Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side of the Moon’: 10 Things You Didn’t Know

5. “Money” was influenced by Booker T and the MGs.
Pink Floyd’s first Top 20 hit in the U.S. (it reached Number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 in July 1973), “Money” is Dark Side‘s most aggressively rocking track. With its tricky 7/4 time signature (except for during the guitar-solo segment, when the song switches to 4/4), Waters’ indelible bass riff, Gilmour’s wailing guitar lead, a squalling solo from saxophonist Dick Parry, and a distinctive sound collage loop made up of ringing cash registers and rattling coins, the recording all but obscures its roots in the Memphis R&B of Booker T and the MGs – but they’re definitely in there, according to Gilmour.

“Getting specific about how and what influenced what is always difficult,” he told Rolling Stone in 2003, “but I was a big Booker T fan. I had the Green Onions album when I was a teenager. And in my previous band, we were going for two or three years, and we went through Beatles and Beach Boys, on to all the Stax and soul stuff. We played ‘Green Onions’ onstage. I’d done a fair bit of that stuff; it was something I thought we could incorporate into our sound without anyone spotting where the influence had come from. And to me, it worked. Nice white English architecture students getting funky is a bit of an odd thought … and isn’t as funky as all that [laughs].

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