THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

 

  

 

The Dark Side of the Moon is an album by the British rock band Pink Floyd. This album was published for the first time on 1^st March 1973. It's one of the most listened albums of all time: it stayed in rank for 741 weeks.

 

The distinctive trait of The Dark Side of the Moon is that every song is connected by the same melody. In this way the album is as if it were composed by only one long song.

Doing that, Pink Floyd wants to highlight the link between the themes they want to express: greed, ageing, death and madness.

The second track, Breathe (in the air), invites us to not be afraid. And the slow rhythm seems to underline It.

 "Breathe, breathe in the air

Don’t be afraid to care"

 However, the second part of this song tells about a rabbit who digs a hole. And as soon as he finishes digging one, it starts digging one more.

 "Run, rabbit run

Dig that hole, forget the sun,

And when at last the work is done

Don’t sit down it’s time to dig another one"

 Though, his excessive industriousness will lead him to death.

 "For long you live and high you fly

But only if you ride the tide

And balanced on the biggest wave

You race towards an early grave"

 These lines invite us to reflect: we always want to do more demonstrating we are worthy. We try reaching the vertex of the social pyramid. But, when we get there, it's easy to fall down.

We aren't able to settle for what we have. We desire more and more.

 This song seems to be in contrast with the fourth track, Time. In fact, this track is about a young man who wastes his time doing nothing. He does it since he thinks that he still has a lot of time ahead of him.

  "Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain.

You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today"

 However, suddenly, he notices that he has ten years behind him that he hasn't lived.

  "And then one day you find ten years have got behind you

No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun".

 So, he starts to run, trying to make up for lost time, but it is no longer possible.

  "So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it’s sinking

Racing around to come up behind you again

The sun is the same in a relative way but you’re older,

Shorter of breath and one day closer to death."

 Through these songs, the Pink Floyd show us two different ways to waste our time: working hard and doing nothing.

 The rabbit, for example, spent all his life digging new holes. But what was the point of all that? He just dug his own grave.

 The young man, instead, had a whole life ahead of him. But what did he decide to do with all that time? He decided to watch it pass by sitting on a sofa.

 Both of them have wasted their time and their lives away .

 The two songs I mentioned, along with three other tracks, are part of the A side of  the vinyl and the thread connecting  all the songs, is death. Instead, in the B side the topics are avidity, war and madness.

 Money is the first track of the B side of this vinyl. This song faces the problem of capitalism: everyone desires to make money. According to them, money can buy everything, happiness too.

 "Money

Get away

You get a good job with more pay and you're okay

Money

It's a gas

Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash

New car, caviar, four star, daydream

Think I'll buy me a football team"

 Instead, Us and Them talks about war and its uselessness. In this song there are two sides (us and them) composed by ordinary men.

 "Us (us, us, us, us) and them (them, them, them, them)

And after all we're only ordinary men"

 Pink Floyd describe these common people as automatons: they are deprived of the freedom of choice and forced to fight for ideals they do not believe in.

"Me

And you (you, you, you)

God only knows

It's not what we would choose (choose, choose) to do (to do, to do)"

 Others decided for them that they had to fight and these "others" are safe while they give orders and send men to die.

 "Forward he cried from the rear

And the front rank died

And the general sat

And the lines on the map

Moved from side to side"

 After this song, there is Any Colour You Like. This piece is composed only by music, without any words. So, we are free to give our interpretation to this music.

Not by chance, Any Colour You Like comes after Us and Them: in the latter, men are not a choice, in the first men are completely free.

 Brain Damage, instead, talks about madness. In fact, Syd Barrett (the singer who preceded David Gilmour) was hospitalised for mental illness.

 "And if the band you're in starts playing different tunes

I'll see you on the dark side of the moon"

 However, through this track, Roger Waters (the author) wants to show us who the real mad person is.

 "The lunatic is on the grass

The lunatic is on the grass

Remembering games and daisy chains and laughs

Got to keep the loonies on the path"

 He wrote these lines thinking about the "No Step on Grass" signs which are in the gardens of King's College (where he studied).He says that he has always hated any imposition coming from society. According to him, society forces us to stay inside some margins which we can't overstep. The mad person is the one who goes beyond those limits, instead. The mad are those who decide to lay down on the beautiful garden. 

 The last track of this album is Eclipse. This tune recalls all events and experiences which characterize our life.

 "All that you touch

And all that you see

All that you taste

All you feel

And all that you love

And all that you hate

All you distrust

All you save"

 During our life, we try to follow logic or social conventions.

So, we always try to explain everything that has happened to us and we don't accept that something may be unclear or inexplicable.

 "and everyone you meet

and all that you slight

and everyone you fight

and all that is now

and all that is gone

and all that's to come

and everything under the sun is in tune

but the sun is eclipsed by the moon"

 We are used to classifying everything by means of social rules. Through these ones, we judge if something is positive and rational or negative and irrational.So we are scared by the dark side of the moon, because we can't see it or really know it.

 However, in the final part of this tune, Gerry O’Driscoll's voice-over (the janitor of Abbey Road studios) says that the dark side of the moon doesn't exist: the moon is completely dark.

 "There is no dark side of the moon, really. Matter of fact it’s all dark. The only thing that makes it look alight is the sun."

 But what is the dark side of the moon? It’s our life and the fact that the album starts and finishes with the rhythm of a heartbeat seems to highlight it. Life is unpredictable: we aren't able to plan what will happen to us. Life is not rational and does not follow fixed patterns.

We usually organi plan and organize our future, but can we really do that?

Angelica T., 5scB