Forgive me
a cliché, but –
I was today
years old when I found out –
The song “Breathe,”
the first sung song on Pink Floyd’s 1973 album The Dark Side of the Moon,
has the exact same chordal structure as Neil Young’s song “Down by the River,”
the side one closing tune on his 1969 record, Everybody Knows This Is
Nowhere.
Well,
almost exactly.
Down by
the River:
Em7 to A (four times)
Cmaj7 to Bm (four times, ending with a D on
the fourth)
G to D to A (three times for the chorus)
Breathe:
Em to A7 (four times)
Cmaj7 to Bm to Fmaj7 to D9
Well, it
sounds more similar on my guitar than it looks like on the electronic page here.
Man, I
wish I knew this back in the day. I was familiar with both songs, but just never
made the connection. The guys I hung out with way back then were more into Neil
Young than Pink Floyd, though we did manage to see both live the summer of
1988:
Pink Floyd at Giants Stadium, June 4, 1988
Neil Young and the Blue Notes at Pier 84 in
NYC, August 30, 1988
As a side
note, that was a great summer for concerts. I also saw AC/DC that May at the Brendan
Byrne Arena in the Meadowlands and the famous Guns N’ Roses / Deep Purple /
Aerosmith concert at Giants Stadium two weeks before Neil Young at the Pier.
That was the concert where they filmed the video for “Sweet Child o’ Mine.”
Though I was probably already sick of the omnipresent overrepresentation of GNR
on the radio by then, let me tell you, the vast majority of the crowd was there
to see them, not the two dinosaurs of 70s rock.
Oh well.
Let’s see … what else can I play on my guitar …
