The Dark Side Of The Moon

Fifty years ago came the landing on the dark side of the Moon. Four psychedelic couriers — Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Rick Wright — better known as Pink Floyd, plumbed the depths of madness and alienation with an album that would turn them into global superstars. Iconic from its very first moment, thanks to Storm Thorgerson's legendary cover art depicting a triangular prism refracting a beam of light, the monolith known as "The Dark Side Of The Moon" was destined to break through the fifty-million-copies-sold barrier, becoming one of the biggest bestsellers of all time. Much to the chagrin of those who would go on tiresomely insisting that the real Pink Floyd were someone else.

To mark the occasion, on March 24th the Floydian colossus is being polished up once again in a newly remastered deluxe box set, also available on Apple Music in spatial audio with Dolby Atmos, a special technology that uses headphones to simulate a three-dimensional audio environment: not just left and right channels, as in stereo, but also above and below. The result is a kind of sonic funfair, in which the heartbeat created by the bass drum on "Speak To Me" seems to come from inside your own body, "Time" turns into a hailstorm of ticking clocks, "The Great Gig In The Sky" becomes a heavenly rapture, and the cash-register coins of "Money" seem to rain down from above, hugely amplifying the array of echoes and reverbs that has always given the album its extra sparkle.

On the same day, "The Dark Side Of The Moon — Live At Wembley Empire Pool London, 1974" will be released separately on CD, and for the first time on vinyl: the complete recording of the concert held in London in November 1974 at the Empire Pool (now Wembley Arena). But that's not all, because alongside the box set a book will also be published, edited by photographer Jill Furmanovsky and Hipgnosis co-founder Aubrey Powell, produced with the involvement of the members of Pink Floyd, featuring previously unseen photographs taken during the 1972-1975 tours.

Even fifty years on, then, Floyd's black Moon keeps resisting everything — even the henhouse squabbles that have engulfed its creators, culminating in the recent acid exchange of tweets between David Gilmour and his wife Polly Samson on one side of the barricade, and former leader Roger Waters on the other. The former, eager to settle the score with the tyrannical ex-leader's megalomania, accused him of every kind of misdeed (including Putin-sympathising, antisemitism, and a fondness for miming live); the latter, so desperate to prove that album was entirely his own creation that he went as far as devising a whole new version "purged" of his former bandmates' contributions. A disconcerting act of erasure that seems to evoke the techniques of Socing in James Orwell's "1984". A telling example, on the "The Wall" side of things, is the *new* "Comfortably Numb" released in recent days, hideously stripped of Gilmour's closing solo (one of the most beloved in rock history) to make room instead for a wordless vocal part sung by backing singer Shanay Johnson. And who knows whether the now unstoppable leader might not treat us to excerpts of it at his upcoming Italian shows on the Farewall Tour too (March 27, 28, 31 and April 1st at the Mediolanum Forum in Assago, Milan; April 28 and 29 at the Unipol Arena in Bologna).

A sorry dispute, in short, one that has tarnished the name and history of Pink Floyd, embarrassing the London band's own fans and everyone who has long hoped for a Final Cut to this sorry saga, which has dragged on for years amid a long trail of feuds, controversies and score-settling.

But if it has managed to withstand half a century of wear and tear, "The Dark Side Of The Moon" will surely survive this too. Regenerating itself once again, through its constant palingenesis as rock's eternal bible. Even in the age of Instagram and TikTok. Immutable and untouchable in its aura of austere classicism. And yet, thinking about it, that black monolith was the mirror of a very specific historical era, now long gone. Years of disillusionment over the end of Sixties utopias and of frenzied transformation. With new nightmares on the horizon: the alienation and greed of consumer society, the violence of power, the specters of the Cold War and of an increasingly technological and dehumanizing future, and the resulting sense of bewilderment and madness. Roger Waters, at the time at the height of his creative powers, had a blinding flash of inspiration for the concept, and his bandmates went along with it, their minds turned to their former brother-in-arms Syd Barrett, the crazy diamond who, on that dark Moon, had unfortunately come to stay, after the exhilarating early days they'd shared together. "'The Dark Side Of The Moon' was an instance of political, philosophical and humanitarian empathy that was desperately demanding to come out", in Waters' own words.

More than an album, a sonic novel, put together over 42 days of sessions at Abbey Road Studios in London. The soundtrack to a dreamlike journey lasting 42 minutes and 57 seconds, without a single break. With a unique, technologically groundbreaking sound, forged together with the then-young sound engineer Alan Parsons, going as far as conceiving the idea, insane for the time, of recording in quadraphonic sound, a technology that not only wasn't actually available in 1973 but even today can only be used under special conditions. A full-blown sonic experiment, in which Pink Floyd also indulged in cutting and splicing sounds and noises captured from real life (the ticking clocks of "Time", the footsteps of "On The Run", the jingling coins of "Money", the sinister laughter of "Brain Damage"), through a superb feat of audio production. What emerged was a futuristic yet velvety sound (thanks in part to the soft blankets of keyboards from the late Rick Wright), restless, but ultimately melodic and engaging. Like the soaring, dizzying flights of Clare Torry, the immortal voice of "The Great Gig In The Sky", hired for a mere sixty pounds but decisive for the song's everlasting fortune. So much so that she launched a legal battle over unpaid royalties, which in 2005 led to a ruling by the British High Court of Justice in her favor, declaring her co-holder of the song's copyright. This is just one of the many anecdotes that have contributed to the album's legend. Like, for instance, the story of "Us And Them", which had been written by Richard Wright for "Zabriskie Point" but was rejected by Michelangelo Antonioni, or that of "Money", with all those noises and clangs and cash register sounds that Waters wanted and recorded in analogue fashion, for one of the most famous 7/4 tracks in rock history ("but for the guitar solo we went back to 4/4 to make things easier for me", as Gilmour would later point out).

"The Dark Side Of The Moon" thus remains a magical combination of musical ideas, technology, art design and that visionary imagination which, from its very earliest days, has been the defining trait of the band behind "The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn". Form and substance united, as in every self-respecting masterpiece.

And to think that "The Dark Side Of The Moon" was also the title of an album released in 1972 by Medicine Head, an English heavy rock band that suffered a resounding flop with that record and that nobody remembers today. Just another of the many paradoxes surrounding an album that has always thrived on contradictions, absorbing them into its magnetic cone of shadow. In the age of streaming and disposable listening, "The Dark Side Of The Moon" remains a hi-fi totem, the gateway to a mysterious world that still enchants us, today just as it did 50 years ago.

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