40 years on, Nick Mason says nothing sounds quite like Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon

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Co-founder Nick Mason says he doesn’t hear a lot of new music that reminds him of Pink Floyd’s record-smashing space-rock release Dark Side of the Moon, even four decades later.

“It’s very nice when other musicians say, ‘You’ve been a big influence,’ or that was the first album they’d had, or whatever,” Mason tells the BBC. “But I certainly don’t listen to other music and say, ‘Oh, that comes from Dark Side.‘ I think the influences that that album, and that we had, on other musicians was more general — in terms of, the way things were put together. I think there was probably a move toward longer pieces, more elaborate pieces.”

Pink Floyd’s eighth studio album, Dark Side of the Moon was issued on March 1, 1973, and would go on to sell some 50 million copies — remaining on the Billboard album charts for a staggering 741 weeks, all the way through to 1988.

For all of its many accolades, Mason admits that the initial launch of Dark Side of the Moon wasn’t greeted with that much pomp and circumstance four decades ago.

“There wasn’t a lot of in-depth reporting and criticism at the time,” Mason told the BBC, noting that a touring Pink Floyd didn’t even attend an album launch back home. “Forty years ago, people were taking albums seriously, but not quite that seriously.”

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