Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon Album Art

"The Dark Side of the Moon": How an Album Cover Became an Icon

Pink Floyd would have been a perfect match for the visually oriented era of Pinterest and Tumblr had the ring emerged today.

At the elevation of Pink Floyd's popularity in the 1970s, the Floyd'south visually arresting album covers and iconography complemented the artistry of the its music and generated buzz that would make the Word of Mouth Marketing Association proud. Nowhere is the ability of Pinkish Floyd'due south visual appeal more apparent than the encompass for the album The Nighttime Side of the Moon, released 44 years ago. The Dark Side of the Moon is non only one of the greatest albums e'er made, its cover became an visual icon for Pink Floyd itself — a tranquillity, mysterious team of iv musicians who let their music and visual stories speak for them. For its ability to create mystery and intrigue for 4 decades, The Nighttime Side of the Moon joins my hall of fame of memorable album covers.

The Night Side of the Moon cover fine art created intrigue when the anthology landed in record stores in March 1973. At the time, Pink Floyd was on the cusp of condign a mainstream success with a growing fan base. The cover, depicting white low-cal passing through a prism to class the bright colors of the spectrum against a stunning blackness field, invited listeners to explore the music inside — and nonetheless does today. The mystery began after you lot heard the mind-blowing music on the album coupled with bassist Roger Waters's deeply personal lyrics exploring themes of alienation, loss, and materialism.

In context of intense songs like "Time" and "Us and Them," what did the album cover hateful, exactly? The mystery deepened when y'all studied the poster and stickers of pyramid shapes plant within the album sleeve.

None of the band members offered an explanation, leaving it up to fans to add their own meanings, a procedure that required repeated album listens and give-and-take with other fans. (In an interview with Ed Lopez-Reyes of Floyd news site Encephalon Harm, I likened Pinkish Floyd to magicians who don't explain their tricks.) Information technology'due south no wonder that the anthology turned Pink Floyd into major stars, sold 50 meg copies and remained on the Billboard charts 741 weeks.

The Night Side of the Moon design is some other product of the fertile creative squad of Aubrey Powell and Storm Thorgerson of Hipgnosis, who are responsible for creating some of stone'southward nearly memorable album covers, such every bit Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy. As discussed in Marker Blake's Comfortably Numb: The Inside Story of Pink Floyd, the original blueprint emerged from Powell's and Thorgerson's practice of conducting brainstorming sessions that stretched from late evening until iv:00 a.m. (Hipgnosis had been given minimal creative direction by the band other than a suggestion by keyboardist Richard Wright to "do something clean, elegant and graphic.")

One night, Thorgerson showed Powell a blackness-and-white photograph of a prism with a color axle projected through it — an paradigm he'd likewise noticed in a physics textbook. After graphic designer George Hardie provided his expertise, Hipgnosis presented the prism design along with some others ideas to the ring (including a design that featured the Marvel Comics hero the Argent Surfer).

The band approved prism concept almost immediately. Waters also suggested that the image extend across the gatefold and include on the inside the suggestion blip of a heartbeat (as yous would come across on a hospital monitor).

There was to exist no mention of the band's name or album championship. Higpnosis countered with some ideas of its own: the creation of the inserts that tape fans constitute when the opened the album, including an infrared photo of the pyramids at Giza. Thorgerson and then personally undertook the photo shoot of the Giza pyramids sometime subsequently 2:00 a.yard. on a clear night with a "fantastic" moon visible.

When the album was released, it was an immediate commercial and disquisitional success (fifty-fifty though the ring went out of its way not to promote it), and a happy union of acclaimed music and memorable artwork. The covers made for brilliant images to brandish in record store windows. The prisms adorning the front end and back inspired tape stores to brandish copies of the albums in various combinations, such equally images of repeating prisms interlocking. And presently fans began creating their own visual interpretations:

Because the ring members (Waters, Wright, David Gilmour, and Nick Mason) remained reclusive fifty-fifty equally the album was turning into a massive best seller, The Dark Side of the Moon cover came to symbolize Pink Floyd.

As Johnny Morgan and Ben Wardle wrote in The Fine art of the LP, "The album was and so successful that it is this image which, for most people, immediately represents Pinkish Floyd. Even Floyd fans could have walked past Wright or drummer Nick Mason in the street without recognizing them, only testify them the prism and they'd say: 'Pink Floyd.'"

The album helped turn Pink Floyd into one of the biggest bands in the earth, with financial wealth, a mainstream following, and broad critical acceptance. However, the trappings of fame created in function by the album's success created enormous tension and breach that would Waters to write the iconic The Wall in 1979.

The Nighttime Side of the Moon is invariably hailed as 1 of the greatest and most influential albums e'er — certainly a defining moment of the progressive rock genre. And the mystery of the cover art remains today. Like all adept fine art, the comprehend (not to mention the music) remains open to interpretation — a dark, impenetrable symbol of the enduring power of music.

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