Comfortably Numb: The Inside Story of Pink Floyd (34 page)

‘I scared myself shitless doing it, too,’ Thorgerson recalled. ‘I hired a taxi at 2 a.m. to take me out to the pyramids. It was a wonderful, clear night and the moon was fantastic. So I’m doing it, and then, at 4 a.m., these figures come walking across - soldiers with guns. I thought: This is it - young photographer dies a strange death in a foreign land. Of course, they were really friendly, and just wanted a bit of
bakshish
, a little bit of money, to go away.’

Hipgnosis’ eye-catching cover design was a gift for record shop window displays. With the gatefold covers opened and the front and back covers matched up, the prism and spectrum continued into infinity. ‘It was such a brilliant concept,’ said Gilmour. ‘I remember the first time I saw it pinned up in the window of a record shop. I thought it looked amazing.’

A window display in a record shop alerted Clare Torry to the possibility that her vocal, from some two months earlier, might have found its way onto vinyl.

‘There was a record shop next door to the Chelsea Potter pub on Kings Road, and there was this display in the window with the prism,’ says Clare. ‘I remember thinking: Is that the thing I did? I went in, took the cover out of the plastic sleeve and opened up the record. Sure enough, it was. My name was on it. And they’d spelt it right, too . . . I bought a copy and took it home and played it to my boyfriend when I got in. I was astonished when I heard “The Great Gig in the Sky”. I thought they’d just use a few bars of my singing. I didn’t expect them to use the whole thing.’

Reviews for
Dark Side of the Moon
disproved the belief that all critics were opposed to the band. Despite some sniffiness at the Planetarium playback,
Melody Maker
now insisted that it was ‘the best Pink Floyd album since
Ummagumma
’ and that ‘side two is perfect’.
New Musical Express
was even more effusive: ‘Floyd’s most artistic musical venture.’ In America, where the band were already touring when the album was released,
Rolling Stone
writer Loyd Grossman (who would go on to a high-profile career in the UK as a TV chef and presenter) applauded ‘a grandeur that exceeds mere musical melodramatics and is rarely attempted in rock.
Dark Side of the Moon
has flash.’ Elsewhere in the review, though, Grossman suggested that ‘The Great Gig in the Sky’ should have been canned. It was the one song on the album that most polarised opinion. ‘Some people love it, some people hate it. It’s
that
kind of song,’ admits Clare.
Q
magazine once asked David Gilmour if, when listening to ‘The Great Gig in the Sky’, he’d ever thought, ‘Oh, put a sock in it.’ He replied, ‘Sometimes. Sometimes no. Sometimes yes.’

Played out against a domestic situation in 1973 in which Britain was stricken with its highest unemployment levels in years, and with the IRA soon bringing its conflict with the British government on to English soil,
Dark Side of the Moon
also seemed to mirror the troubled world around it. ‘A grim record for a grim time,’ as one observer put it, albeit with the promise of something better over the next horizon. Like so much of Roger Waters’ future work, it bleated and moaned and harangued the listener, while also grabbing hold of them and reassuring them that all would be OK in the end. It was a sad but uplifting experience.

Waters’ philosophical message was also making its way through to the critics, with
New Musical Express
picking up on its themes of ‘madness, death from overwork, and the separation of the classes’. Even now, though, when questioned about the album on its various anniversary reissues, each of the band members has expressed slightly different interpretations of what it all means. ‘But it expressed emotions that I think we all felt at the time,’ said Wright.

What Wright and Gilmour, especially, brought to Waters’ personal vision was a musicality. However bitter the pill, these two sweetened it with some inspired arrangements and musicianship. There was none of the freeform wig-outs heard in
A Saucerful of Secrets
; even the album’s instrumental jams showed a rare economy and focus. This was highbrow rock music with a broader, low-brow appeal.

For Floyd’s ex-managers Andrew King and Peter Jenner, hearing the album was a strange experience. ‘I played it and immediately picked up on certain influences,’ says King. ‘One of Rick’s favourite composers had always been Stockhausen, and you could still hear that in there. The whole album contains a lot of study and awareness of what was happening in the avant-garde in Europe, especially on things like “On the Run”. But Roger synthesised it in a way that made sense in a pop group. They made it palatable for a mass audience.’

‘After Syd left, they never had the musical excitement for me,’ admits Jenner. ‘And I remember really pouring piss on
Dark Side
when it came out, because I was still comparing it to what they’d done with Syd. I had what you might call cultural sour grapes. Why? Because I’d backed the wrong horse. Once I got over that, I came to appreciate what they were doing. I just needed to adjust my view and accept what Pink Floyd had become. That it was now Roger’s baby.’

For the first time on a Pink Floyd album, Roger Waters had, at his own behest, written all the lyrics, a decision that had not gone unchallenged, but which would have repercussions later on.

Richard Wright’s single or co-writing credit on five of the ten tracks hints at a greater musical contribution than history sometimes allows. His co-written composition with Waters, ‘Us and Them’, would remain both parties’ favourite song on the record, long after their personal relationship had soured. ‘
Dark Side of the Moon
contains the best songs the Floyd have ever written,’ Wright told writer Carol Clerk. ‘Even though I wasn’t great friends with Roger, there was a great working relationship. To this day, I think it’s sad we lost it.’

Nick Mason scooped two credits, a co-writer’s credit alongside Waters and Gilmour for the space-filling instrumental ‘Any Colour You Like’, and a sole writer’s credit for the opening fanfare ‘Speak to Me’. Oddly, Gilmour’s name was listed on just four of the songs, and only ever in conjunction with one or more of his bandmates. Yet his presence is all over the album: taking the lion’s share of the lead vocals; maintaining a dominant presence on the guitar; and, finally, acquiring a close approximation of the warm sound he’d pushed for on the final mix.

‘I didn’t pull my weight when we were writing
Dark Side of the Moon
, though,’ Gilmour told writer Phil Sutcliffe. ‘I went through a bad patch. I don’t think I contributed to the writing in the way that I would have liked, hence the credits.’ Gilmour would blame his lack of songs on ‘laziness’.

Roger Waters would take a more sanguine view: ‘He doesn’t have very many ideas. He’s a great guitar player, but he’s not really a writer. However conscientious or hard-working Dave was, he would never actually write anything.’

For Waters, the decision to allocate some writing credits in the spirit of band democracy would come back to haunt him.

However good it may have been, there was still the issue of selling the new album. Not least in America. In 1971, Bhaskar Menon had moved to Los Angeles to take up the position of president of Capitol Records. Menon had been appointed to address the issue of the label’s under-performance, immediately cutting back their roster and focusing on those acts he believed to have a future.

Menon was a Pink Floyd fan, but also understood why America didn’t quite get it. ‘Extremely long tracks, philosophical ruminations and some very English themes - these were all outside the radar of American Top 40 radio,’ says Menon now. ‘America was still coming out of the Eisenhower period of pop music. FM radio was still evolving, and was almost regarded like an underground society, like a “head shop”.’

Bhaskar realised that Capitol’s marketing and promotional departments were as unfamiliar with the band’s music as the public, and, in some cases, intimidated by their overseas success. ‘The label was struggling to adjust to the post-Glen Campbell and Beach Boys markets,’ he says. ‘They just didn’t understand it.’

Dark Side of the Moon
was Pink Floyd’s last album under contract to Capitol. Despite the concerted wooing by Warners and Atlantic, which Steve O’Rourke had been fending off in Lindos, the band had agreed to sign to Columbia in the US, for a rumoured £1 million advance. The label’s president, Clive Davis, was a huge presence in the industry, had signed Janis Joplin and Santana, and would later sign Bruce Springsteen. (In the event, Davis would drop out of the picture almost as soon as Pink Floyd signed the deal, when he was relieved of his position after it was discovered that he’d paid for his son’s bar mitzvah out of the Columbia coffers.) Nevertheless, Bhaskar Menon flew to France in November 1972 to watch Pink Floyd perform with the Ballet de Marseille, and talk business with Steve O’Rourke.

The group and their manager had neglected to tell Menon that Pink Floyd would not be renewing their contract with Capitol. ‘In our usual, non-confrontational way we just forgot to mention it,’ wrote Nick Mason later. However, Bhaskar insists that he knew all along. ‘I was aware of what was happening with Columbia, but could see no great value in sharing that information with Pink Floyd.’

Adding to Menon’s problems, Steve O’Rourke was also angling to have the band released from their contract, meaning that Pink Floyd now effectively owned
Dark Side of the Moon
, and could shop it to Columbia. O’Rourke believed that Capitol would agree to this in exchange for a long-term deal with the band for territories outside North America.

Menon proposed a bet. ‘I wagered him my Casio watch against his bejewelled Rolex that he would never succeed in dividing the EMI empire,’ he laughs. ‘I wanted to ensure that the momentum we’d got going on
Obscured by Clouds
continued. Some people might have said, “Why waste your energies on this?” But it wasn’t in my interests or Capitol’s shareholders’ not to keep going. I
wanted
this album.’ An all-night meeting ensued in a seedy Algerian bar and restaurant near to the band’s Marseilles hotel. ‘I finally concluded a deal for the album just after sunrise,’ says Menon, ‘rescuing Steve from the loss of his very valuable watch and me from having to pick up another Casio at the Duty Free counter.’

Having culled several acts from the roster, Menon was free to put the weight of Capitol’s promotional department behind the new Floyd album. His diligence and belief in a record that he claims ‘was as important as
Sgt Pepper
’ paid off.
Dark Side of the Moon
made it to number 1 in the US. America had finally come round to Pink Floyd. The album reached number 2 in Britain, number 1 in France and Belgium, and number 3 in Australia, with similar Top 5 placings in Brazil, Germany and Spain.

Back on tour in America in March, the band were now joined by saxophonist Dick Parry, and three female backing singers - sisters Phylliss and Mary Ann Lindsey, and Nawasa Crowder, all fresh off the road with American songwriter and pianist Leon Russell. DJ Jeff Dexter joined the touring party in New York, and found the band and their entourage in high spirits. While the wives shopped for antiques, Gilmour and Waters were engaged in high-stakes games of backgammon. In between, they attended a lunch reception in their honour at the exquisitely upmarket Four Seasons Restaurant.

‘It was a buffet affair,’ recalls Jeff Dexter. ‘One of the servers put a spoonful of caviar on Dave Gilmour’s plate. He asked if he could have some more, and was told, “I don’t think so, sir.” At which point someone from the record company stepped in: “If the gentleman would like more, then give him as much as he would like.” Dave took the ladle and helped himself. Then he turned to me and said, “If I can afford it,
they
can afford it, too.” ’

At New York’s Radio City Music Hall that night, Pink Floyd’s entrance on stage at 1 a.m. was as portentous and dramatic as their new album demanded. An elevated platform transported them upwards to stage level, where they materialised, like scruffy, hippie deities, coloured smoke billowing around their feet, lights blazing, and a twenty-speaker quad system relaying the throbbing heartbeat and chiming clocks of
Dark Side of the Moon
to the rapt audience. ‘It was,’ says Jeff Dexter, ‘one of the best shows ever.’

A late-night soirée back at the group’s hotel would culminate in Jeff and Floyd lighting wizard Arthur Max riding the elevator, ‘dressed in matching Chinese Communist suits, reading out loud from Chairman Mao’s
Little Red Book
’.

Back in England, the conquering heroes sold out two nights at London’s Earls Court. Just as in America, they bombarded their audience with blinding lights, blazing gongs and more industrial quantities of dry ice, prompting one critic to compare the stage to a ‘Macbethian blasted heath’. This time,
Dark Side of the Moon
backing vocalist Liza Strike and fellow session singer Vicki Brown provided the back-ups. Clare Torry had been sent two complimentary tickets for the show, but found it an emotional experience: ‘I’m afraid I cried when they did “The Great Gig in the Sky”. I thought it was mine and I should have been up there doing it. It’s hurt me a lot over the years.’

Torry would perform the song again with Pink Floyd, including a headlining performance at Knebworth Park in 1990. Later, she would launch a claim to songwriting royalties from the album, believing her contribution to the song justified it. In 2005, the case was finally settled out of court in her favour, although she is prohibited from revealing any details about the settlement. From then on, ‘The Great Gig in the Sky’ would be credited to Richard Wright
and
Clare Torry.

Floyd’s home visit would be brief. There were more US dates booked throughout June. While having a number 1 album in America had raised their profile, having a hit single in America would take them into a different league altogether. While ‘Free Four’ from
Obscured by Clouds
had been issued in the US as a single, the band had no desire to do the same with any of the songs on
Dark Side of the Moon
. Bhaskar Menon thought otherwise. The album’s success had made them a
cause célèbre
with America’s serious rock audience, but a Top 40 hit would enable them to reach the heartland and a different audience of record-buyers altogether.