Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon Art Cover

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

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

At the top of Pinkish Floyd's popularity in the 1970s, the Floyd's visually arresting album covers and iconography complemented the artistry of the its music and generated buzz that would make the Word of Mouth Marketing Clan proud. Nowhere is the ability of Pink Floyd'south visual entreatment more than apparent than the comprehend for the album The Nighttime Side of the Moon, released 44 years ago. The Nighttime Side of the Moon is not simply i of the greatest albums always fabricated, its encompass became an visual icon for Pinkish Floyd itself — a quiet, mysterious squad of four musicians who let their music and visual stories speak for them. For its ability to create mystery and intrigue for four decades, The Dark Side of the Moon joins my hall of fame of memorable anthology covers.

The Dark Side of the Moon cover art created intrigue when the album landed in record stores in March 1973. At the fourth dimension, Pink Floyd was on the cusp of condign a mainstream success with a growing fan base. The cover, depicting white lite passing through a prism to class the bright colors of the spectrum against a stunning black field, invited listeners to explore the music within — and yet does today. The mystery began later you heard the mind-blowing music on the anthology coupled with bassist Roger Waters's securely 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 mean, exactly? The mystery deepened when you studied the poster and stickers of pyramid shapes found within the album sleeve.

None of the ring members offered an explanation, leaving it upward to fans to add their own meanings, a process that required repeated album listens and discussion with other fans. (In an interview with Ed Lopez-Reyes of Floyd news site Encephalon Damage, I likened Pink Floyd to magicians who don't explain their tricks.) It's no wonder that the album turned Pink Floyd into major stars, sold 50 1000000 copies and remained on the Billboard charts 741 weeks.

The Dark Side of the Moon blueprint is some other product of the fertile creative team of Aubrey Powell and Storm Thorgerson of Hipgnosis, who are responsible for creating some of stone'due south most memorable album covers, such as Led Zeppelin'south Houses of the Holy. Equally discussed in Mark Blake's Comfortably Numb: The Inside Story of Pink Floyd, the original blueprint emerged from Powell's and Thorgerson'southward practice of conducting brainstorming sessions that stretched from late evening until four:00 a.m. (Hipgnosis had been given minimal creative direction by the band other than a proposition past keyboardist Richard Wright to "exercise something clean, elegant and graphic.")

One night, Thorgerson showed Powell a blackness-and-white photo of a prism with a color axle projected through information technology — an image he'd besides noticed in a physics textbook. Afterward graphic designer George Hardie provided his expertise, Hipgnosis presented the prism design along with some others ideas to the band (including a design that featured the Marvel Comics hero the Silver Surfer).

The band approved prism concept virtually immediately. Waters also suggested that the epitome extend across the gatefold and include on the within the suggestion bleep of a heartbeat (as yous would see on a hospital monitor).

There was to be no mention of the band's name or album title. Higpnosis countered with some ideas of its ain: the cosmos of the inserts that record fans establish when the opened the album, including an infrared photo of the pyramids at Giza. Thorgerson then personally undertook the photo shoot of the Giza pyramids sometime after 2:00 a.yard. on a articulate night with a "fantastic" moon visible.

When the album was released, information technology was an immediate commercial and critical success (fifty-fifty though the band went out of its way non to promote information technology), and a happy wedlock of acclaimed music and memorable artwork. The covers made for brilliant images to display in record shop windows. The prisms adorning the forepart and back inspired tape stores to display copies of the albums in various combinations, such every bit images of repeating prisms interlocking. And soon fans began creating their ain visual interpretations:

Because the band members (Waters, Wright, David Gilmour, and Nick Mason) remained reclusive even as the album was turning into a massive best seller, The Night Side of the Moon encompass came to symbolize Pink Floyd.

As Johnny Morgan and Ben Wardle wrote in The Art of the LP, "The anthology was so successful that information technology is this image which, for most people, immediately represents Pink Floyd. Even Floyd fans could have walked past Wright or drummer Nick Mason in the street without recognizing them, simply prove them the prism and they'd say: 'Pink Floyd.'"

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

The Dark Side of the Moon is invariably hailed equally one of the greatest and nigh influential albums ever — certainly a defining moment of the progressive rock genre. And the mystery of the cover fine art remains today. Like all good art, the embrace (non to mention the music) remains open up to estimation — a nighttime, impenetrable symbol of the enduring power of music.

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