Charts: Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac, Battle It Out In Australia

The five-decade chart battle between Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side Of The Moon (1973) and Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours (1977) looks like it’s being extended in Australia.

Both albums have sold over 1 million copies each in this country. That puts them in an exclusive club of 12 long players, topped by Meat Loaf’s Bat Out Of Hell and John Farnham’s Whispering Jack.

By 2023, Dark Side was ruled to have sold 45 million copies around the world, with Rumours at 40 million.

Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour said: “I can clearly remember that moment of sitting and listening to the whole mix the whole way through and thinking 'my God, we've really done something fantastic here’."

In America, it set a new record, spending more than 970 weeks, or the equivalent of over 18-and-a-half years, in the Billboard Hot 200.

As for Rumours, drummer Mick Fleetwood suggested, “The album was about the messy break-ups in our lives, so I think there was a sense of voyeurism on the part of listeners.”

The mega-success of the two albums also made them enough money to be as self-indulgent as they wanted to be. Interestingly, while Floyd had giant inflatable pigs at shows, Mac had a 60-foot penguin to float over the stage at their vast outdoor shows.

Thrust into a world of private jets and limos and outrageous riders (Stevie Nicks insisted on a dressing room painted pink with a white piano) and copious amounts of cocaine. 

Mac intended to thank their drug dealer on the album credits. But Fleetwood admitted they changed their minds when he was tragically executed by gangland rivals just before the record came out.

Australian Chart

The Dark Side Of The Moon and Rumours have been slipping in and out of the Australian charts—first the David Kent Report and then ARIA—due to the streaming era and vinyl renaissance.

Rumours unexpectedly returned to #2 in 2011 after Network Ten aired a Fleetwood Mac-inspired episode of musical drama Glee, and then again in 2022 after the passing of Christine McVie that November.

It’s not just in Australia that it has a continued lease of life. Last month, it was also in the UK, Ireland, US, and Canada charts following the March release of Fleetwood Mac's 1975-1987 boxed set. 

Additionally, in the UK, Go Your Own Way was certified 5 x platinum for 3 million sales and streams.

In the US in April, Rumours leaped from #49 to its highest streaming chart ranking of #34. It was also on four other Billboard charts: Top Rock Albums (#2), Top Rock & Alternative Albums (#3), Top Album Sales (#9), Vinyl (#7), and the Hot 100 (#25).

The Dark Side Of The Moon’s continued appeal goes back not just to the impeccable playing but song themes inspired by their tough touring around that time.

In 1972 alone, they had done 100 shows, including two North American and European tours and visits to Australia and Japan. 

The concept of stress, devised mainly by Roger Waters, led to songs about money, death, time, madness, travel, choice, war and violence. The long-player "has some kind of universal appeal in that it confronts a number of major psychological and emotional concerns", Waters has suggested.

In 1995, there was a rush by Australians to record stores when, in August, the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette in Texas ran an idiotic but intriguing story claiming that The Dark Side Of The Moon was secretly made to synchronise with the classic 1939 film The Wizard Of Oz. After the third roar of the MGM lion, the lyrics and titles matched the action and plot.

In 2023, another boost in Australia came with the 50th Anniversary box set, which included new mixes, photos, and a London Wembley 1974 set of the album.

Rumours had, by last year, been streamed 5 billion times globally on Spotify alone, the most streamed release from the 1970s. Of three of its biggest hits, Dreams is over 1.5 billion on that platform, The Chain is slightly over 1 billion, and Go Your Own Way is at 900 million.

Dark Side has generated 2.63 billion streams and is still doing nearly 1.4 million streams a day. Interestingly, it’s only their third-most-streamed album. The Wall is the top of the list with 3.45 billion, followed by A Foot in the Door: The Best of Pink Floyd with 3.41 billion.

Now Dark Side, which has remained in the Australian vinyl charts for years, looks like gearing up for re-entry, along with the other perennial, Wish You Were Here after the chart success of their latest release, Pink Floyd At Pompeii – MCMLXXII.

This week it entered at #3 on the ARIA Vinyl Chart and #27 on the Hot 50 Albums.

The new live album, released late last week, also debuted the UK charts at #1 (their seventh chart topper in their home market) as well as in Germany, Italy and Belgium. It entered the Top 20 across the Netherlands, France, Japan, New Zealand and Sweden.

Movie

The live album follows the cinematic return of the newly restored version of the groundbreaking 1972 film directed by British-born, France-based filmmaker Adrian Maben.

It broke into the top ten at the global, North American and many other box office charts upon its debut, and top 5 in the UK & Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands and Uruguay. It’s so far clicked over $6.4 million worldwide. In Australia, it opened with $228,696 after its April 24 release

The film is remastered in 4K, meticulously restored frame-by-frame from the original 35mm cut negative, discovered in five unmarked cans in Floyd’s archives.

The enhanced audio was newly mixed by Steven Wilson, who calls the film and album “the absolute zenith of Pink Floyd as an experimental rock band, the definitive statement of that era”.

He saw the original 63-minute film as a 12-year-old. Floyd became his favourite band when his dad kept playing The Dark Side of the Moon on repeat.

Apart from CD and Digital Audio, the album is out for the first time on Dolby Atmos and on vinyl.

Pink Floyd At Pompeii was shot in the ruins of an ancient Roman amphitheatre in Pompeii, Italy. 

There was no audience, which allowed the cameras positioned in the band to have a more intimate sense, rather than look out at where the crowd would have been.

The film includes 83 minutes of rare, behind-the-scenes footage of the band starting sessions for The Dark Side Of The Moon at London’s Abbey Road studios. This footage had been issued before, screened in late-night cinemas in North America.

It was initially to be just a small screen documentary, financed by French, Belgian and German TV companies. But one suggested it have a cinema release, upgrading to four cameras and 35mm film.

In a MOJO interview with Maben and Floyd drummer Nick Mason, it was revealed that the band had initially rejected the film-maker’s advances. 

Mason recalled: “We never took a huge interest in it. We dithered about doing it because it meant we had to give up a couple of gigs in England that had to be replaced later. 

“We were incredibly offhand about it and didn’t have any idea of what we were getting into or where we were filming.”

It was on arriving in October 1971 for a six-day shoot that they realised what a magnificent location it was.

There were problems. The power source was unreliable, cutting out after seconds, forcing the shoot to stop for two days. Floyd insisted on performing live, not lip-synching to their recordings.

Maben decided that while the issue was being sorted out, he’d shoot the band walking along a volcanic landscape in nearby Solfatara using a handheld camera.

He told MOJO: “Alas, this was the first Sunday in October, the day of the procession of the Blessed Virgin of the Rosary between the Cathedral of Pompeii and the Piazza Garibaldi in Naples.

“Thousands of pilgrims block the streets leading to Naples. So the Pink Floyd and the camera crew sat in their car and waited for three hours. I began to think that the film had been cursed, and we would never be able to shoot anything. 

“But we finally arrived at Solfatara and managed to get some images. Upon our return to the amphitheatre, we got good news: the electricity was working! A long cable (750 metres or 2,460 feet) had been connected from the Cathedral of Pompeii.”

The film was released on video numerous times, and in 2002, a Director's cut DVD appeared, which Maben combined the original footage (including 10 minutes shot in a Paris studio) with contemporary shots of space and the area around Pompeii.