I think when the melodic line from "You Never Give Me Your Money" kicks back in the concluding section of "Carry That Weight"......it shows that the Beatles were truly capable of gigantic thinking without losing sight of melody or composition. The same goes for Floyd when Breathe returns at the end of Time. Those two sections are amongst the most awesome moments in rock music......
The thing which I don't think gets mentioned is just how much more difficult it is to play certain Beatle Songs on Abbey Road than it is to play most Pink Floyd Songs (including all of Dark Side).........Most of the Dark Side material is based on the I / IV of the minor scale......Breathe is essentially thing (E Minor to A Major), Great Gig in the Sky is essentially this (G Minor to C Major) and Any Colour You Like is really a reprise of Breathe in D Minor rather than E Minor. Time, Money are really basic songs which are produced immaculately. Yes Money is largely in 7/4 time, but it's still simple (which is not a bad thing)....Us and Them is the most complex song on the album harmonically, and it defintely comes across as a song that was written on the piano (which it was).....
I still think as a solid structure Dark Side of the Moon is probably the best single album ever produced. But the songs independently are not as great as the sum for me.
If you take a song like Because or You Never Give Me Your Money you have certain types of counterpoint and fast paced moving chords that very few bands are ever able to master without sounding like they've been overtaken by the virtuosity of their composition.......here is an example........if you listen to a song like Roundabout (which is one of my all time favorite songs).....your mind can make the ascertation that the song you are hearing is complex, that the writing took time and that the musicians are working their asses off........
The anatomy of You Never Give Me Your Money
In truth, You Never Give Me Your Money is a far more complex composition......but the independent sections of that song are so melodic and breezy that it passes by like natural flowing water.......the song starts out in A minor and the melody placed on top is rather Baroque-ish. The following section "out of college, money spent..." is totally a blues / honky tonk fast paced section which has NOTHING to do with section A. The only similarity is that it is in the relative major of the opening section. The next section "But oh that magic feeling, no where to go" leaves both A minor and C Major and falls into the mixolydian mode of F Major.....the chords here are independently very simple (B flat, F, C...all majors)......but you are no longer in the key of C major, but in fact F Major, resolving to C. THEN........the 4th section which is very brief and strictly instrumental, uses a series of guitar fills all cadencing on a diminished chord climbing up a staircase till you reach A Major which is a major contrast to where the song started out in A Minor........now the "One sweet dream" section is largely in A Major, but it actually leaves it momentarilly when "soon we'll be away from here, pack up the bags and wipe that tear away" which is actually a D Minor chord (back in the key of A minor) but instead of falling back to the A Minor tonic it decidely falls back to A Major. This creates a finale type feeling in the brain, but before you are able to feel the true feeling of finality, there are 3 chords which are arpaggiated in triplet form (C Major / G Major / A Major).......this now not in any key, but rather a pentatonic scale.....and the song fades out......
Such complexity is really hard to make sound so simple. If you are not familiar with this song please take a listen. When the opening motif returns in the 15th track (Carry That Weight) it makes the most astounding completion.........
