Lawrence English has a sharp analytical mind and is a clear and lively writer. He has been an attorney enforcing the Clean Water Act, an attorney supporting electronic discovery in very large cases, an engineer, and editor of a technical trade magazine. Mr. English has a law degree, a degree in English, and a degree in Polymer Science.

He has been constantly curious, continually supplementing his formal education with books and magazines of all kinds, finding out how apparently separate areas relate to one another — even when people in those areas want them to remain separate.

Mr. English has been listening to The Dark Side of the Moon for well more than forty years, and he’s discussed it with scores of people from many different corners of society. He is now keen to broaden the discussion through this book.

Analyzing the album from many different avenues, the book provides clear correlations of the music...

Analyzing the album from many different avenues, the book provides clear correlations of the music and lyrics to many aspects of human culture, from ancient times to the present. Each song is examined line by line to show how the album evokes and ties together themes from myriad philosophical, mythological, psychological, religious, historical, literary, and other cultural sources.

The book shows how William James and Carl Jung, Ecclesiastes and Kierkegaard, D.H. Lawrence and T.S. Eliot, Horace and Orwell, Jesus and Buddha, Beethoven and Strauss, William Blake and Jean-Paul Sartre, The Beatles and Gilbert and Sullivan resonate throughout The Dark Side of the Moon. They are among the most powerful sources of who we are and why. Coming to see how the album knits together so many diverse elements into a seamless whole, the interplay of many factors that make up society is illuminated.

This book will give readers a new way of looking at how the factors of philosophy, religion, psychology, mythology, literature and poetry, history and politics derive meaning and depth from each other. Readers will never listen to The Dark Side of the Moon the same way, but they’ll never look at the underlying factors the same way again, either.

Into the tumult of the early 1970's, Pink Floyd released their eighth studio album, The Dark Side of the Moon.

The Rock Renaissance

On March 1, 2023, The Dark Side of the Moon will be fifty years old. The Dark Side of the Moon still sells hundreds of copies even now. Being a staple of Classic Rock stations everywhere, you can hear songs from it almost every day, and maybe you can sing along because you have heard the words for years. You find Pink Floyd cover bands selling out in many cities, month after month. You see Pink Floyd prism t-shirts on school kids, their parents, and their grandparents. What explains the continued fascination of The Dark Side of the Moon ? Why does it appeal to people who were not around in the Seventies? Why does it appeal to people whose parents weren’t around in the Seventies?

Why You Listen to The Dark Side of the Moon 4

Side One 5

Band One: Speak to Me 5

Hearing From the Collective Unconscious 7

The Voice of the Trickster 10

Many Songs, One Album 12

Band Two: Breathe 17

Kierkegaard and Finality, Updike and Fecklessness 18

Camus, Sartre, and Laboring 20

Blake as Visionary, Lawrence as Witness 21 Moving Images 23

Wave Riding and Wave

Band Three: On The Run 31

Band Four: Time 33

Illusions of Time and Consciousness 35

Band Five: Breathe Reprise 47

Band Six: The Great Gig in the Sky 55

Side Two 60

Band Seven: Money 61 Band Nine: Any Colour You Like 79

Band Ten: Brain Damage 81

Band Eleven: Eclipse 93