The Dark Side of the Moon is one of the best-selling and most beloved albums in rock history. It also represents a crucial turning point in the evolution of Pink Floyd. While Roger Waters had been the group’s primary lyricist following the departure of former guitarist and frontman Syd Barrett, he played a more significant role in defining Pink Floyd’s creative output with this landmark 1973 album. Waters wanted that Floyd’s albums are more conceptually coherent, and Dark side was the band’s first attempt to tie all the tracks on an album to a common theme.
The Dark Side of the Moon is a concept album, albeit a loosely organized one. Its 10 tracks address a number of different themes, such as greed, war and mortality, which are linked in their relationship to the dark side of human nature. Waters wanted the theme of madness to also be an integral part of the album and he explored it directly in The Dark Side of the Moonthe penultimate piece of “Brain damage.” (Waters’ interest in the subject was reflected in an early version of the album title, The Dark Side of the Moon: A Room for an Assorted Fool.)
The members of Pink Floyd had lost Barrett as a band member: he was no longer able to perform due to mental illness. In the lyrics of “Brain Damage,” Waters makes an explicit reference to Barrett, but the song also gives us a much broader perspective on how society views those it considers mentally ill.
Keeping the “Loons” on the Path
The lyrics of “Brain Damage” fly between verses that address societal attitudes toward mental illness and choruses that seem to be aimed specifically at Barrett. Each of the three verses refers to “fools” encroaching on an area not intended for them. In the first verse, Waters sings: The fool is on the grass” – a line inspired by a “Keep out of the grass” sign he spotted at King’s College, Cambridge University. Waters uses the reference to the “keep off” sign as a symbol of order and rigidity, as he also does with the line, I gotta keep the fools out of the way. In Waters’ view, those who resist the pressure to “stay on the path” are considered by society to be “crazy.”
In the second verse, the fool is now “in the room.” Specifically, this verse expresses the resentment of those who consider themselves normal toward the “crazy” behavior that is brought to their attention in the media.
The paper keeps their faces folded to the ground
And every day the newspaper boy brings more
The third and final verse concerns the madman’s intrusion into his own mind. Just as the intrusions of the madman cannot be tolerated in public space or in the home, they must be extirpated from the mind through a lobotomy.
You raise the blade, you make the change
You rearrange me until I’m sane
In the choruses, Waters appears to address Barrett directly. When Waters sings, What if the band you’re in starts playing different songs, it refers to the time when Barrett was literally playing a different song than the rest of the band because he was disconnected from everything around him. Additionally, when Waters ends each chorus with I’ll see you on the dark side of the moonhe seems to be telling Barrett that he sees him and understands what he’s going through.
Waters’ later references to Barrett
Over the next four albums that Pink Floyd released with Waters as a member, he would revisit many of the themes he touched on in his lyrics for The Dark Side of the Moon. The topics of Barrett and mental illness were no exception. On the very next Pink Floyd album, wish you were Here, more than half of the album’s length is devoted to “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”, a nine-part piece split into two tracks, which was a tribute to Barrett. Lines like Do you remember when you were young / You shined like the sun And Now there’s a look in your eyes / Like black holes in the sky are obvious references to his former bandmate. While on “Brain Damage” Waters dealt with the way society dismisses non-conformists as “crazy”, on “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” he focuses on the complexity of Barrett’s life in as a “martyr” who is both brilliant and brilliant. “target of distant laughter.” Just as Waters once sang that he would see it “on the dark side of the moon,” here he sings, “I’ll meet you there.”
(RELATED: Planetary Misalignment: The Meaning of Pink Floyd’s ‘Echoes’)
Also on The wall, released in 1979, the protagonist of Waters’ rock opera was based on both his and Barrett’s experiences in Pink Floyd. More generally, Waters develops the theme of how fame can breed isolation, which in turn is harmful to mental health.
The impact of “brain damage”
“Brain Damage” was never released as a single, but in tandem with The Dark Side of the MoonThe closing track, “Eclipse”, received heavy airplay on album-oriented rock and classic rock stations in the decades following its release. At the time of writing these lines, The Dark Side of the Moon is the fourth best-selling album of all time and it’s still on the market. Billboard 200, approaching its 1,000th week on the chart.
Although “Brain Damage” takes less than four minutes The Dark Side of the MoonThe total runtime of , it covers a lot of ground. The song functions as both a meditation on how we use the concept of mental health to create division and as a personal tribute to Barrett. Like any song on the album, it is responsible for The Dark Side of the MoonThat’s incredible endurance.
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