ALAN PARSONS
ON PINK FLOYD’S DARK SIDE OF THE MOON
BY MITCH GALLAGHER
Recording engineer Alan Parsons’ first studio gigs included tracking albums by the Beatles and Pink Floyd.
Imagine, you’re 19 years old, and you’ve landed a job as an assistant engineer
at the famous Abbey Road Studios in
London. Among your first sessions? The
Beatles’ last two albums, Let It Be and
Abbey Road. Then, after being promoted to
full engineer, you are assigned to work with
a band called Pink Floyd on a project called
Atom Heart Mother, followed by Dark Side
of the Moon—the latter of which earns you
the first of nearly a dozen Grammy nominations. Not a bad way to start out, is it?
For Alan Parsons, it was a launching pad
for a stellar career engineering and producing a who’s who of recording artists, including the Hollies (“He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My
Brother,” “The Air That I Breathe”), Paul
McCartney (Red Rose Speedway, Wild Life),
Al Stewart ( Year of the Cat, Time Passages),
Ambrosia (Ambrosia), and many more.
But Parsons wasn’t content to stay behind
the console. He also stepped out front
with his Alan Parsons Project, earning hit
records (including I Robot, Eye in the Sky,
About Dark Side
Pink Floyd had already released
seven albums and was a major success by the time their magnum opus,
Dark Side of the Moon, debuted in
early 1973. They’d begun working
on the new songs in 1971, and the
suite—which was originally known as
Dark Side of the Moon: A Piece for
Assorted Lunatics—was performed
live for the press in early ’ 72. Floyd
entered the studio in May of that year,
with Alan Parsons manning the console and Chris Thomas (Roxy Music,
Badfinger, Sex Pistols, Pretenders)
producing. They spent nearly a year
recording what would become one of
the biggest albums of all time.
Dark Side was an immediate hit
upon its release in March 1973. It
shot to the top of the charts within a
week, and remained on them for an
amazing 741 weeks. It is one of the
best-selling albums of all time ( 50 million copies and counting), surpassed
only by Michael Jackson’s Thriller. It
has been remastered and rereleased
several times, most recently as part
of the exhaustive Why Pink Floyd …
set released in September 2011.
