RECORD REVELATIONS: THE DARK SIDE OF THE EARTH
- Hindu College Gazette Web Team
- Jul 10, 2023
- 9 min read
“There is no dark side of the moon. Matter of fact, it’s all dark.”
Pink Floyd’s “Eclipse” on The Dark Side of the Moon
The piece highlights how the 70s music industry unearthed and divulged into the dark side of humanity and how the cultural impact of art reshaped the destiny of society across all of its dimensions and stratifications.
"I am continually influenced by the feeling that music culture captured in the late 60s - for my generation, it was a time to rebel, against our parents, against everything." ~ Renxzo Rosso
Credits: BBC
When gracing a campfire, nine times out of ten you would probably find an up-and-coming artist with a guitar eager to go “Hey, here’s “Wonderwall,” but if they muscle their way past four chord song requests and reach the “American Pie” phase. The campfire no longer stays a medium of leisure and rather mutates into a medium of 1970s cynicism. The depths of 70s music cannot be understated. The decade was bestowed with gems of the music industry like Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, David Bowie, Queen, and The Beatles among countless others at the peak of their prowess.
To avoid turning this into a historical monologue, I believe everyone can fathom how monumental the 70s were for music. But, only when one gets past head banging to all of them, can one understand the inspiration & impact of the vibrations radiating from their pair of headphones.
To understand where exactly I’m coming from, we need to rewind nearly 50 years.
Turning back the clock
The 1970s were a pivotal chapter in the history books embedded with conflict, bloodshed & struggle on various fronts all over the planet. Regardless of the crucifixion of humanity, which was ongoing, art never stopped developing and gave birth to an incredibly significant period of robust representation of the strife people were suffering through.
To illustrate the same, I will be going through some musical pieces which I feel mapped the social & political landscape exceptionally.
What’s Going On? by Marvin Gaye
Released in 1971 and needs no introduction, while explaining it in-depth would take an article of its own, the impact of the same cannot be summed up even in a novel. Often regarded as the epitome of protest albums, it set a precedent & benchmark on how Black America was finally ready to use its voice to get what they deserve.
Credits: CNN
Understanding its origin rests upon context on the political landscape of 60s America. The country was anguishing from the effects of oppression. Especially, for people of colour as highlighted by the 150+ racial riots which took place in 1967 alone.
Instigated further by the cost of equality with the assassinations of major proponents of change like Fred Hampton & Martin Luther King Jr. American society was breathing on life support. The struggles of the people were not only limited to the blacks, the Vietnam War also played a key role as it resulted in the deaths of countless young Americans drafted to fight someone else’s war across the biggest ocean on the planet.
The ghastly present and the prospect of an even bleaker future made Marvin Gaye wonder “what is going on”? and after much struggle & fighting with Motown Records on 21st May 1971, he dropped the album. The title emphasises the rhetoric “what exactly is going on & does anyone know how we ended up here?”
All of this complemented critical & commercial acclaim. The title track became the fastest-selling single Motown ever dropped, selling a record breaking over 70K copies in the first week. The acclaim was not unjustified either with the tracks on the album striking a chord with nearly every American on issues like Vietnam, police brutality, and social conditions alongside many other things. The album tackled all of the plaguing issues across its 9 tracks.
“What’s Going on Brother” the second track was written from the perspective of a combatant in Vietnam who came back after all the trauma and struggle, only to find his country not in a better state than from where he had just returned. “Flyin’ High (In the Friendly Sky)” & “Save The Children” tackled issues like drug addiction & its repercussions while “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)” foreshadowed the modern-day climate crisis. Everything culminated in the final track “Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)” which emphasised how even after reaching the moon, America still did not provide the basics for its citizens.
What’s Going On? ended on a very uncertain note even though Marvin accentuated the need for love alongside the need for positive change there seemingly was no clue on how to proceed further. Yet Intentionally or unintentionally Marvin also inspired another prominent artist of the same demographic to come up with their interpretation of the question of what exactly was going on.
Enter Sly Stone.
1971’s There’s a Riot Goin On by Sly & The Family Stone.
Still reeling from the success of their landmark 1969 protest album “Stand!”, Sly Stone started working on the band’s 5th studio album originally titled “Africa Still Talks to You”. But after Marvin Gaye’s rhetorical question of what’s going on was left unanswered. Sly decided to answer the same and retitled the album There’s a Riot Goin' On.
The album opened with the track “Luv N’Haight” which advertised the striking contrast of drug use & how the youth had resorted to it to numb the constant aches of social troubles. The diversity of the album further prospers on its third track “Family Affair'' where Sly compared America with a family. With heavy significance that even if America may have its issues, everyone still wants to be one, but they will not give up when someone’s in the wrong.
Sly did not end there either; the concluding track “Poet” signified how people were not ready to give up yet on their optimism for a better world & how he would continue using his voice and influence to achieve just that, even if the injustice continued. Regardless the most important bit lies in a track that doesn’t exist where Sly symbolised how he wanted no more riots. The titular track which only exists in the track listing and runs for a total of 0 seconds embodied just that brilliantly.
I’ve listed countless issues flagging up a significant number of artists but if there’s one that sums it up the best it has to be the zenith of campfire songs.
Don McLean’s American Pie
Invigorated by the level of art propagated in the aforementioned albums, Don McLean released “American Pie” in 1971, and the epochal titular track across all of its 8 mins and 37 seconds summed up the state of the world concisely and mesmerisingly so. Based on the theme of Ms. American Pie who was the symbol of the capitalist world, which sold everyone the dream of a perfect life while ignoring its caveats. The track features basically anything and everything about the state of the planet that one can think of.
The song began on a grim instance in itself with the death of three key figures in Don’s life. The figures have been interpreted often; some consider them to be social figures fighting for justice in the USA or McLean’s musical influences.
But the crux of the song is signified by its beautifully written chorus which rests upon the shrine of loss through saying goodbye to Ms. American Pie. The track also touched upon an incredible number of momentous instances throughout its verses. McLean’s main focus was on how capitalist America was projecting utopia even though tensions were brewing underneath with references all over the song.
A few of my favourite ones include when McLean referenced how rock music in the third decade of its prominence was evolving from its happy and idealistic themes to much darker tones, with artists like John Lennon entering politics and feeling the weight of the same (the thorny crown, Lennon read a book of Marx).
The Lennon mentions don’t end there with the impacts of the Charles Manson murders & the development of the Beatles as the fresh face of mainstream music (Helter skelter in the summer swelter, While the sergeants played a marching tune).
But the best of the bunch is when McLean paralleled the conflicts, rage, and issues of the world to the bonfire of humanity with the devil celebrating the suicide of it, once again symbolising how mankind ripped out its inner soul piece by piece. (And as the flames climbed high into the night, to light the sacrificial rite, I saw Satan laughing with delight, The day the music died)
The true magnificence of the song cannot be abbreviated by one in a few paragraphs but the cultural significance of the same is no less than a prestigious relic. In the aforementioned albums/tracks, the dire state of the 1970s and the importance of art is very vivid, but we cannot end without a mention of an album by a band that recorded humanity’s lens on itself.
For that, we also have to take a trip across the Atlantic. Chances are if you understand the English language and have ever used your ears for over 30 seconds you might have already encountered it.
The Wall by Pink Floyd.
Marvellous, historical, monumental there are not enough words in any language to describe this jewel of rock music. Released in 1979 by David Gilmour, Roger Waters, Richard Wright, Nick Mason & co as a follow-up to three equally incredible albums (The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here & Animals). The album was levied critical, commercial and any acclaim you can think of.
Pink Floyd had cemented their place in history with this album by stacking a classic upon a classic.
Credits: CNN
The album spanned every concept associated with the human race and is now a yardstick for concept albums and music in general. It even inspired a 1982 movie (of the same name) based on the themes of the tracks. The true beauty of the album is recognised once the reason for its birth is understood, which was based on the themes of how a person can lose everything that made them themselves due to decisions and processes which they should have aborted but chose not to. The person in question was Syd Barrett the former founding member of Pink Floyd who due to psychological issues had lost what truly made him himself (for a better grasp of Syd’s life, the chronicles of Wish You Were Here can be referenced) and the contrast to humankind is ever-present.
Tracks like “Another Brick in The Wall Pts 1-3” lead as an example for the same where the narrator explains the story of how a person’s trauma begins due to institutionalised derogatory treatment and how even though we have a choice to change it, we don’t. Although, the band was only indulging in their stories the comparisons to issues leading up to animosity are ever-present. And how institutions had a choice to prevent it but did not.
“Comfortably Numb” iterate the story of bassist Roger Waters’ experience of being injected with tranquillisers before a performance in 1977 and how the drugs made him numb. Yet the parallels cannot be overlooked, the song fits like a cog in the machine of humanity and its obliviousness of how we choose to be ignorant and become comfortably numb to agony.
To paint the canvas of the marvel of the same would take no less than another fifty years. But, one can comprehend the gravity of its significance by now.
The Impact of what went on
Although, some may consider the seventies just another brick in the wall of history. It is indisputable that it was an unforgettable period of history and the gravitas of the same can only be emphasised through its art and the lore that accompanied and inspired the art. I write this piece as we are going through the consequences of everything the artists I mentioned had written and expressed about. Society is once again at a crossroads.
Climate Change is killing the planet bit by bit, people are still fighting against systemic racism and oppression, and the gap between the rich and the poor is continuing to widen. The worst of all of it is, even though all of us are craving to change everything, society is still failing. If it is not obvious art is still thriving and fighting (albeit not being very successful) for the same. Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright” has become an anthem for Black Lives Matter, “RTJ4” by Run the Jewels has been described as one of the best protest albums of the last decade, Childish Gambino & Taylor Swift are two major proponents of optimism in mainstream society.
All of them, among many others, are still using the art form to propel humanity into a better place. Is it working? That I am not qualified to tell you but if not apparent already, the impact of art is ever present, as music has opened up horizons of knowledge no other medium could.
But the most vital question is are we on the right road? And is the future any better or are we just repeating what we have already done wrong? We can only know another 50yrs later.
Shubh Mathur
Shubh Mathur is a first-year undergraduate from the Department of Sociology at Hindu College. A lifelong Chelsea FC and Max Verstappen fan, he is most often found blabbering about politics or with his headphones on listening to The Strokes.
References
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