The Pink Floyd Song That Predicted Their ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ Breakthrough
Pink Floyd might have had one of the most dramatic transformations of any major classic rock band. Though drummer Nick Mason said the band’s groundbreaking early concerts were rubbish, Floyd became a psychedelic sensation. When the group moved on without founder and chief songwriter Syd Barrett, they emerged as a commercially successful prog rock powerhouse. But it didn’t happen overnight. One Pink Floyd song marked the breaking point between its psychedelic origins and legendary future.
The Pink Floyd song ‘Childhood’s End’ pointed toward ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ and beyond
Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page praised Barrett’s genius approach to music making. The innovation didn’t last. His erratic behavior led his bandmates to move on without him in 1968. Yet transforming into the prog-rock band that churned out commercially successful albums throughout the 1970s wasn’t seamless.
Pink Floyd held on to their psychedelic roots for several years after dismissing Barret. The 23-minute opus “Echoes,” with its plinking synths, spectral guitars, extended jam section, and trippy lyrics, closed their 1971 album Meddle.
Yet by early 1972, Pink Floyd made one song that foreshadowed the band they’d become on The Dark Side of the Moon. “Childhood’s End” from Obscured By Clouds signaled the musical and lyrical direction the band planned to take on Dark Side.
The song’s slow droning fade-in maintained some of the hazy psychedelia of the band’s past, but it charted Pink Floyd’s new direction. If you close your eyes and open your ears, you can hear the DNA of “Have a Cigar” hidden inside “Childhood’s End.” Roger Waters’ funky bass riffs and Mason’s steady groove anchored the song. David Gilmour provided a blistering guitar solo, and Rick Wright added texture with his synths.
“Childhood’s End” signaled Pink Floyd’s new musical direction a year before Dark Side of the Moon. So did its lyrics. The band gave up mind-bending wordplay and substituted it for more earthbound concerns. Lines such as “Of long past thoughts and memories / Childhood’s end your fantasies / Merge with harsh realities” and “To say we know the reason why / Some are born some men die / Beneath one infinite sky” predate the themes Pink Floyd explored on throughout the 1970s on Dark Side, Wish You Were Here, Animals, and The Wall.
In fact, “Free Four,” the song that followed “Childhood’s End” on Obscured By Clouds, upped the ante on depressing subject matter a la Dark Side of the Moon. The band sheltered bleak lyrics such as “Life is a short warm moment / And death is a long cold rest” beneath the cocoon of a jaunty pop song.
The band started working on Dark Side songs in late 1971, but it wasn’t until 1972 that Pink Floyd showed the world what would come with their song “Childhood’s End.” In many ways, that one tune that lasted less than five minutes pointed to the several hours of standout songs that followed on the band’s following four albums.
How did ‘Obscured By Clouds’ perform on the charts?
Pink Floyd headlined a major concert early in their career (with a little help from John Lennon and Paul McCartney) even though they had just one single (“Arnold Layne”) to their name. That early taste of success helped propel the band through its massive lineup shift and into the 1970s.
“Childhood’s End” from 1972 was the first Pink Floyd song that charted their course toward success, but fans weren’t quite ready for it. The band never released it as a single, and Obscured By Clouds peaked at No. 6 on the charts in England, where it spent just three of its 14 weeks in the top 10 (per the Official Charts Company). Conversely, Meddle rose to No. 3 during an 88-week chart residency, and Dark Side hit No. 2 as it spent nearly 11 years on the charts.
Fans in the United States were even less receptive to Obscured By Clouds, a quickie album recorded as the soundtrack to the French movie La Vallée. The album peaked at No. 43 during a 25-week stint on the Billboard chart. Less than a year later, Dark Side reached No. 1 and began a nearly 19-year run among the top 200 albums.
The Dark Side of the Moon made the band an international sensation, but the relatively anonymous Pink Floyd song “Childhood’s End” from Obscured By Clouds paved the way for the future.
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