The Dark Side of the Moon is the eighth studio album by the English rock band Pink Floyd. It was released on 1 March 1973 by Harvest Records. New material was recorded in two sessions in 1972 and 1973 at Abbey Road Studios in London. It has been certified 14× platinum in the United Kingdom, and topped the US Billboard Top LPs & Tapes chart, where it has charted for 951 weeks.
About The Dark Side of the Moon in brief
The Dark Side of the Moon is the eighth studio album by the English rock band Pink Floyd. It was released on 1 March 1973 by Harvest Records. New material was recorded in two sessions in 1972 and 1973 at Abbey Road Studios in London. The record builds on ideas explored in Pink Floyd’s earlier recordings and performances, while omitting the extended instrumentals that characterised their earlier work. It has been certified 14× platinum in the United Kingdom, and topped the US Billboard Top LPs & Tapes chart, where it has charted for 951 weeks in total. With estimated sales of over 45 million copies, it is Pink Floyd’s most commercially successful album, and one of the best-selling albums worldwide. In 2013, it was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress for being deemed ‘culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant’ The album helped to propel Pink Floyd to international fame, bringing wealth and recognition to all four of its members. The sleeve, which depicts a prism spectrum, was designed by Storm Thorgerson, following keyboardist Richard Wright’s request for a ‘simple and bold’ design, representing the band’s lighting and the record’s themes. The album was promoted with two singles: ‘Money’ and ‘Us and Them’. It is among the most critically acclaimed records in history, often featuring on professional listings of the greatest albums. The band had explored a similar idea with 1969’s The Man and The Journey, and Roger Waters’ idea was for an album that dealt with things that ‘make people mad’, focusing on the pressures faced by the band during their arduous lifestyle, and dealing with the apparent mental problems suffered by former band member Syd Barrett.
The group employed multitrack recording, tape loops, and analogue synthesisers, including experimentation with the EMS VCS 3 and a Synthi A. Parts of the new album were taken from previously unused material; the opening line of ‘Breathe’ came from an earlier work by Waters and Ron Geesin, written for the soundtrack of The Body, and the basic structure of “Us and Him’ was borrowed from an original composition by Wright for Zabriskie Point. This would be the first time the band had taken the entire album on tour; this would be an lonic output transported three lorries at a time. The new material premiered at The Dome in Brighton, on January 20, 1972, and changed back to the original title of Eclipse after the failure of Medicine Head’s album. However, after discovering that the title had already been used by another band, the title was temporarily changed to ‘A Piece for the Assorted Lunatics’ It was performed in the presence of an audience of more than a dozen people before its release, and was then known as ‘The Great Gig in the Sky’ The band performed the song ‘Eclipse’ on 17 February 1972.
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