Lunacy: The Curious Phenomenon of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, 50 Years on

After Syd Barrett departed Pink Floyd, the band that he had co-founded and fronted became a rudderless ship, releasing a series of nebulous (though highly inventive) jam albums and taking on touring expenses that nearly bankrupted them. Their eighth album was a make-it-or-break-it proposition, and its timing could not have been better. Released in March of 1973, The Dark Side of the Moon quickly topped the US Billboard charts and took up residence there for over 700 weeks, selling over forty-five million copies to date. In Lunacy, award-winning music biographer John Kruth ("A fantastic writer"-Jim Jarmusch) delves into the making of this iconic record and considers why it continues to speak to generation after generation of music lovers around the world. Placing the album in its full cultural and musical context, Kruth provides an illuminating look at the ingredients of its great "sonic stew"-a mixture of musical styles from avant-garde electronic to jazz to classical, all of them contributing to its timeless originality. Lunacy features in-depth interviews with musicians, artists, DJs, and many others who have deeply personal relationships with the record, including a passionate astrophysicist, a leading brain surgeon's nurse (who has performed surgery while "Brain Damage" plays), and a woman who gave birth while screaming along to the Floyd's "Great Gig in the Sky." Packed with behind-the-scenes details and unexpected insights, Lunacy is not just another rock history rehash, but a celebration of a unique time and the music that made it great.

About the Author :
A two-time ASCAP/Deems Taylor award winner, John Kruth is the author of such books as To Live's To Fly: The Ballad of the Late, Great Townes Van Zandt, Rhapsody in Black: The Life & Music of Ray Orbison, and Hold On World: The Lasting Impact of John Lennon and Yoko Ono's Plastic Ono Band, Fifty Years On. As a music journalist, Kruth's articles have appeared in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, American Songwriter, and many others. He is a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, and as a sideman he has performed and collaborated with such musicians as Laurie Anderson, Violent Femmes, Patti Smith, and Ornette Coleman.

Review :
Singer/songwriter/music journalist Kruth (A Friend of the Devil) examines both Pink Floyd's development as a band and their iconic 1973 album, The Dark Side of the Moon, which he analyzes track by track. He also takes interesting side trips into somewhat related territory, such as an interview with Delaware State University astrophysicist Matthew Bobrowsky about the moon itself. Kruth grounds Pink Floyd's endeavors in the British blues explosion, the onset of widespread use of electronic sounds, psychedelic rock's appearance, and the surprisingly long history of the concept album. Copious quotes from the band members, whose personalities come across clearly, as well as remarks from contemporary musicians set the narrative. Since Pink Floyd used the same Abbey Road studios as the Beatles, whom the musicians acknowledged as influential, readers will see two vastly different paths music took in the 1960s and 1970s. A playlist, bibliography, and index are useful addenda. For fans of The Dark Side of the Moon, this book is especially welcome. Those not familiar with Pink Floyd or this particular venture will still likely appreciate the well-researched and swiftly flowing tale that combines musical intricacies with cultural context. John Kruth takes the novel approach of breaking down the album song by song, following up the album analysis with a study of various facts of the album's longstanding cultural and historical impact ... Takes you deeper inside the creation of this enigmatic work and its cultural reverberations that have echoed across the decades John Kruth sets the stage nicely, with a concise summary of the band's story before digging into the album track by track. Lunacy is a standard-bearing rock-album vivisection for anyone interested in how a work of art can capture the zeitgeist, deservedly or not. -Nell Beram, author and freelance writer Kruth is a well-studied music historian whose writing skills are mellifluous. Magical . . . John Kruth is a fantastic writer! Lunacy: The Curious Phenomenon of Pink Floyd's 'Dark Side of the Moon,' 50 Years On is John Kruth's exuberant but shrewd homage to one of the bestselling albums of all time and the band, place and era that begat it.