50 Years of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon”
The dreamscape that is Pink Floyd’s classic-rock masterpiece Dark Side of the Moon stays in the mind long after the suite ends with “Eclipse.”
The album, considered one of the greatest in rock history, is celebrating its 50th anniversary. Since being released on Mar. 1, 1973 it’s sold more than 45 million copies worldwide. Rolling Stone lists it as the №. 55 greatest album. It used to be in the Top 10.
Growing up in the late ’60s and early ’70s, I was more into the U.S. psychedelic bands coming out of California than the so-called prog or art rock musings of groups like Floyd, Genesis, King Crimson, the Moody Blues and Emerson, Lake & Palmer. I preferred the latter two: the byzantine complexity of ELP and the orchestrated trips provided by the Moodys. The others were over my head.
It took a strange encounter in Arkansas with a character playing Jesus in an Ozarks Passion Play in the summer of 1973 to turn me on to Floyd. We all hung out one night in a hotel room, stoned on pot, listening to the interconnected aural tapestry of Dark Side. The next day I appeared as an extra in the Passion Play. (Ed Bender can verify this story.)
Years later I still slept on Floyd, even with the success of The Wall, both the album and movie in 1979. A friend who is no longer with us was a fan and took me…
