Enlightenment Rock: “The Age of Reason” (1794) and The Dark Side of the Moon (1973)

[academic writing, April 2011]

Thomas Paine’s 1794 essay “The Age of Reason” established themes of political, social, and theological independence for individuals, parts of life sought by New World settlers around the time of Paine’s scholarship. While individuals’ religious and intellectual freedoms were important for Paine to identify in 1794, the continued and rabid popularity of one “classic” rock album has helped continue discussion of Paine’s themes of reason and rigid individuality. British psychedelic rock group Pink Floyd’s 1973 release The Dark Side of the Moon [DSOTM] has been celebrated a great deal in the United States and worldwide: its notoriety has come as a work of music and aural experience, as well as its continued lyrical discussion of themes identified in Paine’s “The Age of Reason” (1794). In the tradition of Paine’s (1794) essay “The Age of Reason,” DSOTM (1973) is a work of a twentieth century Enlightenment in pop music, a work that, in its whole, was created to invoke and sustain within its audience a transformative spiritual experience.

Personal Relationships With God On the New Continent: Paine’s “The Age of Reason”

“The Age of Reason” (1794) addresses “my fellow-citizens of the United States of America” (p. 174), as Paine, among others, viewed his newfound nationality with pride. Born in England, Paine (1794) began his essay by assuming a distinct level of intellectual ability and trust among his readers: “I put the following pages under your protection […] He who denies to another this right [of reading this work] makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it” (p. 174). While Paine’s introduction may be easily overlooked, the accessibility of his writing was historically unprecedented and important; the author’s careful relationship with his audience may have aided in this effectiveness. It may be the Age of Reason itself that supports Paine’s assumption, that his readers would find his personal views on religion useful, a means for understanding their own relationship with a higher power.

Paine’s (1794) essay “The Age of Reason” establishes the nature of sovereignty for individuals regarding their own spiritual beliefs. While a full and separate study may examine Paine’s (1794) distrustful views on organized religion, the potential and ability that may result from one’s contemplation of their relationship with the divine: “It is only in the creation that all our ideas and conceptions of a word of God can unite. The creation speaketh a universal language, independently of human speech or human languages, multiplied and various as they be. It is an ever existing original which every man can read” (p. 179). Paine (1794) uses creation itself, including the non-human environment, as adequate grounding for any individual’s theological search: creation is beyond language and institution, “ever existing” and, by definition, universal.
Modern American religious pamphletry exists, though most call for readers’ ascription to specific denomination; some likely call for individuals’ forging a “personal relationship” with a specific divine entity (Paine would likely be more interested in how the dissemination of one religion’s core beliefs have become an issue of federal, national security). In “The Age of Reason,” after systematically dismantling popular religions including Christianity and Islam as being built upon “hearsay evidence and secondhand authority”(p. 177), Paine (1794) concludes by declaring “it is only by the exercise of reason that man can discover God” (p. 180). Reason is an action to Paine, a consciousness through which an individual may develop a more full awareness of oneself and one’s surroundings: “reason” is not an organized religion, a reason to attend specific services, or a means by which to pester unknown individuals with conversations about spiritual conversions. It is a means by which one may most fully and productively engage the world on an individual basis: “it is a contradiction in terms and ideas to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second-hand, either verbally or in writing” (p. 176). From Paine’s important ideas, in “The Age of Reason” and elsewhere, a new nation, with new artistic and theological freedoms grew to fruition.

Reasonable Psychedelia: Context for Pink Floyd

On February 17, 1972, a crowd gathered at the Rainbow Theater in London, to hear a live performance of Pink Floyd’s latest material, as the band prepared to embark on a tour. Previously, Pink Floyd had experienced only mild commercial success in Meddle (1971) and previous releases; prior to work on DSOTM (1973), band members David Gilmour (guitar), Nick Mason (drums), Roger Waters (bass), and Richard Wright (keyboards) were producing music for a number of film soundtracks. Pink Floyd’s music helped define the category of psychedelic rock in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as their experimentation with synthesized sound within the framework of popular rock music, mixed with themes of social criticism and individual perception and gained popularity. Prior to DSOTM, however, the band had yet to embrace the full ability of a work of popular music to establish a theme and focus for its critique.
The performance of an early version of DSOTM in London in February of 1972 quickly became critically acclaimed, and has since become the stuff of rock legend. This early manifestation of what many consider to be the band’s masterwork contained most segments heard on the album, released in March of 1973, though important distinctions help identify the band’s philosophical intentions: lacking the arpeggiation of synthesizers and other studio nuance to be engineered by Alan Parsons, the members of Pink Floyd filled what would become a non-lyrical improvisational space by a talented female vocalist with Scripture readings, with effective theatrical results. The memorable and defining songs that would appear on the studio release of DSOTM were in place, including the rousing chorus “Money,” the poignant “Us and Them,” and the album’s dramatic final sequence of songs, including “Brain Damage” and “Eclipse.”

More Than Mental Illness: Themes of Reason on The Dark Side of the Moon

While much scholarship on DSOTM notes former and founding Pink Floyd member Syd Barrett’s departure from the band in 1968, and his subsequent mental illness, as providing primary inspiration for the album’s themes, one individual’s descent into madness is an insufficient summary of what philosophy drives the lyrical content of this work: however unbased, the entry on Wikipedia regarding this album cites at least two occasions upon which the listener of DSOTM was brought to tears, having an emotional response to the work’s universal themes. If a discussion of lunacy and madness is the lyrical goal of DSOTM, a sense of reason, and rational behavior, is essential contrast to its thesis:

breathe/breathe in the air/don’t be afraid to care/leave/don’t leave me
look around/choose your own ground
long you live and high you fly/and all smiles you give and tears you’ll cry
and all you touch and all you see/and all your life will ever be
(“Breathe,” Pink Floyd, 1973)

The opening track of DSOTM makes use of common human action as a means for introducing themes of human accomplishment, relationship, and stability; boldly, many lyrics address the listener directly, as if making commentary on their own life. Throughout this strong lyrical assertion, an unspoken understanding regarding the limitation of human ability is at work, one described best by Paine: “Man frequently fails in accomplishing his ends from a natural inability of the power to the purpose; and frequently from the want of wisdom to apply power properly” (1794, p. 179).

The album’s first single, “Money,” gained ironic significance as it became the band’s first mainstream FM radio hit: with lyrics such as “I’m all right Jack/keep your hands off of my stack” (“Money,” Pink Floyd, 1973) and “share it fairly but don’t take a slice of my pie,” songwriter and bassist Roger Waters’ dark satire of greed may have become more accepted as a direct message of the album than was the band’s intention. Original vinyl pressings of DSOTM had “Money” begin the second side—an important position, in an era when listeners were required to physically turn over a product in order to hear the second half of the music. This track initiated DSOTM’s second sequence, the last four of which (“Us and Them,” “Any Colour You Like,” “Brain Damage,” and “Eclipse”) were blended seamlessly by producer Alan Parsons.
It is these tracks together that seek to transform individual listeners’ sense of reason most on DSOTM: moving from a pronouncement of difference amid conflict (“who knows which is which/and who is who?” on “Us and Them” (Pink Floyd, 1973)) to a pronouncement of difference regarding simple human ability:

the lunatic is in the hall/the lunatics are in my hall
the paper holds their folded faces to the floor
and every day the paper boy brings more
and if the dam breaks open many years too soon
and if there is no room upon the hill
and if your head explodes with dark forebodings too
I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon (“Brain Damage,” Pink Floyd, 1973)

As noted previously, the listener is addressed directly in the lyrics on DSOTM, here with strong rhetorical effect: among dire and unforeseen circumstance—from the unexpected breaking of a dam to “your head explodes”—one may take some comfort in reappearance and acknowledgement, in whatever alien environment lies ahead for us. It is a humanistic common sense that drives these lyrical conclusions, spreading the word that we can, indeed view the world as an “unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible whole is governed” (Paine, 1794, p. 179). DSOTM is not a work of predestinationism, but one of reason: if the audience is to make any sense of the events of their lives, their own ability to reason—that is, their own sanity—must be questioned.

A Legacy of “Eclipse”: Enlightenment Rock in the 21st Century

The impact of DSOTM on the music industry, and on genres of pop, rock, and experimental recording, is unprecedented. While its commercial success further enabled Pink Floyd’s career (notably, The Wall in 1979 sought discussion of human themes on a level of depth equivalent to DSOTM, through imposing a more direct narrative structure), and its legacy is represented in part by its widespread coverage: its singles are still frequently played, and its embrace by musicians across genres continues to grow. Last summer, the Flaming Lips performed DSOTM in its entirety, at a number of venues across the United States and Europe; at the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Tennessee, lead singer Wayne Coyne tossed giant balloons containing real money into the crowd. Echoing the songwriter’s ironic intention penned forty years prior, the balloons bounced across the crowd of thousands, and the bills were said to have been single dollars, each signed “with love, the Flaming Lips.”

How one work of popular rock music has and continues to inspire reason among its listeners, its audience is fascinating. Examination of other albums through a lens established by Thomas Paine’s 1794 essay “The Age of Reason” would be helpful in further assessing how pop music may embrace spirituality: while isolated genres of pop rock may disagree, mainstream and especially popular musical works may dismiss full theological discussions, but to agree that “the word of God is the creation we behold” (Paine, 1794, p. 178). In this, Pink Floyd’s 1973 Dark Side of the Moon serves as a fine example.

Works Cited

“The Dark Side of the Moon.” (n.d.) Wikipedia. Retrieved from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Side_of_the_Moon

Pink Floyd. (1973). The Dark Side of the Moon. [vinyl record]. Capitol: Los Angeles.

Paine, T. (1794). “The Age of Reason.” The Portable Enlightenment Reader. Ed. I. Kramnick. Penguin: New York.