New book & box set coming this spring
Pink Floyd is set to celebrate the 50th anniversary of its seminal album, Dark Side of the Moon, with a new book and box set this spring. March 2023 marks the golden jubilee of the band’s eighth studio album that includes the hits “Money” and “Us And Them.”
On March 7th, Thames & Hudson USA will release an official book commemorating the band and the album in a covetable package. Designed by Pentagram to high specifications, the luxurious book presents rare and unseen backstage and onstage photography of the band during the album tours of 1972 to 1975.
The 160-page hardbound book contains 129 candid black-and-white photographs by Storm Thorgerson, Jill Furmanovsky, Aubrey Powell, Storm Thorgerson, and Peter Christopherson, documenting the soundchecks, the shows, and the after shows. A review of the October 1972 Wembley gig, originally published in Melody Maker, provides insight into one of the Floyd’s most celebrated performances, and there is a complete listing of the tour dates. The book also reveals the visual conception of the iconic album artwork.
The book listing also states “a luxury box set containing a re-release of the album together with numerous related music items” will be released on the same day. That information is forthcoming as it’s yet to be officially announced.
Dark Side of the Moon — originally released on March 1, 1973 — explores themes, including conflict, greed, the passage of time, and mental illness, all ideas the band explored during their earlier recordings and live shows. Developed during live performances, an early version was premiered several months before recording began with new material recorded in two sessions in 1972 and 1973 at Abbey Road in London.
The album was groundbreaking as the group used multi-track recording and tape loops — technology that was new at the time — analogue synthesizers, and snippets of recorded interviews with the band’s road crew that provided philosophical questions throughout.
The album’s iconic sleeve, designed by Storm Thorgerson, depicts a prism dispersing light into color and represents the band’s lighting, the record’s thematic material, and keyboardist Richard Wright’s “simple and bold” design request.
The Dark Side of the Moon is one of the best-selling albums of all time globally and is the band’s most successful album. The album has been certified 15 times Platinum by the RIAA in the US and 14 times Platinum in the UK. It charted for 741 weeks from 1973-1988 and reached No. 1 in the US and the UK.
