Ravinia 2023 Issue 5

“ It’s amazing to think we had the [‘Us and Them’] music recorded in 1969. It was obviously waiting to be reborn for this album. ” THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON is a musical med- itation propelled by Roger Waters’s honest, pointed lyrics and moving melodies, David Gilmour’s powerful and graceful gui- tar heroics, Richard Wright’s sublime piano and keyboard touches, and Nick Mason’s explosive and deliber- ately restrained drumming. It encompasses a wide, bountiful backdrop filled with innovative and varying moods and mindsets, sounds and styles, emotions and elements, insights and instruments. It thrives on pessimism and possibility, harmonic diatribes, and hopeful destinies. It revels in the realities of human- ity and strains in the struggles of the human being. It’s consumed with life’s dichotomies—the good side, the bad side, the light side … the dark side. Waters, who conceived the album’s original theme, proposes an almost clinical description of Dark Side , as “an expression of political and psy- chological empathy that was desperate to get out.” He emotionally spews about stress and anxiety (“Breathe (In the Air)”), insanity (“Brain Damage”), greed (“Money”), death (“The Great Gig in the Sky”), life (“Time”), and isolation (“Us and Them”)—all dark sides of the human experience. T It might be best summed up in one of Waters’s lyrical lines that sounds more like an extract from a piece of Victorian literature than a ’70s rock album, “Quiet desperation is the English way.” Dark Side entered the zeitgeist as the post-hippie, ’70s rock music stalwarts similarly were reeling in the chaotic, transitional times of the era—dominated by events and issues including war, protest, societal change and division, and political scandal (sound familiar?). From its original release on March 1, 1973, Dark Side has been among the most successful albums in music history. An elabo- rate marketing campaign by Capitol Records helped it make a beeline to number one in America by April and, to date, Dark Side has sold more than 45 million copies worldwide. Perhaps its most audacious achievement is the time it’s spent on the Billboard Hot 200 Album chart. Since its release, it has appeared on the sales chart on and off through the decades for a ridiculous run of 981 weeks (more than 18 years). The Dark Side of the Moon is more than just an album. It is a rock and roll rite of passage for any budding adolescent who begins to feel the inner, emotional pangs of puberty, self-identity, angst, rebellion, and liberation. And 50 years later it still marvels, mesmerizes, and mystifies. It’s rock’s Mona Lisa . To celebrate the half-century milestone, Classic Albums Live, an extravagant ensemble of accomplished musicians and vocalists, will pres- ent The Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety on Ravinia Festival’s Pavilion stage on August 25. Its note-for-note, cut-for-cut performance proves how this 50-year-old, riveting record re- mains relevant and urgent. PINK FLOYD ’s road to ultimately creating its mag- num opus was not simple. The band was founded in 1965 during the baptism of Beatlemania, and after various names (including The Tea Set) and lineups, it finally settled on an unlikely group of young, former architectural students (Waters, Mason, and Wright) and Waters’s childhood friend (Syd Barrett). The doe-eyed Barrett concocted the offbeat “Pink Floyd” moniker by combining the names of blues artists Pink Anderson and Floyd Council. He became the band’s enigmatic de facto leader, principal songwriter, and, as Waters described Barrett, “the heartbeat of the band.” Pink Floyd first turned on British concertgoers with its immersive, mood-altering live show. In 1967, it found its footing with popular singles like the gender-bending “Arnold Layne” and the trippy “See Emily Play.” Later that year, the band re- leased its expansive debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn . However, Barrett began to dabble in hallucinogenic drugs like LSD and his emotional state became fright- eningly fragile and unpredictable. By 1968, guitarist David Gilmour—a P fellow Cambridge University student with Barrett—officially joined the band to cover for the unreliable mu- sician, who eventually agreed to leave the group he founded. After Barrett’s inevitable departure, Waters assumed the outfit’s primary songwriting duties, and the band’s fan base and success steadily grew with each album, building upon its previous progressive style with the space-rocking A Saucerful of Secrets (1968), the experimental and live collection Ummagumma (1969), and its first UK number-one, Atom Heart Mother (1970). The impetus for what would become Dark Side emerged on the band’s 1971 release, Meddle . The entire second side featured the provocative almost-25-minute passage “Echoes”: an expansive, experimental, cohesive piece with several musical interludes, special effects, and lyrics by Waters that were more direct and personal, rather than the esoteric, fantasy me- anderings of previous efforts. “I had fallen out of love with that psychedelic noodling stuff,” Gilmour stated in the 2003 documentary Clas- sic Albums concerning the making of the album, “We wanted to continue experimenting, but retain melody.” “Echoes” became a transformation- al touchstone, providing a fresh, excit- ing roadmap for Pink Floyd to follow toward its new, desired destination. Drummer Nick Mason remem- bered, “It was probably the most focused moment in our career, all of us working together as a band.” BY EMBARKING on this more con- centrated approach, the members were open to exploring new recording and B RAVINIA MAGAZINE • AUGUST 15 – AUGUST 27, 2023 80