50 years on, this Pink Floyd album continues to shine

Many moons ago, precisely on March 1, 1973, an avant-garde British rock band released an album that went on to become one of the most iconic and influential albums in the history of rock music.

Fifty years later, its sound and message remain relevant. Some may agree, some may not. But the album sells and it is still on Billboard’s top 200 charts.

If you haven’t guessed it, it is Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side of the Moon’, their ninth album.

The early 70s was marked by the Watergate scandal, the end of the Vietnam war, the slow fading of the hippie era, the launch of the Swedish pop group ABBA and some remarkable happenings.

It was also a time when Pink Floyd was coping with its own challenges, groping for a new direction. The band was left without their leader, Syd Barrett who quit due to drugs and mental problems. With eight albums under its belt, the band needed to produce something unique to move to the next level. Some out-of-the-box thinking and remarkable team work saw the foursome — Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Richard Wright — create a generation-spanning album ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ with 10 tracks that spoke of time, money, greed, war, anxiety, madness, death, alienation, the horrors of everyday life. The rest, as they say, is history.

The album transcended time and genre. It was a conceptual album based around a central theme or concept. In this case, the focus was on the pressures faced by the band during their arduous lifestyle as well as the mental health problems of their former band member. The album’s eye-catching rainbow prism cover was distinctly unique. It swiftly became an instant hit and went on to stay put in Billboard’s Top 200 album chart over the next 14 years. It has sold over 45 million copies so far, according to published reports.

What has made the British progressive rock band’s 1973 album so relatable and enduring that the young and old continue to listen to this record.

Many fans are hard put for an answer. Some like the lyrics. Some others the experimental creative music, special effects, or innovative sounds.

Even the band never really understood what lay behind the album’s popularity and appeal as evidenced by their comments to Rolling Stone magazine some time ago.

As drummer Nick Mason noted: “There are elements that you would never have perceived at the time. It was partly about timing and partly about the songs being relevant to people at that time, and that sort of gave it a lift that then brought it on to the attention of another bunch of people and so on.”

Bassist Roger Waters who wrote all the lyrics of the album observed, “The music’s quite compelling but I think there’s something more. Maybe it’s the simplicity of the ideas that appeal to a generation going through puberty and trying to make sense of it all.”

Indeed, as a conceptual album with a running theme, it gave the music a focus. While ‘Time’ observes how the years have flown when you look back, ‘Breathe’ revolves around life as a ‘race towards an early grave’. ‘Money’ alludes to the remorseless struggle to survive and ‘Us and Them’ describes war and human nature. Isolation, choices, paranoia and mental breakdown form the themes of the concluding tracks ‘Any Colour You Like’, ‘Brain Damage’ and ‘Eclipse’.

Frankly, I for one, think there’s nothing extraordinary about this album although the lyrics are insightful; it didn’t move me, let alone impress me with the music when I heard the tracks years ago. I also know musicians and music lovers who’ve agreed with me.

Some tracks have no vocals; when there is, one can hardly comprehend the lyrics; the music, to me, was not ear-catching.

I must admit though that music, like books, is a matter of taste and choice.

That said, there must be something special about ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ for it to have a cult following and remain popular even after 50 years.