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David Gilmour Addresses Syncing Pink Floyd's Album with The Wizard of Oz
He tells Jimmy Fallon whether the band had planned for The Dark Side of the Moon to match up with the beloved musical.
With Wicked flying into theaters later this month, the world has Oz on the brain. And one of the strangest pop culture legends surrounding the original 1939 movie, The Wizard of Oz, is how Pink Floyd's classic The Dark Side of the Moon album magically seems to sync up with what's happening onscreen in the musical.
During his appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on November 8, Pink Floyd member David Gilmour addressed the rumor, and if the band had actually planned their famous album to match with The Wizard of Oz.
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Was it on purpose? "Well, of course it was," Gilmour told Jimmy Fallon with a straight face — before confirming that it's just a crazy coincidence.
"We listened to it, Polly and I, years ago," Gilmour continued, referring to his wife, Polly Samson. "There was no planning that out. I only heard about it years later."
How to sync up The Dark Side of the Moon and The Wizard of Oz
Gilmour told Fallon and The Tonight Show exactly how to watch The Wizard of Oz to see the coincidental moments the film appears to align with musical cues in The Dark Side of the Moon.
"On the third roar of the MGM lion, you put the needle [of the record player] on for the beginning of Dark Side, and there's these strange synchronicities that happen," the Pink Floyd singer and guitarist explained.
"Well, now people have done the chore work, and added it on YouTube," Gilmour continued. "You can watch. It's kind of amazing, and there are these strange coincidences — I'll call them coincidences."
"So maybe if you play this while you watch the movie Wicked..." said Fallon, as he held up Gilmour's latest album, Luck and Strange.
"Who knows?" answered the musician. Might be time to break out your record players, Ozians!
The theory of the Dark Side of the Moon/Wizard of Oz connection became widespread in the '90s thanks to journalist Charlie Savage, who wrote about the phenomenon of certain lyrics and sounds from the album syncing up with scenes in the classic Judy Garland film.
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"The band members have said they didn’t do it on purpose and that when they were recording the album there was no ready means of reproducing the film in the studio, which seems persuasive," Savage told Mojo in 2023. "But I have never thought that it was intentional, and I don’t think it’s necessary for this oddity to have been created on purpose to enjoy it."
"In fact, in some ways it’s more interesting if it just happened," he added. And it seems it did.
