends, to finally reach their nirvana.
Before Dark Side Of The Moon, the band’s growing pains could be heard. The psychedelic curiosity of Syd Barrett on Piper At The Gates Of Dawn was indeed accomplished, but dampened by his subsequent breakdown. When David Gilmour was brought in to pick up the pieces, they had a master melodicist who was stretched too far in the boundaryless worlds of their experimental records.
It was taxing at times, but ultimately encouraged by the brief nuggets of genius the band showcased at times. Those flashes would, of course, explode on their 1973 epic, and to their later detriment, their masterpiece was completed.
Understandably, the record hung around their neck like an albatross, and the endless pursuit of repeated greatness weighed heavily. Speaking of the sort of despondency they felt after summitting their musical everest, guitarist and creative force David Gilmour said: “It was a very difficult period I have to say”.
“All your childhood dreams had been sort of realised, and we had the biggest-selling records in the world and all the things you got into it for.”
So much so that the cracks in the foundations of their friendships eventually grew into gaping holes, and the creative differences became personal differences. By 1985, the band had pretty much called it quits – though never officially – and the ever-growing feud between the band’s leaders, Roger Waters and David Gilmour, was untenable. And so as that final organ note drew out on ‘Eclipse’, with it went their creative peak.
So, what was the album that ushered in the ending?
Understandably, fans of the album would dispute this given the fact that its title track is arguably one of their finest standalone songs. And while the lyrics are likely an ode to Syd Barrett, it’s hard not to read David Gilmour’s line of “we’re just two lost souls, swimming in a fish bowl” as a wider sentiment about the growing disconnect between the band.
Now, signalling the end by no means makes it a bad record. Of course, it’s a piece of accomplished work, but nevertheless, it represents the first downward step in what was a creative and personal decline for the band.
Just two years after Dark Side Of The Moon, they went into the studio for Wish You Were Here relatively fatigued, as the album’s engineer Brian Humphries remembered. “There were days when we didn’t do anything. I don’t think they knew what they wanted to do. We had a dartboard and an air rifle and we’d play these word games, sit around, get drunk, go home and return the next day. That’s all we were doing until suddenly everything started falling into place.”
With Gilmour and Waters firmly locking horns, it was perhaps the last great example of their dynamic tension, the beauty that arises out of the chaos. So it’s perhaps ironically fitting that they both cite it as their favourite Floyd record, proving their rivalry forever bonds them.
