Release date:
March 24th, 1973
Recorded at: EMI Studios, Abbey Road, London
(June 1972-January 1973)
The future began here. Recorded at Abbey Road on the new 16-track
desk, seamlessly constructed and employing a thematic 'concept'
to link the songs, Dark Side was the album which swiftly
projected the Floyd from cult band to cornerstones of rock
culture. A Quadrophonic mix by Alan Parsons, authorised by EMI
and launched at the London Planetarium, caused a rumpus, with the
band refusing to attend. This aside, the album was a huge
success, and is still their biggest in commercial terms, with 28m
copies sold worldwide.
It seems rather appropriate that "Dark Side" was EMI's first rock CD release. If there was a prime candidate for the new digital medium, then this was it. Inevitably, the release of "Dark Side" on CD helped give the album a new lease of life. Its success was 80 great--legend has it that there was an EMI factory which did nothing but churn out "Dark Side" CDs--that it enabled the album's U.S. chart run to top 730 weeks.
It is the fourth best seller rock album of all time - just behind "Thriller", "Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack" and Fleetwood Mac's "Rumors". It stayed on Billboard's top 200 album chart until April 23, 1988, and after that they changed the format so that once an album dropped off, it could not return. It stayed there for 723 weeks, the longest of any album, ever.
Nick Mason: "Dark Side started as a sequence called Eclipse. Most of it was developed in rehearsals for live shows, and we played it live at the Rainbow in London and opened shows with it in America in 1972. The concept grew out of group discussions about the pressures of real life, like travel or money, but then Roger broadened it into a meditation on the causes of insanity. The linking of all the sounds and the voices was very well done, I think, and we introduced an early synthesizer, the VCS3, right at the end. The recording was lengthly but not fraught, not agonised over at all. We were working really well as a band, But it wasn't only the music that made it such a success. EMI/Capitol had cleaned up their act in America. They put money behind promoting us for the first time. And that changed everything."
David Gilmour: "The big difference for me with this album was the fact that we'd played it live before we recorded it. You could't do that now of course, you'd be bootlegged out of existence. But when we went into the studio we all knew the material. The playing was very good. It had a natural feel. And it was a bloody good package. The music, the concept, the cover, all came together. For me it was the first time we'd had great lyrics. The others were satisfactory, or perfunctory or just plain bad. On Dark Side, Roger decided he didn't want anyone else writing lyrics."
As a side note, it is rumoured that initial U.K
CDs were mastered not from the original tapes, but from
second-generation copies. The story among Floyd buffs is that
Dave Gilmour discovered this and ordered a shame-faced EMI to
rectify this situation straight away.
Tracks:
Total Playing Time: 42'52
Musicians Featured: