US groove thrashers Prong will put out a new self-titled album, Prong, which will be unleashed unto the public on November 6th. This will be their Napalm Records debut. To promote it, the band also announced a short European tour.
Read moreâŠ
Thereâs the clank of a cash register. A jangle of coins. A tearing of till receipts. A loping bassline, built on just eight notes. And finally, David Gilmourâs opening gambit (âMoney! Get awayâŠâ). So begins Pink Floydâs first true international signature tune and their ticket to the stadium league.
Nobody could have predicted those impending plaudits when Roger Waters arrived at Abbey Road in June 1972 with the bones of the song: an awkward 7/4 composition that tested both Nick Mason and guesting tenor saxophonist Dick Parry.
âItâs Rogerâs riff,â noted Gilmour. âRoger came in with the verses and lyrics for Money more or less completed. We made up middle sections, guitar solos and all that stuff. We also invented some new riffs â we created a 4/4 progression for the guitar solo and made the poor saxophone player play in 7/4.â
âOccasionally,â Waters reflected, âI would do things and Dave would say, âNo, thatâs wrong. There should be another beat. Thatâs only sevenâ. Iâd say, âWell, thatâs how it isâ. A number of my songs have bars of odd length. When you play Money on an acoustic guitar, itâs very much a blues thing.â
For the studio take, Waters would re-record the sound effects that he had originally created in his garden shed by throwing coins into a bowl used by his wife for mixing clay, while Mason drilled holes into old British pennies and threaded them onto strings to create a distinctive metallic chink.
Yet the songâs most dazzling moment came from Gilmour. Though the guitarist would self-deprecatingly refer to Money as ânice white English architecture students getting funkyâ, there was searing soul in his solo, which adrenalises the song at the three-minute mark then drops its effects for the âdryâ section at 3:48.
While Floydâs management quickly identified Money as a potential âmonster hitâ, the band members themselves were ambivalent, feeling that the tricky time signature would hold it back, and also envious of Led Zeppelinâs refusal to issue singles or pander to radio.
âWe didnât think anything would happen with Money,â noted Rick Wright. âAnd suddenly, it just did.â
And how. Released on May 7, 1973 â two months after parent album The Dark Side Of The Moon had topped the Billboard chart â Money climbed to No.13 in the US, announcing Floyd as rock heavyweights and making Watersâs wealth-baiting lyric ring a little hollow. With Money in their locker, the band found themselves harangued at shows across the planet.
âIt was quite a shock,â Gilmour said, âto be confronted with people down the front all screaming for us to play Money â when previously our slightly more reverential audiences were sitting in absolute silence waiting to hear the next pin being dropped.
Unusually, Money was re-recorded by Gilmour in 1981 for the Pink Floyd compilation album, A Collection of Great Dance Songs. The band had recently signed to Columbia Records, but Capitol still held the US rights to the original 1973 studio version of The Dark Side of the Moon and flatly refused to license Money to their rival.
To bypass this roadblock, Columbia asked the band to re-record the track from scratch, but Gilmour and Waters weren’t talking, and Mason and Wright weren’t available, so the guitarist re-recorded the song from scratch, playing every part himself apart from the saxophone, which was reprised by Dick Parry.
Gilmour’s new version was as faithful a reproduction as he could manage, although his drums lacked Mason’s swing and the bass felt rather perfunctory compared to Waters’ more swaggering original.
Fifty years on from Money‘s emergence, Waters got his own back, releasing an unexpected new version as part of his Redux re-recording of The Dark Side Of The Moon.
Gone was the original’s lively rhythm, replaced by a slow, brooding acoustic arrangement. Gone was the original’s most iconic instrumentation â Gilmour’s guitar and Parry’s saxophone â replaced by spooky strings and a foreboding piano. Gone was Gilmour’s voice, replaced by a gravelly new vocal from Waters. And the midsection now contained an apocalyptic spoken-word poem.
âThe original Dark Side of the Moon feels in some ways like the lament of an elder being on the human condition,â said Waters. âBut Dave, Rick, Nick and I were so young when we made it, and when you look at the world around us, clearly the message hasnât stuck. Thatâs why I started to consider what the wisdom of an 80-year-old could bring to a reimagined version.”