Life...act II, pg. 60

I went in, put the headphones on, and started going ‘Ooh-aah, baby, baby - yeah, yeah, yeah.’ They said, ‘No, no–-we don’t want that. If we wanted that we’d have got Doris Troy.’ They said, ‘Try some longer notes’, so I started doing that a bit. And all this time, I was getting more familiar with the backing track. … “That was when I thought, ‘Maybe I should just pretend I’m an instrument.’ So I said, ‘Start the track again.’ One of my most enduring memories is that there was a lovely can [i.e headphone] balance. Alan Parsons got a lovely sound on my voice: echoey, but not too echoey. When I closed my eyes–-which I always did—it was just all-enveloping; a lovely vocal sound, which for a singer, is always inspirational.

— Clare Torrey, the then 22-year old last-minute choice of engineer Alan Parsons to perform vocals on the “The Great Gig in the Sky.” She was paid £30.

There’s no lyrics. It’s about dying — have a bit of a sing on that, girl.

—Roger Waters

Also:

(At 0:38)

And I am not frightened of dying. Any time will do, I don’t mind. Why should I be frightened of dying? There’s no reason for it — you’ve got to go sometime

— Gerry O’Driscoll, Abbey Road Studios janitorial “browncoat”^[14] [15]

(At 3:33, faintly)

I never said I was frightened of dying.

— Patricia ‘Puddie’ Watts, wife of road manager Peter Watts^[1