On this day March. 10th in 1973: Pink Floyd released their 8th studio album, ‘The Dark Side Of The Moon’, on Harvest Records; it would remain on the American charts for 741 non-continuous weeks between 1973-88, longer than any other album in history; after moving to the Billboard Top Pop Catalog Chart, the album notched up a further 759 weeks, reaching a total of over 1,500 weeks on the combined charts by May 2006; with an estimated 45 million copies sold, it is the group’s most commercially successful album & one of the best-selling albums worldwide… Originally released in 1973, The Dark Side of The Moon became Pink Floyd’s first number one album in the US, The Dark Side of The Moon also introduced the iconic album cover artwork by Hipgnosis, after a request for a ‘simple and bold’ design. The new Discovery version presents the original studio album, digitally remastered by James Guthrie and reissued with newly designed Digipak and a new 12 page booklet designed by Storm Thorgerson. The band members spent three minutes deciding on the front cover. Designer Storm Thorgerson brought seven designs into the Abbey Road studio where they were still recording. “The band trooped in, swept their gaze across the designs, looked at each other, nodded, and said ‘That one,’ pointing at the prism. Took all of three minutes,” Thorgerson recalled in liner notes for the 2011 deluxe box. In an 2003 interview, the designer elaborated, “No amount of cajoling would get them to consider any other contender, nor endure further explanation of the prism, or how exactly it might look. ‘That’s it,’ they said in unison, ‘we’ve got to get back to real work,’ and returned forthwith to the studio upstairs.”
“Money” was influenced by… Booker T and the MGs? Though the basis of the song is a blues progression written by Waters, Gilmour has said he brought an R&B influence to the song’s instrumental breaks. “I was a big Booker T fan,” said Gilmour. “I had the Green Onions album when I was a teenager. And in my previous band… we played ‘Green Onions’ onstage… It was something I thought we could incorporate into our sound without anyone spotting where the influence had come from. And to me, it worked. The opening “song,” “Speak to Me,” is credited solely to drummer Nick Mason, something Waters has insisted was an act of charity.
“Us and Them” was originally written and submitted three years earlier for the soundtrack of the film Zabriskie Point. Antonioni’s loss was Dark Side’s gain. “We wanted to put it on Zabriskie Point, on the sequence where they’re having the riots and the police beating heads on UCLA campus; the counterpoint between that slow, rather beautiful music and this violence going on was great,” said Gilmour.
“Breathe” emerged from a song of the same name that Waters wrote for the soundtrack of a documentary called The Body, also three years earlier.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jL5SEBdG5RQ&t=24
Torry’s main direction: sing for several minutes, and don’t sing any words. Waters recalled, “Clare came into the studio one day, and we said, ‘There’s no lyrics. It’s about dying—have a bit of a sing on that, girl.’ I think she only did one take. And we all said, ‘Wow, that’s that done. Here’s your 60 quid.’” (By Torry’s recollection, it was two and a half takes, and 30 quid.) It was engineer Alan Parsons’ idea to bring Torry in for the “Gig” vocal. Parsons claims he heard her singing a cover of “Light My Fire”—although she disputes that, claiming she never sang the Doors’ song in her life. At the time she got the call, the only Pink Floyd song she knew was “See Emily Play,” “and that didn’t really hit the spot with me,” she said. “They weren’t my favorite band. If it had been the Kinks, I’d have been over the moon.”
In 2005, the classic lineup reunited for one mini-set at Live 8. This one-time gig included three songs from “Dark Side (“Speak to Me,” “Breathe,” and “Money”) as well as two later choices (“Comfortably Numb,” “Wish You Were Here”). Shall we say this was a landmark album?
It is one of the best-selling albums of all time. The album has had numerous full-length cover versions. Phish and Dream Theater are among the bands who’ve covered the album in its entirety in concert, and the Flaming Lips released a studio version of their take on the album. There have been bluegrass, a cappella, and string-quartet album versions, not to mention the notorious, reggae-died Dub Side of the Moon.
The Fat Angel Sings 