![]() “ I was seventeen and looking through ale smudged Christmas windows in Colchester, Essex,” he recalls. ![]() In the foreword to Rob Chapman’s book, A Very Irregular Head, the first authoritative Syd Barrett biography, Graham Coxon of Blur recalls his first musical encounter with Syd. This vital artistic leap was effected not – as might be imagined – by jettisoning the spirit of Barrett and what he represented musically and lyrically, but rather by understanding him or to put it another way, by breaking his secret code for understanding how music can capture the hearts and minds of a mass audience. On The Dark Side of the Moon, the received wisdom says, they became their own men. Peter Jenner, one time manager of Pink Floyd, said of The Dark Side of the Moon, that although it was largely about Syd, it was the album where Pink Floyd escaped from Syd. Soon after the recording of their debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Syd Barrett left Pink Floyd, but through their subsequent albums – A Saucerful of Secrets, Atom Heart Mother, Meddle – Pink Floyd continued to be in hock to him. But to get to the heart of it involves a journey – or a trip even – not just down memory lane, though that is important, but deep into the realm of Englishness. It is an approach which yields all manner of extraordinary questions. However, there is an entirely different way to enter the world of The Dark Side of the Moon, which is to exhume the ghostly imprint of the genius of the original Pink Floyd prime mover, Syd Barrett, on the album. ![]() Obviously, there are potentially countless artistic, cultural and theoretical strands to any discussion of one of the best-selling and most critically acclaimed albums of all time – the collective vision and artistic endeavour of then-current band members Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Richard Wright being crucial. ![]() Q magazine once theorised that because there were so many copies in existence, that it was possible that it is always on rotation somewhere on the planet. It has since shifted an astonishing 45 million copies, making it one of the best-selling albums of all time. Released on 1st March 1973, it remained on the US Billboard charts for 14 years. Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon is a landmark recording. ![]()
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