The £30 Sunday Session Behind Pink Floyd's Great Gig in the Sky
A session singer walked into Abbey Road on a Sunday night in 1973, was told only to skip the words, and left sure nobody would ever hear it.
Our Short calls it the most haunting voice in rock, and honestly, we are not going to argue. The wild part is how little planning went into it. The voice on "The Great Gig in the Sky" belongs to Clare Torry, a session singer who was not in Pink Floyd, had no strong feelings about the band, and walked out of Abbey Road sure that nobody would ever hear what she had just done.
The Dark Side of the Moon
Pink Floyd · 1973
A Song Looking for a Voice
The track began as a slow, solemn piano piece by Richard Wright. Pink Floyd were already playing it on stage in early 1972, back when it was called The Mortality Sequence, and they tried filling it with Bible readings and recordings of the writer Malcolm Muggeridge. None of it stuck. By January 1973 The Dark Side of the Moon was nearly finished, and this piece still had a hole in the middle.
1972
Pink Floyd already played the piece live as The Mortality Sequence
Engineer Alan Parsons, who had worked with Torry before, suggested they give her a shot.
One Rule: No Words
She could not make the Saturday night they first asked for, so she came in on Sunday, 21 January 1973. The band explained the album's big themes, played her Wright's chords and said they wanted some singing on it. Beyond that, by Torry's account, they had no idea what they wanted.
Abbey Road Studios, Studio Three, London
21 January 1973 · Clare Torry's Sunday session
She started with words. They stopped her. One early take had a "baby" in it, and that had to go. So Torry stopped thinking like a vocalist and started thinking like an instrument, something closer to a guitar. David Gilmour coached her a little on dynamics. She did a handful of quick takes, and the vocal on the album was stitched together from them. Not one magic take, then. It just sounds like one.
Thirty Pounds and a Record Shop Surprise
Torry left embarrassed, sure the whole thing would never come to anything. Her pay for the evening was £30, the rate for a Sunday session.
when I left I remember thinking to myself: 'That will never see the light of day.'
Clare Torry
The album came out that March, and nobody called to tell her she was on it. She found out the old fashioned way, by picking up a copy in a record shop and spotting her own name in the credits.
The Credit, Three Decades Later
In 1998 she told Mojo that if she had known then what she knew later, she would have sorted out the copyright. In 2004 she did something about it, taking Pink Floyd and EMI to the High Court and arguing that her vocal made her a co-writer. The case was settled out of court in 2005. The terms stayed private, but the song has since been credited to Richard Wright and Clare Torry.
2005
Out of court settlement, then a co-writing credit for Torry
She also sang it live with the band, at London's Rainbow Theatre in November 1973 and at Knebworth in 1990. Thirty pounds, a few takes and not a single word. Some of the best things in rock really do happen on a Sunday.
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// Quick quiz
What was Clare Torry paid for her Sunday session on The Great Gig in the Sky?
She got a flat £30 for the Sunday session; the co-writing credit only came with the 2005 settlement.
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