Dark Side

Of The Moon

Pink Floyd are the best, and they want everybody to know it...

+ Greatest album of all time?

“I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT TO EXPECT”

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It is definitely a name that many people instantly recog-nise as being one of the best albums in Rock history. Yet it seems hard to believe that it was released over 30 years ago, at a time when Rock dominated the world of music, and musicians were incredibly talented and commited. But yes, Pink Floyd have recently been announced as the 3rd best band to come onto the British music scene. James Guthrie is interviewed. Guthrie’s home studio, Das Boot, named by a visit-ing band in recognition of Guthrie’s “fixation” on subma-rines—specifically, American diesel boats of World War II is where he spends most of his time these days. And indeed, his studio is adorned with gauges that summon up small, dark spaces of the past. Yet the London-born Guthrie has finally escaped the studio dungeons of his own past. His “Boot” is a spacious, comfort-able room, with three long windows affording a spectacu-lar view of the Sierra Nevada Mountains that surround his

Northern California home. This is where Guthrie and his assistant engineer, Joel Plante, started work on Dark Side Of The Moon—where the original 16-track master tapes arrived from Abbey Road Studios. “The tapes were in quite good condition,” Guthrie says, “but they weren’t well marked or logged. At first, we only had handwritten track sheets and a few scribbled notes. But then the terrific librarian at Abbey Road, Ian Pickavance, sent over copies of the daily job sheets. So we were able to do a great deal of sleuthing work. “We were always trying to find little bits of music to make sure we had everything. As far as I was concerned, it was not acceptable to miss even one element. And I hope we haven’t.” By the middle of January, Guthrie was ready to play his initial six-channel mix for each member of Pink Floyd. “I didn’t know what to expect. They’re a fairly low-key band—just in terms of their characters. They don’t get ex-cited easily. But they were very

enthusiastic about this SACD. I haven’t seen Rick and Nick like this for years. The band asked for some changes, but thankfully, none of them were major. And there was very little in terms of the placement of instruments. It’s crucial for fans to understand that this mix has the band’s input and endorsement.” He acknowledges that some fans are wondering why the album’s original engineer, Alan Parsons, wasn’t involved with the remix. It was Parsons who did the quad mix in 1973. “The band listened to that quad mix and elected not to use it,” Guthrie says. “I used the original stereo mix as my guide, because it captured the detail and emotion of the songs. “The focal point of the six-channel mix is the listening position, not any of the speak-ers. What I have tried to do for many, many years is to make the speakers disappear—so that you’re aware of sound being everywhere. You get im-mersed in the sound and can experience the music. “When you first listen to the mix, it’s very easy to think that everything is everywhere. But in fact, there are things moving

around, there are elements in the back. But it’s all for a reason, and it’s relevant to the music. In the end, I wanted to keep the album’s homoge-neous sound but also try to spread it out. It was a com-bination of keeping the heart and soul of the original but also making use of the larger soundstage.” It’s no wonder that Parsons, having gone to the Moon and back, still keeps his eyes on the sky and his ears on the cutting edge. After all, this is the man who, way back in 1975, predicted the future when he saw the Ken Rus-sell film of Tommy and wrote about its use of “a quinto-phonic system—doubtless an indication of things to come.” Forward, he cried!