The Voice Of The Great Gig in the Sky

When Clare Torry walked into Abbey Road Studios in 1973, she had no idea her non-verbal, improvised wailing would redefine rock history

The instructions were notoriously vague. On a cold Sunday evening in January 1973, a 25-year-old session singer named Clare Torry walked into Studio Three at Abbey Road. Pink Floyd were putting the finishing touches on their eighth studio album, The Dark Side of the Moon, and they had hit a wall.

Keyboardist Richard Wright had composed a haunting, melancholic piano instrumental centered around mortality—initially titled The Mortality Sequence. The band felt it needed a vocal element, but they didn't want standard lyrics. They wanted an emotion.

Torry, recommended by producer Alan Parsons, stepped up to the microphone. Keyboard player Rick Wright told her to think about death and horror, but the band offered little else in terms of direction.

Try some vocals on it, David Gilmour told her.

What do you want? Torry asked.

We don't know, Gilmour replied.

When the music began to play through her headphones, Torry tried singing words like Oh, baby, but immediately stopped—it felt cliché and completely wrong for the brooding, majestic chords. Instead, she decided to pretend her voice was a musical instrument. She took a deep breath, opened her mouth, and let out an agonizing, soaring improvise of gospel-tinged roars, delicate falsettos, and raw, wordless grief.

She sang multiple takes, pushing her vocal cords to the absolute limit. But by the time she finished, Torry was convinced she had blown the audition. The performance felt too extreme, too chaotic. Embarrassed, she apologized to the band, collected her double-pay Sunday rate of £30 (roughly £400 today), and went home. She assumed her vocals would end up on the cutting-room floor.

She didn't think about the session again until a few months later, when she walked into a local record shop and saw The Dark Side of the Moon on display. Opening the gatefold sleeve, she checked the credits: Vocal track by Clare Torry.

She bought the album, went home, put it on her turntable, and was stunned to hear her second take serving as the magnificent centerpiece of track five, newly retitled The Great Gig in the Sky.

While the album went on to sell over 45 million copies worldwide—becoming one of the best-selling records in human history—Torry’s contribution remained legally classified as a simple studio performance for hire. For decades, the songwriting credit for The Great Gig in the Sky belonged solely to Richard Wright.

As the years passed, musicologists and listeners alike argued that Torry’s vocal performance wasn't merely a performance; it was the primary composition of the song's melody. In the UK, copyright law dictates that anyone who composes a unique vocal melody contributes to the authorship of the work.

In 2004, after years of reflection, Torry filed a lawsuit in the High Court against Pink Floyd and EMI, claiming half-ownership of the song’s copyright based on co-writing. Given that her melodies were completely improvised on the spot over Wright’s chord progression, her legal argument held formidable weight.

In 2005, an out-of-court settlement was reached. Though the financial terms remained confidential, all subsequent pressings of The Dark Side of the Moon officially bear a revised credit: Wright/Torry.

What began as a £30 session that Torry thought was a total failure became one of the most iconic vocal solos in rock history—and, eventually, a hard-won victory for session musicians everywhere.

Sources

• Pink Floyd: The Dark Side of the Moon (Classic Albums documentary, 2003)
• High Court of Justice proceedings
• EMI Music Publishing
• BBC Radio