Gilmour’s steel comes in where Speak to Me ends
Breathe is the first song on The Dark Side of the Moon, even though Speak to Me, the heartbeat collage, is the first track. On the 1973 LP they are separate. A backwards piano chord holds the join, which is why later CDs often stick them together. Pink Floyd had already been playing the piece on stage. The suite, then called Eclipse, was premiered at the Brighton Dome on 20 January 1972, months before the album sessions were finished.
The album was recorded at Abbey Road through 1972 and into January 1973. Alan Parsons engineered it. The band produced it. Chris Thomas came in to help with the final mix when the four of them could not agree. Harvest released the record in the United States on 1 March 1973 and in Britain on 16 March. Gilmour and Wright wrote the music for Breathe. Waters wrote the lyric. Gilmour sings the lead.
The tempo stays down. Gilmour plays electric guitar through a Uni-Vibe, and pedal steel with a volume pedal, several passes of the steel. Wright plays Hammond organ and a Fender Rhodes. Waters’ bass moves more than the vocal does. Mason keeps time and does not push it. There is no big chorus. The lyric is a short list of instructions, starting with the line about breathing in the air and not being afraid to care.
The Brighton premiere was rough. The taped effects gave them trouble that night, and the suite they were calling Eclipse was not yet the record. They kept playing the songs through the first half of 1972, then went into Abbey Road to cut them. Breathe was already in that set. By the time Parsons rolled tape, Gilmour knew the steel part. The Uni-Vibe on the rhythm guitar is a slow pulse, not a fast spin. Wright’s Rhodes fills the gaps the vocal leaves open. The lyric’s other idea, the rabbit told to run, is the same warning Time will make louder a few minutes later on the side. Here it is still said quietly, over the steel.
Lines like “Breathe in the air, don’t be afraid to care” are easy to attack as puerile, adolescent, head-in-the-clouds nonsense, but on another level, it’s a very straightforward exhortation to be here now and to live, something we all need help with. I still do.
(Roger Waters, USA Today, 1999)
A short reprise of the same song sits at the end of Time, without the steel, and with Farfisa organ and Wurlitzer where the Hammond and the Rhodes had been. Then the side goes on to The Great Gig in the Sky. Breathe itself is under three minutes. It is the calm minute before On the Run.
The Dark Side of the Moon reached number 1 on the US album chart and number 2 in Britain. Breathe is not the single. It is the first human voice on the record, a pedal steel over a heartbeat. Waters later called that opening couplet simplistic, and he kept it. The 1972 and 1973 Abbey Road tapes are the record. A later remaster does not change who played the steel.
