Pink Floyd’s 1973 album “The Dark Side Of The Moon” is arguably the most recognizable album in rock and roll history. Spending a record-breaking 741 weeks on the US top albums Billboard charts, the release cemented Pink Floyd’s reputation as the premiere art rock band of a generation.
During the Dark Side of the Moon sessions, the band literally ran out of tracks on the 2″ 16-track machine they were working with. The drums had to be copied across and mixed down to a 24-track machine, so all issues of Dark Side of the Moon have had second generation drums until James Guthrie’s 2003 remaster where he laboriously tracked down the original 16-track tapes and sourced the drums from the original tapes.
• When recording the Dark Side of the Moon live concerts, their were various technical problems, including the kick-drum being mic’d up incorrectly, meaning that non of that drum was recorded on tape. However spill from other mics picked it up slightly, and engineers were able to accurately recreate the kick-drum for the remastered live recordings.
• During the research period for the reissues, the original tapes of the famous Dark Side of the Moon “interviews” were found including – amongst many others – Paul and Linda McCartney’s voices and Wings’ Guitarist Henry McCullough, whose “I don’t know; I was really drunk at the time” can be heard at the end of Money. Since the engineers now had access to the original isolated tapes we can apparently look forward to a DVD ‘Easter egg’ which will make use of some of this audio!
• The original working title for Dark Side of the Moon was Eclipse and The Great Gig in the Sky had the working title of “the religious section”, while On The Run was known as “the travel section”. These fitted in with the ‘big’ themes of the album money, time etc.
While the album was released on March 1st, 1973, the music was remarkably written months before the album ever premiered. The band promoted DSOTM with two tours, one before the album release in 1972 and the other, after the release, in 1973. After technical difficulties halted Floyd’s first performance on January 20th, 1972, the group took the stage one night later and delivered the first-ever, full-length performance of “The Dark Side Of The Moon”.
Remarkably, the live set matches the album closely. With a handful of differences, including a spacey jam instead of “On The Run” and some church-like organ progressions instead of “The Great Gig In The Sky,” it’s interesting to see how this music evolved from a live performance in Portsmouth, UK to one of the most well-known albums of all time, just a little over a year later.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQiF76m6qHs
Also remarkable is that a full recording of the show exists! . Feast your ears on the first-ever live take on “The Dark Side Of The Moon”, Pink Floyd – Portsmouth (Live Portsmouth, UK – January 21st, 1972)
The Fat Angel Sings 