The Dark Side of the Moon is one of the best-selling and most highly-regarded albums in rock history. It also represents a crucial turning point in the evolution of Pink Floyd. While Roger Waters had been the band’s primary lyricist upon the departure of former guitarist and frontman Syd Barrett, he took on a larger role in defining Pink Floyd’s creative output with this landmark 1973 album. Waters wanted Floyd albums to be more conceptually cohesive, and Dark Side was the group’s first attempt to tie all of the tracks on an album to a common theme.
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The Dark Side of the Moon is a concept album, albeit a loosely-organized one. Its 10 tracks address a number of different themes, such as greed, war, and mortality, that are connected in their relation to the grim side of human nature. Waters wanted the topic of insanity to be an integral part of the album, too, and he explored it directly in The Dark Side of the Moon’s penultimate track, “Brain Damage.” (Waters’ interest in the topic was reflected in an early version of the album’s title, The Dark Side of the Moon: A Piece for Assorted Lunatics.)
The members of Pink Floyd had lost Barrett as a bandmate—he was no longer able to perform due to mental illness. In the lyrics for “Brain Damage,” Waters makes an explicit reference to Barrett, but the song also gives us a much broader perspective on how society views those it deems mentally ill.
Keeping the “Loonies” on the Path
The lyrics of “Brain Damage” volley between verses that tackle societal attitudes about mental illness and choruses that appear to address Barrett specifically. Each of three verses makes a reference to “the lunatic” encroaching on some area not meant for them. In the first verse, Waters sings, The lunatic is on the grass—a line that was inspired by a “keep off the grass” sign he spotted at King’s College at the University of Cambridge. Waters uses the reference to the “keep off” sign as a symbol of order and rigidity, as he also does with the line, Got to keep the loonies on the path. From Waters’ perspective, those that buck the pressure to “stay on the path” are regarded by society as “loonies.”
In the second verse, the lunatic is now “in the hall.” Specifically, this verse voices the resentment of those who consider themselves to be normal towards the “lunatic” behavior that is brought to their attention in the media.
The paper holds their folded faces to the floor
And every day the paperboy brings more
The third and final verse concerns the intrusion of the lunatic into one’s own mind. Just as the lunatic’s intrusions can’t be tolerated in public spaces or in one’s home, it has to be rooted out of one’s mind by way of a lobotomy.
You raise the blade, you make the change
You rearrange me ‘til I’m sane
In the choruses, Waters appears to be speaking directly to Barrett. When Waters sings, And if the band you’re in starts playing different tunes, he is referring back to when Barrett would literally play a different song than the rest of the band due to being out of touch with everything around him. Also, when Waters ends each chorus with I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon, he appears to be telling Barrett that he sees him and understands what he is going through.
Waters’ Subsequent References to Barrett
Over the course of the next four albums that Pink Floyd would release with Waters as a member, he would revisit many of the themes he raised in his lyrics for The Dark Side of the Moon. The topics of Barrett and mental illness were no exception. On Pink Floyd’s very next album, Wish You Were Here, more than half of the album’s runtime is dedicated to “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”—a nine-part piece split into two tracks, which was a tribute to Barrett. Lines like Remember when you were young / You shone like the sun and Now there’s a look in your eyes / Like black holes in the sky are obvious references to his former bandmate. Whereas on “Brain Damage,” Waters was processing the ways that society shuns nonconformists as “loonies,” on “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” his focus is on the complexity of Barrett’s life as a “martyr” who was both brilliant and a “target for faraway laughter.” Just as Waters had previously sung that he’d see him “on the dark side of the moon,” here he sings, “I’ll be joining you there.”
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Also, on The Wall, released in 1979, Waters’ rock opera protagonist was based on both his and Barrett’s experiences in Pink Floyd. More generally, Waters expands on the theme of how fame can breed isolation, which in turn is harmful to mental health.
The Impact of “Brain Damage”
“Brain Damage” was never released as a single, but in tandem with The Dark Side of the Moon’s closing track, “Eclipse,” it has received voluminous airplay on album-oriented rock and classic rock stations over the decades since its release. As of this writing, The Dark Side of the Moon is the fourth-highest selling album of all time and is still on the Billboard 200, approaching its 1,000th week on the chart.
Though “Brain Damage” takes up less than four minutes of The Dark Side of the Moon’s total runtime, it covers a lot of ground. The song works as both a meditation on how we use the concept of sanity to create divisions and as a personal tribute to Barrett. As much as any track on the album, it is responsible for The Dark Side of the Moon’s incredible staying power.
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