The Music of Pink Floyd and Modern ‘Madness’
Pink Floyd are one of the most-popular and most-praised bands in popular music history. Their albums have sold in the millions – Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, The Wall. Their lead songwriter on these albums has been Roger Waters.
But a fact you may not know is that Pink Floyd originally had a different lead songwriter, Syd Barrett. Syd wrote highly psychedelic songs about a range of subjects, focusing especially on childhood whimsy and the strange sounds he heard on one of his acid trips. Indeed, Syd dropped acid frequently and in large doses. And this did him in. In the end he suffered serious brain damage from taking too much LSD and entered a state of highly unpredictable, sometimes catatonic, action and impoverished communication. Some have said he might have had a genetic pre-disposition to mental illness, and this was triggered by Syd’s copious use of LSD.
Whatever the medical or psychiatric state of Syd, he was dropped from the band.
But this did not mean an end to themes of altered mind states and mental illness.
Pink Floyd’s best-selling album is Dark Side of the Moon. Now this album is a ripper! Great songs, beautifully painted sounds, compelling musical and thematic structure. And it is a concept album. What is the concept? Why, the very nature of ‘madness’! More particularly, it is an album that explores the social and political sources of mental distress. It does so with a series of songs about the stresses of modern life – On the Run (about the speed and constant demands of modern life), Time (about the passing of time and the ephemerality of life), The Great Gig in the Sky (about death), Money (about greed and associated impoverished human relationships), Us and Them (about the division of people to a state of disunity, even war). The album also explores ‘madness’ as understood by lay-people; the album uses snippets of interviews with people around the band about whether they considered themselves ‘mad’, what ‘madness’ is, if they had been violent in the past, and whether they were “in the right” in being violent.
Ultimately, the album is not didactic – it searches to explore these themes of contributors to mental distress, rather than make definitive statements of social analysis. Indeed, it may be somewhat surprising, even controversial, to create art about mental illness that does not place the cause of illness inside the diagnosed person’s brain, but in the stresses of modern life. It may also be surprising to hear music so rich and compelling with such dark undertones. But Dark Side of the Moon is a complex and rich album and deserves to be understood as a fascinating meditation on ‘madness’ in the second half of the 20th century.
Dr. Richard Schweizer, Policy Officer at One Door Mental Health richard.schweizer@onedoor.org.au.
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Dr Richard Schweizer