#2 Pink Floyd — Time (1973)
I’ve been thinking a lot about time (the concept), recently, and one particular thought has stuck with me: how different would our lives be if there were 59 seconds in a full minute, instead of 60? Let’s say that tomorrow, the powers at be decide to fall back one second for each minute. If you are bored enough, you can consider adjusting the lengths of days, months and years. How would we fare? Sure, everything would fall apart at first, but couldn’t we adapt?
The concept of time is strange because we don’t have any objective sources. There doesn’t seem to be an easily comprehendible explanation, and we aren’t given helpful explanations as children. Rather, we each develop a distinct and personalized relationship with time: some complementary, some adversarial. Yet, while non of us have formal explanations, many of us now have decades of personal experience. I guess it’s related to love in that way: we know all about it, but we really don’t know what it is at the same time.
Does anyone?
The Pink Floyd
We all know the story: the genesis of an experimental psychedelic, and very-English, rock band called the Pink Floyd. The band finds relative success early, before the inevitable crumbling of it’s lead singer, guitarist, and chief songwriter. That’s more than a tough obstacle to overcome for a budding young band. I’d venture to say that for any other band that would be a knockout blow. Imagine if Paul really did die in 1966, would we have gotten Pepper? However, while it would have been an accomplishment, in and of itself, to find a way to keep on with a new face in David Gilmour, they found a way to end up making one of the best albums of all time in 1973, just across the hall from the studio that George Martin, Paul McCartney and John Lennon carefully produced their catalog.
So Gilmour was about 26 years old when the Dark Side sessions began. To be fair, in his five short years as the band’s front man, he’d solidified himself within rock history with his work on albums like 1972’s Meddle, and performances like Pompeii, of the same year. So, going into 1973, Gilmour was, and the Pink Floyd were, relatively well-known, which came with expectation. In the early 1970’s the band toured vigorously, and often experimented live. Several songs that made it unto Dark Side of the Moon were routinely performed during this time while in their infancy.
Roger Waters
Someone recently asked me who my favorite songwriter of all time is. To buy time, I said “I don’t know, you?” Well, he responded with my answer: Roger Waters. We are two very different people, with distinct tastes in music. While he reaches for Metallica, I go for Curtis Mayfield. Yet, it’s telling that the two of use share our favorite songwriter, despite all of the differences. To be so wide-reaching, so influential, and so timeless (ah-ha), is really a feat.
While David Gilmour’s ascent is impressive, Roger Waters did not have an easy time either. In fact, it’s hard to believe that he was once the secondary songwriter. Roger went through so much at such a young age, that the subject matter of his albums were anything but that of a person in their 20’s.
So, we’ve arrived on Time (I’m done, I promise).
Time
There are two key elements that make this song so great. The first, common among the tracks on this project, are the effects, and I don’t merely mean reverb. From the startling clocks at the beginning, we are taken on a ride that transcends music. This is one of those albums that you can feel, one that you can point to and say: “yes, that’s exactly how I feel.” The second element is the penmanship of Roger Waters. The first four bars are just a taste of the Water’s accuracy when describing a feeling, which is by no means easy.
I recently clicked on the Dark Side of the Moon documentary, which I highly recommend for fans of music and miners of meaning alike. In it, Waters states that he sought to write of things that every generation could relate to, and how brilliant. Whether you were alive during the time of Moses or Martin Luther King, you can relate to Water’s laments on Time and Money. Perhaps it’s no wonder that The Dark Side of the Moon spent a whopping, and record, 736 weeks on the Billboard Top 200, from 1973 to July of 1988.
Consider the following lines:
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way
In all reality, I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a human that cannot relate to these words, or the next:
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
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gunAnd 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
I hate being late for work, or anything, really. To me, there is nothing worse than the feeling of being stuck in a particular situation, for which is there no remedy but to keep moving forward. You were supposed to be there at 7:55am, but now your GPS says that 8:11am is your earliest ETA. So, you’ve got no choice but to speed up, and try to get there as fast as you can. The worst part is, perhaps, that you know that there is nothing you can do to avoid the pain that will come from being late. You are powerless, and if there is anything humans hate, it’s recognizing that we are powerless.
The second half of this passage describes the great comeback: that romantic surge toward balance, toward reckoning, that we’ve all experienced. Whether you are comparing the minutes you have left to make it to work against the distance to travel, or consider the score of a football game when your team is down and there isn’t much time left on the clock. The key to adulthood, however, rests in the repetition of that effort.
One day, like Sisyphus, you will reach the peak of a hill, and we all have: graduation, retirement, marriage, or divorce, even (given the right circumstances). However, this reflection, this self-recognition of our work is usually followed by a negative narrative: “I always do things for everyone, and I just get screwed,” or, “I go to work everyday and work hard, but it doesn’t matter to anyone but me.” The point of these considerations:
What’s the point?
Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I’d something more to say
Now things get scary. Any remaining time, that precious resource, that we had left is almost gone, and we get to reflection upon a lifetime of plans “come to naught.” Therefore, we are left to simply hang on in “quiet desperation,” and while it may have been “the English way,” people feel like this everywhere.
It’s important to note that the song does not end there, of course. The turn to melancholic nostalgia of phrases like “home, home again,” add the warmth and complexity usually only experienced during self-reflection. Simply put, this is an experience… a kind of Dickens-eques third-person examination of your own existence, expect instead of the Ghost of Christmas past, we have Gilmour’s guitar to lead the way.
Time-less
You don’t hear too many attempts to cover this song, but for me, Tyler Childers is one of the few artists that ahs done justice to the words of Waters. Tyler is such a great writer himself, that it’s as if he could’ve written his version of the song. While this speaks to his talent, consider that a young English Waters penned a piece so universal, that a kid from Kentucky from could make it his own nearly 40 years later.
I’ve recommended this song to friends, colleagues and clients alike. I once worked as the activities coordinator for a facility for clients with traumatic brain injuries, where I was tasked to create engaging groups with different targeted outcomes. For a while that summer, I began experimenting with music appreciation, or sessions where we would take a deep dive into classic songs to find meaning that’s easily overlooked on the radio. I did this by printing off 4–6 pages, each with the lyrics to one song and the album cover.
One-by-one, we would play each song and in turn, I would open the floor to everyone for a reaction. One particular day, I chose Pink Floyd, and of course, Time was an easy choice. I saw this because although we were 10 very different people from diverse backgrounds, all of us either heard the song before, or enjoyed it upon first listen. After all, you don’t have to be all-in on psychedelic rock to admit when a song is special.
While may not provide a breakthrough moment, or simply hand you an answer, it will provide a reliable source for a very specific emotion that we all carry from time to time, but have great difficulty explaining in simple terms.
Final Thoughts
The trip that Waters, Gilmour, Wright and Mason take us on this song alone has been more exciting, eventful, and memorable than some week-long vacations I’ve taken in my life to date. When I listen to this album, I almost always begin from the top, but there are instances when Time is up on shuffle, and I stick around for the ride.
Again, this should be credited to Rogers. Not only did he seek to include nearly everyone at once, but also all the time. Long after Waters is gone, this, along with other iconic Pink Floyd tracks like Dogs, will retain its well-earned spot in the history of humanity.
If I had to bet, this album will take many, many, more trips around the sun.
