The engineer Alan Parsons was responsible for many aspects of the recording, and for the recruitment of the session singer Clare Torry, who appears on "The Great Gig in the Sky".

In a band meeting at the home of the drummer, Nick Mason, in North London, the bassist, Roger Waters, proposed that a new album could form part of the tour.

[9] Parts of the album were taken from previously unused material; the opening line of "Breathe" came from an earlier work by Waters and Ron Geesin, written for the soundtrack of The Body,[10] and the basic structure of "Us and Them" was borrowed from an original composition, "The Violent Sequence", by the keyboardist, Richard Wright, for Zabriskie Point.

They also purchased extra equipment, which included new speakers, a PA system, a 28-track mixing desk with a four channel quadraphonic output, and a custom-built lighting rig.

The new material was premiered at The Dome in Brighton, on 20 January 1972,[15] and after the commercial failure of Medicine Head's album the title was changed back to the band's original preference.

[16][17][nb 1] Dark Side of the Moon: A Piece for Assorted Lunatics, as it was then known,[7] was performed for an assembled press on 17 February 1972 at the Rainbow Theatre, more than a year before its release, and was critically acclaimed.

Differences included the lack of synthesisers in tracks such as "On the Run", and Clare Torry's vocals on "The Great Gig in the Sky" replaced by readings from the Bible.

[21] Work on the album was interrupted in late February when the band travelled to France and recorded music for the French director Barbet Schroeder's film La Vallée.

[22][nb 2] They performed in Japan, returned to France in March to complete work on the film, played more shows in North America, then flew to London and resumed recording in May and June.

[23][24][25] The Dark Side of the Moon was built upon experiments Pink Floyd had attempted in their previous live shows and recordings, although it lacked the extended instrumental excursions which, according to the critic David Fricke, had become characteristic of the band following the departure of the founding member Syd Barrett in 1968.

The Dark Side of the Moon's lyrical themes include conflict, greed, the passage of time, death and insanity, the last inspired in part by Barrett's deteriorating mental state.

[27] "Time" examines the manner in which its passage can control one's life and offers a stark warning to those who remain focused on mundane pursuits; it is followed by a retreat into solitude and withdrawal in "Breathe (Reprise)".

[1] For "Money", Waters had created effects loops in an unusual 74 time signature[36] from recordings of money-related objects, including coins thrown into a mixing bowl in his wife's pottery studio.

[37] The recording sessions were frequently interrupted: Waters, a supporter of Arsenal F.C., would break to see his team compete, and the band would occasionally stop to watch Monty Python's Flying Circus on television while Parsons worked on the tracks.

[41] Gilmour recalled the band listening to the finished album for the first time as "a moment of great joy and of satisfaction and the feeling of achievement that we'd really gone that extra mile".

[50][54] In 2004, Torry sued EMI and Pink Floyd for 50% of the songwriting royalties, arguing that her contribution to "The Great Gig in the Sky" was substantial enough to be considered co-authorship.

Thomas's background was in music rather than engineering; he had worked with Beatles producer George Martin and was an acquaintance of Pink Floyd's manager, Steve O'Rourke.

[49] The design was inspired by a photograph of a prism with a beam of white light projected through it and emerging in the colours of the visible spectrum that Thorgerson had found in a 1963 physics textbook,[49] as well as by an illustration by Alex Steinweiss, the inventor of album cover art, for the New York Philharmonic's 1942 performance of Ludwig van Beethoven's Emperor Concerto.

One poster bore pictures of the band in concert, overlaid with scattered letters to form PINK FLOYD, and the other an infrared photograph of the Great Pyramids of Giza, created by Powell and Thorgerson.

"[87] Steve Peacock of Sounds wrote: "I don't care if you've never heard a note of the Pink Floyd's music in your life, I'd unreservedly recommend everyone to The Dark Side of the Moon".

[85] In his 1973 review for Rolling Stone magazine, Loyd Grossman declared Dark Side "a fine album with a textural and conceptual richness that not only invites, but demands involvement".

The album reached the Billboard Top LPs & Tape chart's number one spot on 28 April 1973,[93] and was so successful that the band returned two months later for another tour.

[nb 6][99] Menon's efforts to secure a contract renewal with Pink Floyd were in vain however; at the beginning of 1974, the band signed for Columbia with a reported advance fee of $1M (in Britain and Europe they continued to be represented by Harvest Records).

[86] In 1979, The Dark Side of the Moon was released as a remastered LP by Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab,[117] and in April 1988 on their "Ultradisc" gold CD format.

The success of the album brought wealth to all four members of the band; Richard Wright and Roger Waters bought large country houses, and Nick Mason became a collector of upmarket cars.

[139] In a 2018 book about classic rock, Steven Hyden recalls concluding, in his teens, that The Dark Side of the Moon and Led Zeppelin IV were the two greatest albums of the genre, vision quests "encompass[ing] the twin poles of teenage desire".

[140] In 2013, The Dark Side of the Moon was selected for preservation in the United States National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

[163] In 2009, the Flaming Lips released a track-by-track remake of the album in collaboration with Stardeath and White Dwarfs, and featuring Henry Rollins and Peaches as guest musicians.

Jam-rock band Phish performed a semi-improvised version of the entire album as part of their show on 2 November 1998 in West Valley City, Utah.

[168] In the 1990s, it was discovered that playing The Dark Side of the Moon alongside the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz produced moments of apparent synchronicity, and it was suggested that this was intentional.