The Song That Has Passed The Ultimate Test

“Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.” – Nathanial Hawthorne.

As we prepare to set our clocks forward tonight and save some daylight time, here’s an inside look at the song that defines the years, months, days, hours, minutes and seconds of our lives better than any other: Pink Floyd’s “Time”….

It was a TIME To Reflect: Roger Waters got the idea for this song when he was approaching an important time in his life. He was just two years shy of 30 and beginning to think hard about his mortality and how much time he has left on Earth.

TIME Took Them To The Dark Side: An excerpt from an article in Rolling Stone magazine celebrating the then 30th anniversary of the 1973 album Dark Side Of The Moon noted “Time”’s importance to the album by stating the following: “Waters poured his thoughts into a new song, simply titled ‘Time’, a nakedly phrased look at his predicament…..and Waters’ sudden insight colored the entire album the band was working on: Dark Side Of The Moon.”

A TIME-Intensive Creation: The song starts with layers of clock noises that were put together by their engineer, Alan Parsons. Each clock was recorded separately at an antiques store, and the band blended them together. Also, at the time of recording only a few tom-tom drums were available for the intro. To get the right mix and sound, the band had to tune each drum after hitting it, and then blend and mix into a finalized percussion track.

This TIME Everyone Took Part: This was the only song on Dark Side Of The Moon in which all four members received writing credit for.

TIME Paid Off For TIME Put In: The Dark Side Of The Moon album has sold over 34 million copies.

A Very Long TIME On The Charts: Dark Side Of The Moon was on the US charts for 741 consecutive weeks (14 years). It entered the charts in March of 1973 and didn’t drop off until October of 1988 before coming back to the charts in 2009. All told, Dark Side Of The Moon has spent more weeks than any other in history on the American charts with over 800. That’s nearly double what any other record has achieved. To this day, the album continues to sell over 10,000 copies each week.

Live TIME Perfected Before Studio TIME: Pink Floyd played “Time” live long before it was released. They played the whole Dark Side Of The Moon album in February, 1972 at the Rainbow Theater in London, over a year before it came out.

Pink Floyd Spent Some TIME In Oz: If you synchronize the song “Time” to the classic 1939 film The Wizard Of Oz you will notice some interesting similarities in what you see and hear such as:

1) The Wicked Witch of The West appears riding her bike at the same moment you here the alarm clock bells going off.
2) When you hear David Gilmour sing the words "Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day", Dorothy’s uncle puts his hand up to his head and rolls his eyes just before he kicks back in his chair after arguing with Mrs. Gultch.
3) During the lyrics "Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town", Toto hops out of Mrs. Gultches basket and runs back to the farm.
4) When Gilmour sings "Waiting for someone or something to show you the way", Dorothy is in her room wondering what she should do when Toto comes hopping through the window to show her the way.
5) During the song Dorothy begins to run as the words “No one told you when to run” are sung.
6) The fortune-teller is first seen during the song with a sign that reads “Past present and future”…The three states of time.

The TIME Wasn’t Right For A Grammy: Although the album Dark Side Of The Moon stands as one of the greatest pieces of music in rock history, it did not win a Grammy. In fact, it was not even nominated. The Album of the Year Grammy went to Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions album.

It looks like my time is up. I thank you for your time. I thank Pink Floyd for their "Time" too. It truly is a TIME-less song.

Now it's time to spend the next seven minutes and seven seconds watching "Time".