Dark Side of The Rainbow - Coincidence Versus Intent

Coincidence Versus Intent

Pink Floyd band members have repeatedly said that the reputed phenomenon is coincidence. In an interview for the 25th anniversary of the album, guitarist/vocalist David Gilmour denied the album was intentionally written to be synchronized with the film, saying "Some guy with too much time on his hands had this idea of combining Wizard of Oz with Dark Side of the Moon." On an MTV special about Pink Floyd in 2002, the band dismissed any relationship between the album and the movie, saying there were no means of reproducing the film in the studio at the time they recorded the album.

Dark Side of the Moon audio engineer Alan Parsons in 2003 dismissed the supposed effect:

It was an American radio guy who pointed it out to me. It's such a non-starter, a complete load of eyewash. I tried it for the first time about two years ago. One of my fiancée's kids had a copy of the video, and I thought I had to see what it was all about. I was very disappointed. The only thing I noticed was that the line "balanced on the biggest wave" came up when Dorothy was kind of tightrope walking along a fence. One of the things any audio professional will tell you is that the scope for the drift between the video and the record is enormous; it could be anything up to twenty seconds by the time the record's finished. And anyway, if you play any record with the sound turned down on the TV, you will find things that work.

Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason teasingly told MTV in 1997, "It's absolute nonsense. It has nothing to do with The Wizard of Oz. It was all based on The Sound of Music."