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.
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