And if the band you're in starts playing different tunes

Pink Floyd - 'Brain Damage'/'Eclipse' (Dark Side Of The Moon - 1973)

Yes, I am going to write about both of them. I could have just gone for ‘Eclipse’, but the way they run together on the record means I’m also going to talk about ‘Brain Damage’.

The genesis of Pink Floyd’s record-breaking, chart-crushing album and cultural behemoth The Dark Side of The Moon¹ began after the band regrouped following their North American tour in support of Meddle. That album famously closes with the song ‘Echoes’, a song that lasts over 23 minutes and takes up a complete side of the vinyl. (I hope we will get to it sometime next year.) Even the band acknowledged it was a foretaste of what came on their next record, with the themes of communication and the cinematic sweep and operatic elegance of the music a common bridge across albums.

When the group had reassembled, Roger Waters had a few demos such as ‘Money’ and ‘Brain Damage’; the latter was known as ‘The Dark Side of The Moon’ at the time and featured as a lyric that went on to become the album’s title.

That line about Waters seeing you on the dark side of the moon was aimed at former band member Syd Barrett. Barrett struggled with his mental health in the late sixties, moved on from the band, and is often labelled as an acid casualty of the era. Because of his struggles, there were gigs where Barrett was playing a different tune to the rest of the band, but despite all this, Waters empathetically suggests that being on the dark side of the moon is something that could affect any of us at any time.²

The Syd references run through the whole song; the opening line about lunatics on the grass refers to the grass to the back of King’s College at Cambridge University and the “Please keep off the grass” signs. Even the word lunatic means madness associated with the moon, tying the ideas together.

In Karl Dallas’ book, Pink Floyd: Bricks in the Wall, Waters said;

I don't see it as a riddle. The album uses the sun and the moon as symbols, the light and the dark; the good and the bad; the life force as opposed to the death force. I think it's a very simple statement saying that all the good things life can offer are there for us to grasp, but that the influence of some dark force in our natures prevents us from seizing them. The song addresses the listener and says that if you, the listener, are affected by that force, and if that force is a worry to you, well I feel exactly the same too. The line 'I'll see you on the dark side of the moon' is me speaking to the listener, saying, 'I know you have these bad feelings and impulses because I do too, and one of the ways I can make direct contact with you is to share with you the fact that I feel bad sometimes.

Coupled with other interviews, certainly ones this side of 2000, you get the sense that the song is a defence of Syd almost and points out that we don’t always treat people who are different as well as we might³. The lyrics talk about keeping loonies on the path⁴ and forcing those that can't stick to the path through coercion, and with "raising the blade and making the change", we are in lobotomy territory.

As the band’s backing vocals and more prominent drums come in at the three-minute mark, we slowly progress towards the smooth changeover into ‘Eclipse’ as the album’s bombastic climax. Pink Floyd uses the last couple of minutes to recap themes they’ve touched on throughout the album, with the echoing of the lyrics from the first song, ‘Breathe’;

And all you touch and all you see
Is all your life will ever be

We are then taken on a lightning-quick tour of the senses, emotions, and social and commercial interaction before the abstract concepts that the album had dwelt on in the preceding 38 minutes. The takeaway is that as necessary as any of that might seem or feel at any point in your life or anyone else, they are ultimately unimportant and “eclipsed by the moon.”

I worked on the 2012 London Olympics and Paralympics and have happy memories of listening to the song as it soundtracked the montage at the end of the Olympic Opening Ceremony, the huge firework display and ending on the Olympic rings in space⁵.

The album finishes with a set of final callbacks. Firstly we hear the faint heartbeats that introduce the album fading out rather than in, completing the cycle of life and death and underneath that, we hear the doorman at Abbey Road Studios, Gerry O’Driscoll, respond to the question⁶, “What is the dark side of the moon?” with;

There is no dark side of the moon really, matter of fact it’s all dark. The only thing that makes it look light is the sun.

1. Name me another album with an £11,000 watch named after it.

2. I mean, struggle with our mental health, not be on the moon’s surface.

3. There’s also the insinuation from the clips used in concert and later work like ‘Fletcher Memorial Home’ on The Final Cut that the band think it is political leaders who are the real loonies.

4. This ties back to the don’t step on the grass line.

5. More recently, we’ve heard Hans Zimmer’s remix featured in the trailer for last year’s Dune

6. At close quarters when the album was recorded, various people were asked several questions, with their answers little interludes. “When were you last violent?” gets us the lines “I don't know, I was really drunk at the time." and Naomi Watts’ (Yes, the actress) step-mother Patricia Watts assures her husband, Pete (Naomi’s father) that indeed, “that geezer was cruisin' for a bruisin'."