Dark Side at 30 est une série de trois interviews de Roger Waters, David Gilmour et Alan Parsons, pour le trentième anniversaire de The Dark Side of the Moon. Elle a été publiée dans le Rolling Stone n°922 de mai 2003.

After Syd Barrett descended into mental illness, Roger Waters took over as Pink Floyd's driving force. From Dark Side of the Moon until The Final Cut, he wrote ninety-five percent of the lyrics and devised the concepts that underpinned the albums. Despite the band's messy 1987 splintering, he is now on friendly terms with Rick Wright and Nick Mason, but he has yet reconcile with David Gilmour.

Dark Side of the Moon is partly based on the underlying theme of insanity. Was that there from the start?

Yeah, I think so. There is a residue of Syd in all of this. Syd had been the central creative force in the early days, and so his having succumbed to schizophrenia was an enormous blow. And also, when you see that happening to someone you've been very close friends with, and known more or less your whole life, it really concentrates the mind on how ephemeral one's sensibilities and mental capacities can be. For me, it was very much “There but for the grace of God go I.” That was certainly expressed in “Brain Damage.”

You've said in the past that your direct style of lyric-writing on Dark Side of the Moon was influenced by 1970's John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band album.

I just think that's one of the truly great moments in the history of rock & roll, or of the history of any writing. It's a remarkable piece of work. Who knows? He might have found his way back to making something of similar power had he lived. It's so raw. There are a number of records that, when one's young, knock you into a different place and give you the will to go on trying to do something. That record is one of them. Another one was the Band's first album. That completely changed everything about records for me. Pet Sounds and Sgt. Pepper, too.

What's your memory of writing “Money”?

Although it's based around a bass line, I wrote it on an acoustic guitar. Occasionally, I would do things and Dave would say, “No, that's wrong. There should be another beat. That's only seven.” I'd say, “Well, that's how it is.” A number of my songs have bars of odd length. When you play “Money” on an acoustic guitar, it's very much a blues thing. That's how the demo was. There's a very bluesy feel to it.

And how did you come up with the tape loops on that track?

I made those recordings in a shed at the bottom of the garden, throwing coins into a big industrial bowl that my wife used for mixing clay. I recorded those sound effects on my first proper tape recorder, chopped them up and glued them together, stuck them in the machine, put a mike stand there to hold tape taut, and off we went.

What do you recall of recording “The Great Gig in the Sky”?

It was something that Rick had already written. It's a great chord sequence. “The Great Gig in the Sky” and the piano part on “Us and Them,” in my view, are the best things that Rick did – they're both really beautiful. And Alan [Parsons] suggested Clare Torry. I've no idea whose idea it was to have someone wailing on it. Clare came into the studio one day, and we said, “There's no lyrics. It's about dying – have a bit of a sing on that, girl.” I think she only did one take. And we all said, “Wow, that's that done. Here's your sixty quid.” Years later, I moved house, and she lived just round the corner. I used to run into her all the time, walking her dog.

It was your idea to record the snippets of speech that are all over the album…

I thought it was a terrific idea. I wrote questions down on a set of cards, and they were in sequence. Whoever was in the building came and did it. They would read the top card and answer it – with no one else in the room – and then take that card off, and do the second one. So, for instance, when it said “When was the last time you were violent?” the next one said, “Were you in the right?” It provided essential color for the record. The questions that provided us with the best material were the ones about violence.

Looking back on your relationship with Dave Gilmour, what do you make of the theory that your input was based around organizing ideas and frameworks, and he contributed his intuitive musicianship?

That's crap. There's no question that Dave needs a vehicle to bring out the best of his guitar playing. And he is a great guitar player. But the idea, which he's tried to propagate over the years, that he's somehow more musical than I am, is absolute fucking nonsense. It's an absurd notion, but people seem quite happy to believe it.

How did you feel as you watched the album become so successful?

We were very pleased, but not surprised. It went up the American charts quite quickly. We were on tour in the States while that was happening. It was obviously going to be a big record – particularly after AM as well as FM radio embraced “Money.” From that moment, it was going to be a big record.

How did your life change?

If I'm honest, I have to accept that at that point, I became a capitalist. When you suddenly make a lot of money, you have to decide whether to give it away to poor people or invest it. I decided to give some of it away to poor people and invest the rest. I was faced with that dilemma, coming from the background I did. I could no longer pretend that I was a true socialist, but twenty-five percent of my money went into a charitable trust that I've run ever since. I don't make a song and dance about it. One of the good things about being a capitalist, is that you become a philanthropist, to a certain extent.

Did Pink Floyd ever make another record as good as Dark Side of the Moon?

Well, I think The Wall is as good. I think those are the two great records we made together.

David Gilmour joined Pink Floyd in 1968 to replace Syd Barrett. He served as the band's lead guitarist, and he and Roger Waters formed the band's creative core. The two have not spoken since the band's 1987 split.

What's your recollection of how Dark Side of the Moon concept was born?

I really can't remember exactly how it happened – just that at some point, Roger came in and said that instead of just one or two lyrics for individual songs that we had already been working on, he had got an idea that was going to run through the whole album. We had done that before, but mostly in one very long song: “Echoes,” on the previous album, Meddle, was a whole side of a record, and was a piece put together from various little sections – but there was one cohesive lyric. This one was a series of different lyrics that had a theme running through them.

Having Roger coming up with a cohesive idea of what the whole thing was going to be about was very good. We had explored some of that area before, when we did a thing called “The Man and the Journey,” which was a live thing we did in 1969. That was the story of the life of a person. But I think we all thought – and Roger definitely thought – that a lot of the lyrics that we had been using were a little too indirect. There was a definitely a feeling that the words were going to be very clear and specific. That was a big leap forward.

You've said in the past that your contribution to the writing of the material wasn't that great…

We all go up and down a little bit, and we have more creative periods and less creative periods. And looking back, at the time of the writing sessions, I wasn't running on all cylinders. I helped to write several songs, but I didn't write a “Comfortably Numb” or a “Wish You Were Here” for that album. I wasn't as creative as I might have been. I think I pulled my weight in the studio in terms of the production, the playing, the arranging, and all that sort of stuff – but in the early rehearsal stages, something wasn't jelling.

Looking back, what do you think defined your creative relationship with Roger?

It's very hard to analyze what makes things work. Roger had fantastic drive, and a very good brain for lyrics. He was a very driving, creative force. And I suppose I would say that I had a much better sense of musicality that he did. I could certainly sing in tune much better [laughs].

Where did it begin to go wrong?

I don't believe that our creative life together stopped around [Dark Side of the Moon]. I think that Wish You Were Here was as good an album, and in some ways better than Dark Side of the Moon. And although it's not generally believed, we did have a very constructive working relationship though the making of The Wall. It fell apart rather after that.

What are your memories of recording the female vocals on “The Great Gig in the Sky”?

Clare Torry [session singer] didn't really look the part. She was Alan Parsons’ idea. We wanted to put a girl on there, screaming orgasmically. Alan had worked with her previously, so we gave her try. And she was fantastic. We had to encourage her a little bit. We gave her some dynamic hints: “Maybe you'd like to do this piece quietly, and this piece louder.” She did maybe half a dozen takes, and then afterwards we compiled the final performance out of all the bits. It wasn't done in one single take.

What did she look like?

Like a nice English housewife.

One of Pink Floyd's styles that rarely attracts comment is the R&B influence you can hear on “Money.”

I was always trying to put a bit of that into things. I was constantly trying to get Nick to learn new drum patterns and get slightly funkier. Getting specific about how and what influenced what is always difficult, but I was a big Booker T fan. I had the Green Onions album when I was a teenager. And in my previous band, we were going for two or three years, and we went through Beatles and Beach Boys, on to all the Stax and soul stuff. We played “Green Onions” onstage. I'd done a fair bit of that stuff; it was something I thought we could incorporate into our sound without anyone spotting where the influence had come from. And to me, it worked. Nice white English architecture students getting funky is a bit of an odd thought . . . and isn't as funky as all that [laughs].

When you saw the design for the album's sleeve, did it instantly make sense?

Yes. I don't know quite why it made sense. When Storm [Thorgeson, Floyd's co-designer] showed us all the ideas, with that one, there was no doubt. It was, “That is it.” It's a brilliant cover. One can look at it after that first moment of brilliance and think, “Well, it's a very commercial idea: It's very stark and simple; it'll look great in shop windows.” It wasn't a vague picture of four lads bouncing in the countryside. That fact wasn't lost on us.

How did you feel about the album's huge success? Were you surprised?

I was. I knew that we were moving up a gear, but no one can anticipate the sales and chart longevity of that nature. With every month that went by, it stayed right up in there in the charts. There was a point when it had done its initial run and faded right down and out, and then something happened, and it picked up again. The true word-of-mouth thing must have got round. And it's been sitting there ever since.

In 1972, Alan Parsons, an in-house engineer at London's Abbey Road studios, was employed to work on Dark Side of the Moon for £35 (around $50) a week. In the wake of its success, he founded the successful prog-rock band the Alan Parsons Project.

What was your understanding of Dark Side of the Moon's underlying themes? Did the band explain them to you?

Absolutely not, no. In fact, I made a bit of a fool of myself. Toward the end of the recording, I was one of the people who was asked the questions on the cards. One of the questions was, “What do you think Dark Side of the Moon is all about?” I really had no idea at all. I didn't give a sufficiently interesting answer to have it used on the album. All that I sensed was that it was about the trials and tribulations of going through life. I didn't know it was necessarily focused on a rock & roll band. I had it explained to me more succinctly later. I think it's about how a rock & roll band survives or doesn't survive. In my view, it was a preamble to The Wall.

What was your view of the Waters/Gilmour partnership?

It was very calm. Very unenthusiastic; they would never jump up and down with joy when something was working. After an amazing take of a guitar solo, Roger would say, “Oh, I think we might be able to get away with that one, Dave.” It was very low-key.

What hours did the band tend to work when they were recording the album?

When we worked depended on which day of the week it was. If it was football night, we would always finish early; if it was Monty Python night, we'd do the same. Roger was very into football. He was into playing it as well. There was a Pink Floyd team. Very often, they'd stop for Monty Python and leave me to do a rough mix. That was quite fulfilling for me. I got to put my own mark on it.

In the years since the album was released, the band has occasionally downplayed your role…

It's been variable. Dave has said in print that it made absolutely no difference who engineered the record, but a few months later he retracted that statement and said, “No, Alan made a valid contribution.” Roger was always very supportive. I think they all felt that I managed to hang the rest of my career on Dark Side of the Moon, which has an element of truth to it. But I still wake up occasionally, frustrated about the fact that they made untold millions and a lot of the people involved in the record didn't.

How did you contribute over and above simply working as the engineer?

The Floyd are, by their very nature, audio experimentalists. The Floyd and the Beatles have a lot in common in that respect: They both worked in the greatest studios with the greatest engineers. And to be the engineer with a band like that was a dream come true. I recognize that if an engineer's going to shine on a record of that kind, he's going to feel pretty good about it. I just acted on instinct. I didn't thrust my ideas at them: I would occasionally make suggestions, or do things that felt right. We were a good team; we worked well together.

What do you remember about recording “The Great Gig in the Sky”? You found Clare Torry, the female vocalist on that track.

She had done a covers album; I can remember that she did a version of “Light My Fire.” I just thought she had a great voice. When the situation came up, they started head-scratching, saying, “Who are we going to get to sing on this?” I said, “I've got an idea – I know this girl.” She came, and in a couple of hours it was all done. She had to be told not to sing any words: when she first started, she was doing “Oh yeah baby” and all that kind of stuff, so she had to be restrained on that. But there was no real direction – she just had to feel it.

The other thing that happened on that track was we played a trick on Rick [Wright]. He was in Number One studio, playing one of the big grand pianos, and the band was in Number Two studio. Instead of the band actually playing, we played the previous take off a tape. There was no way he would have noticed the difference. So we ran the tape and sneaked into the doorway – and when he looked up at the end of the take, everyone was standing there. He looked a little surprised. We were a bunch of kids really, playing pranks.

What's your opinion of the long-standing myth about Dark Side of the Moon being a secret soundtrack to The Wizard of Oz?

It was an American radio guy who pointed it out to me. It's such a non-starter, a complete load of eyewash. I tried it for the first time about two years ago. One of my fiancee's kids had a copy of the video, and I thought I'd see what it was all about. I was very disappointed. The only thing I noticed was that the line “balanced on the biggest wave” came up when Dorothy was kind of tightrope walking along a fence. One of the things any audio professional will tell you is that the scope for the drift between the video and the record is enormous; it could be anything up to twenty seconds by the time the record's finished. And anyway, if you play any record with the sound turned down on the TV, you'll find things that work.

• les paroles et traduction de Dark Side of the Moon
• l'article En écoutant des images, The Dark Side of the Moon
• passage sur The Dark Side of the Moon du livre From Dawn to the Moon
• la chronique de Dark Side of the Moon par MP

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