«What better place for the Floyd to start their 1972 tour than at the Dome, Brighton ? The symmetrical roundness of the theatre lent itself perfectly to the Floyd’s new 360 deg. surround sound and allowed them to demonstrate that, as well as being impressionistic composers on a grand scale they are master technicians in sound. not everything was perfect - whenever is it ? - and problems forced them to abandon a new piece which they described as their «masterpiece». But this is the first performance of their new show, and a wildly cheering audience left them in no doubt as to what they left about it. After the shortened laster work, they played Atom Heart Mother, building from its floaty, disembodied organ passages to the full fuzz-brass treatment and shrieks from Waters (I suspect they may be using an Echoplex unit on his vocal mike); then One of these Days from «Meddle»; then Echoes, where Waters remove a couple of Nick Mason’s cymbals and lays into them like an insane man while the electronics do their work and send them crashing and whizzing round the auditorium.  A flashing yellow spot from their incredible battery of new lighting picks him out as he moves over to the huge gong and attacks it like an apoplectic version of the Rank man.A stunned audience was treated to A Saucerful of Secrets to conclude. Several people ducked as the feedback from Gilmour’s guitar roared overhead like a dive-bomber attack. If there are any tickets left anywhere for this show, buy them»

«Caught in the act - Pink Floyd», Melody Maker, January 1972

«A pulsating bass beat, pre-recorded, pounded around the hall’s speaker system. A voice declared Chapter five, verses 15 to 17 from the Book Of Athenians. The organ built up; suddenly it soared, like a jumbo jet leaving Heathrow; the lights, just behind the equipment, rose like an elevator. Floyd were on stage playing a medium-paced piece… The Floyd inventiveness had returned, and it astounded the capacity house… The number broke down thirty minutes through».

«Electric chaos, but just great», New Melody Express, January 1972

«Nobody who's involved in present day music is going to deny that the Pink Floyd have contributed some classics. But having become accustomed to them it is all too easy to see all their work as variations from one prolonged blueprint. There are few groups that could rival the distinctive originality of their sound — and that leads to the heart of that problem.

For frequently their compositions arc merely a collection of sounds. Magnificent sounds, startling sounds, shattering sounds, sounds rearranged in different orders, maybe, but still ephemeral shadows, insubstantial and without any real body. The Floyd can, and have, produced some mind-blowing material.

Then, as time passed, the senses are deadened to repetitions of sound. The electric shrieks and wails are anticipated by the listener, and fresh contexts deny even the welcome familiarity of numbers like " Saucerful Of Secrets." Even Eugene seems only to whimper in response to a cut finger.

The battle for the Pink Floyd, and one that they must have been aware of at Brighton on Thursday, is to keep their audience on a nervous pinnacle. Their music thrives on the uncertainty and fantasy induced In the listener.

Bearing that in mind, their performance at the Dome didn't impress me. although It's only fair to add that they received tumultuous applause and were obviously far from failures in most people’s eyes. The one-element that still hit me with its freshness and vigour was Nick Mason's drumming rhythms. What their music lacked in framework and conception it seemed to be trying to compensate for with volume and aura I clarity. Even this produced its problems for the group, in that their speakers were cursed with breakdown and this undoubtedly affected I the concert.

Evidently the Floyd were as depressed about it as anyone, as there are vague rumours that a repeat performance may be staged in Brighton to make up for these electrical shortcomings*»

"Pink Floyd", Melody Maker, 29 January 1972

*It will be actually the case with a two-concerts in June and the statement of the promoter (see below).

« Almost unheralded Pink Floyd arrived in Bournemouth on Saturday evening. But even with a distinct the Winter Gardens Theatre was sold out in record time. Floyd, possibly the creators of the progressive cult, are somewhat unpredictable, one never knows what to expect next. The first half was completely taken up with a series of connected individualities, drifting from to the other with effortless ease. Parts of this were really beautiful, using Floyd's dreamlike capabilities to the full. It is possible not not to be consciously listening to the gentle music, but still get caught up in its shifting moods. Clever was the changing of a religious setting into the sound of clanging cash registers. Floyd's literal all round sound was used to enhance the atmosphere. Highlight of the second half was Echoes from the Meddle album and the powerful encore of Saucerful of Secrets. On the whole, however, Floyd were disappointing. One would expect more from the group around which such a cult was grown. The shifting colors of the light show - apparently a new version - might have been better if the Gardens' system had been linked. As it was most of the effect was lost, blinded by brilliant spots from the rear of the theatre».

«Pink Floyd», Disc and Music Echo, January 1972.

« I first saw Pink Floyd at Newcastle City Hall in 1972. The date of the concert was changed as I recall; I went through the week before, not knowing the gig had been postponed by week or so, and had to come home again. I returned on the correct night, without a ticket for the sold out gig, and managed to buy one outside for face value. The first thing I noticed were four large PA speakers set out in the corners of the hall. Iíd read in the music papers of their quadrophonic sound system, so I knew that I was about to experience something quite different to any other concert I’d been to before. The show was in two sets; I sat and waited. As a 15 year old I was totally immersed in the music and the event; no sneaking down to the bar for me in those days. Pink Floyd introduced their new composition ìEclipse (A Piece For Assorted Lunatics) and played it in full during the first half of the concert. «Eclipse » was to develop into «The Dark Side Of The Moon» in the coming months, and the titles of the tracks changed during that period. A few of the tracks were apparently played as instrumentals in some of the earlier concerts. I definitely remember them (Roger I think) introducing it as «Eclipse » and I also recall the voice «I’ve been mad for f**ing years» swirling around the hall; and the clock, the heartbeat and that laugh reverberating around and around us, switching between the four speakers*.  None of us knew what to expect of course; I nearly jumped out of my seat when I heard the laugh come at me from a speaker behind me at the back of the hall, and at very high volume. Just incredible. Even then, hearing the piece for the first time, you just knew it was unique.

After a short internal the Floyd returned to play a set of classics; starting with ìOne of These Days from «Meddle» (a favourite of mine at the time) which was their most recent album at that time. Roger’s bass vibrated through the hall; to be followed by lots of screaming in ìCareful With That Axe, Eugene. Another thing that sticks in mind was the elevated lighting rig, which stood at the back of the stage behind the band, and was unlike anything I had seen before. Towards the end of the show the rig swirled up to the ceiling drowning the hall in myriad coloured lights. Very effective and actually quite spooky. I would imagine by today its standards it would seem pretty basic, but at the time is was state of the art stuff, and all added to the mysterious of the Floyd in concert. The second closed with the beautiful Echoes and the haunting ìSet The Controls For The Heart Of The Sunî with its heartbeat drum beat, and closing with Roger beating a fire-lit gong. I was totally blown away by the performance, and bored everyone at school for weeks, telling them how great Pink Floyd (and they were great indeed ). A memory I will keep with me forever (at least I hope soÖand if my memory does go, one of the purposes of this blog is to remind me)»

«Pink Floyd Newcastle city Hall 27 January 1972 », Vintagerock Website, 20 January 2014

Denis Keenan (Audience member):

« The first Pink Floyd concert I attended was at Leeds Town Hall on the 28th January 1972 and this was one of the several venues making up Pink Floyds winter tour 1972. This concert was very much about Pink Floyd performing some of their most memorable music from the late 1960's but also performing Dark Side of the Moon, before its official launch in March 1973. I attended this concert with several friends studying at Leeds University who also knew roadies helping the band transport their equipment via haulage company "Avis Trucking". At the end of this concert and as most of those attending were leaving the venue my friends and I held back for a while and were invited to help remove some of the bands WEM speaker columns making part of the group's quadraphonic sound system. The equipment to be loaded into waiting Avis trucks. In completing the task we gathered around the bands 32 channel Allen and Heath sound mixing console looking at the technology. Whilst discussing the equipment to our amazement each of the Pink Floyd band members emerged and stood around the sound mixer for a chat with the sound engineers. Without hesitation the Pink Floyd concert programme I purchased at this concert was presented to each band member and on asking for their autographs they duly obliged. Whilst asking Roger Waters to sign I also plucked the courage to ask him what base guitar strings he used to this he replied "Rotosound". A friend asked him about the main chord sequence for Interstellar Overdrive (music from Floyds Piper at the Gates of Dawn) and again he explained clearly the sequence in word. This was a wonderful concert and the Pink Floyd autographs made the occasion all the more memorable. The concert stub and signed programme saved and looked after by the writer over43 years ».

Roger Waters: 

«The actual song, Eclipse, wasn’t performed live until Bristol Colston Hall, on February 5. I can remember one afternoon rolling up and saying: «I’ve written an ending». Which was what’s now called Eclipse, or Dark Side. So that when we started performing the piece called Eclipse. It probably did have Brain Damage, but it didn’t have ‘All that you touch, all that you see, all that you taste»

«The making of Dark Side of the Moon», Classic Rock, 2013

Roger Waters:

«(…) I seem to remember a giant papier-mâché elbow and hanging it over the band. I have no idea if it's real or not, but it is in my head»

«To Infinity... And Beyond!», Uncut, May 2019

«The (literally) dark days of the early 70s, the miners’ strikes, power cuts everywhere. We had tickets to their show at (again) the Free Trade Hall (“Judas!”) and had heard that they were premiering an even longer new piece (than Echoes) on this tour. The power cuts were, at least, predictable. Local radio stations would broadcast “such-and-such an area will be blacked out between 16.00 and 18.00, and then the next area between 18.00 and 20.00, etc”. We used to do our university (home)work until 15 minutes before we’d be plunged into darkness, then stop, jump into a car, and drive to the next district (which was now just having its electricity restored), have a couple of pints, and return to our house just as the power came back on…….happy days (not!) Well, come the night, as you already know, the Free Trade Hall was in line to have a power cut partway through the Floyd’s show. As a result, they came on stage, on time, and announced that there was a high probability of a power cut during the show and so they would reverse their sets. Instead of doing their long piece and risking having to stop partway through, they’d do short numbers until they were forced to stop, in which case, if we kept our ticket stubs, we could come along on a rearranged date (no good to my friend who couldn’t come back to Manchester). I don’t recall what they did - probably One Of These Days … not my favourite song from that era and maybe a couple more - before they stopped, mid-song, and said the power would go off in about 15 or 20 minutes and could we all leave the hall in an orderly manner (of course we could, we were “British”, after all!). We were front circle so were among the last to leave. As we shuffled out, I looked back and they were playing a fairly elementary blues number to an almost empty Hall. Fast forward to …»

«Recollections of Early Floyd Shows» (Simond), Yeeshkul Website, 9 March 2015

«Pink Floyd are the ultimate statement about why I believe in pop music. Last night they played for an hour a new piece, The Dark Side of the Moon, that brought tears to the eyes. It was so completely understanding and musically questioning. The Floyd have always been innovators in Britain. The last time I saw them at their best was in Hyde Park in 1970 with orchestral and choral accompaniment. They did not need those embellishments as they proved last night. The great thing about them is their originality and peculiarly they represent the ultimate in the British underground because they have sold out The Rainbow for four nights at 3,200 seats a house with scarcely an advertisement.

The Floyd are like that. You will never hear them on BBC‘s Radio One for all that matters and indeed rarely have a chance to even pay to see them. They appear as seldom as they wish to. An incredible hardback to the late 1960s when really only the music mattered and not the hits. And yet in “Dark Side of the Moon” is their total musical statement with Dave Gilmour and Roger Waters’s guitars whining up into the abyss of this theatre whose sound system so often eludes lesser groups. Nick Mason reassures from his drums in the centre of the stage, Rick Wright nurses his keyboards and more poignantly his VCS 3. Shrill shrieks, notes and even at one time the sepulchral tones of Malcolm Muggeridge reverberate around the hall. This is all part of the Floyd’s statement, they build their music, they are the last of the true originals. Over the years they have produced albums and even the soundtrack to the film Zabriski Point (sic) but for me never have they delivered a musical performance as truthful as last night Why truthful? 

Well, for one thing no one ever identified themselves and they forsook The Rainbow’s normal light show for their own smoky green blue and white lights which only heightened their smoldering performance and all the time there was this total committal, total originality. Gilmour’s guitar and Waters’s bass soared and re-echoed about us. The drums strode about them; if needed Wright added credible echoes. They are the first group, excepting perhaps The Who, who have come to terms with sound at The Rainbow. This is because with their promoter Peter Bowyer they took 24 hours to work on it»

«Pink Floyd - The Rainbow», Times, 18 February 1972 

«Burning flashlights, wind-blown sparkle dust, the pre-recorded voice of Malcom Muggeridge and a trip to the dark side of the moon all added up on Saturday to the most successful night’s business London’s Rainbow Theatre had enjoyed since its opening last November.The occasion was the third night of the Pink Floyd’s extravaganza and the converts packed the theatre to such an extent that manager John Morris could happily have retained the group for another seven days.

The greater part of the group’s new act is taken up with their latest opus «The Dark Side of the Moon». Like so much of the group’s material it is a king of space fantasy opera where the all-around speaker system, pre-recorded (including Muggeridge’s voice) and spectacular lighting columns play as big a part as the instrumental work on stage. Musically, they were some great ideas but the sound effects often left me wondering if i was in a bird cage at Regents Park Zoo. At times they were pretentious to the point of absolute silliness, but i was obviously in a minority, judging by the total involvement of all around me Floyd fans are vey serious about their jungle calls  For me, the most enjoyable part of the show was the familiar material. They did Careful with that Axe, Eugène and Saucerful of Secrets, a number which allows Roger Waters ample scope for his J. Arthur Rank gong work, but which takes an awful long time to get to the enjoyable vocal and organ piece at the finale. The fans got three encores and demanded a fourth. Just to show they were not limited to psychedelia, there was a blues jam as one of the encores and they closed with my particular Floyd favourite: Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun which for me was the best thing in the act».

«Floyd’s Star Treck», Melody Maker, 26 February 1972.

«Pendant quatre jours, l’arc-en-ciel fut rose … Dans le décor baroque de l’imposant et déjà légendaire Rainbow Theater de Londres, le Pink Floyd est venu installer ses neuf tonnes de délire spatial et quadriphonique. Pendant quatre jours il a retrouvé le public de ses débuts, puis il est parti enregistrer à Hérouville (lui aussi!) avant de s’envoler vers le Japon et les Etats-Unis. Mais où en sont donc les Floyd ? On les a adulés, vénérés comme les grands maîtres de l’underground, et puis régulièrement, d’année en année, on les a dénigrés en annonçant que, cette fois-ci, c’était fini. Ils étaient à court d’inspiration. Et pourtant ils sont toujours là, et après deux soirées au Rainbow, j’étais définitivement convaincu que c’est pour longtemps encore …»

«Pink Rainbow», Best, March 1972.

Nick Mason:

«We still had to remix the material for an album release, hut before we could do that we had another tour to Japan. This tune we had chartered a DC8 but even after loading all our equipment on board there were still plenty of spare seuls Wives and girlfriends were obvious co-travellers, but the remaining places were filled with passengers w ho had increasingly tenuous connections with the hand, but the kind of careers that apparently allowed them to drop everything and join us at very short notice - usually a had sign»

«Inside out: a personal history of Pink Floyd», Nick Mason, 2006

Alan Parsons:

«It was a recording I did for a sound effects record, originally. It was done for a quadraphonic sound effects album. Nobody took much interest in it. When I heard the clicking bass, I told them that I had this recording of these clocks that would fit in. I played it to them, and they loved it»

«Spend time on 'The Dark Side of the Moon' with Alan Parsons», Goldmine, 12 May 2013.

Aubrey Powell:

« He was only person let loose backstage with a camera, because of his familiarity with the band, and there a whole bunch of photographs where you get a real sense of intimacy within Pink Floyd that isn’t usually associated with them, and it comes flooding back»

«Special Animals», Mojo, April 2017

«Sound is in large measure what the Floyd is all about. The band possesses a remarkable sense of how discordant elements and sound effects can be meshed together with raw rock power and be made melodic. Soft, slow, haunting tunes are often metamorphosed into loud screaming rock, with drums, guitars, and organ filling all spaces as they crash into one another. The group's sound encapsulates you and wraps you up; it lulls you and wakens you. Pink Floyd is one of the few bands, perhaps the only one now, to maintain the integrity of electronic and psychedelic music, principally because of their inventiveness. Their first set featured, as far as I could tell, all new material. But the band seemed a bit out of synch, and their usual power and intensity was dulled. The second set was a different story. They ran through some of their best and most familiar material: "One of These Days," "Careful With That Axe, Eugene," "Echoes," and the encore, "A Saucerful of Secrets"—the latter perhaps their most psychedelic number, with a remarkable complexity and depth, from Roger Waters' eliciting pain as he thrashed the cymbals, to Dave Gilmour's spinning freaky rivulets of sound from his lead guitar as he sat on the floor and manipulated two sets of panels in addition to his amp. Nothing short of incredible»

«Pink Floyd», Great Speckled Bird, First May 1972

«Pink Floyd, the English rock group, is more concerned, I suspect, with light and sound than with the driving rhythms of traditional rock. The group's concert at Carnegie Hall Mon day night was a characteristic excursion through a Dantesque Purgatory of shrieks, electronic wails, exploding flames and choking smoke.

All this in Carnegie Hall? Yes, indeed, and augmented by additional speakers placed around the sides of the halls to make sure that everyone would receive full impact of the high acoustic wattage, as well as the occasional multitrack gimmickry. There is nothing wrong with sound for its own sake, of course. Nor is there anything unusual about a pop‐rock group that obviously aims its music at an audience whose senses have been dulled (or stimulated, depending upon one's point of view) by various forms of solid, gaseous and liquid drugs. But I like to think that good music and theater can provide their own trips, their own ultimate sensations. May be that's the difference between music and theater, and sound and lights»

«Rock Aura Frames show by Pink Floyd», New York Times, 3 May 1972

«No one can play before them for two reasons. Firstly, their 360 degree sound system, smoke bombs, lights and darning gong set-up would necessitate at least an hour’s intermission after another act left the stage. And secondly. Pink Floyd fans cannot sit through anything that does not emanate from their favorite cosmic quartet. Floyd fans have changed over the years. They are more in line with the average boisterous rabble that attend rock nights in large halls nowadays, not the beautiful people of yore. But they know what they like. No other group could come out and do a fifty-minute number that hasn’t yet been recorded. Most would be drowned out in a sea of screams for letter known material. But a Floyd concert is like a seance. You come for the unexpected and you get it. After the unveiling of “Eclipse,” described by its composers as “a piece for assorted lunatics” and a brief respite, the show continued with Pink “gold,” but as the band saw fit to mine it. They make little effort to gain audience acceptance through any means but their music as they choose to play it. And while the lights and the smoke and the taped effects may be showmanship to some, they are more exactly extensions of the art that Pink Floyd addresses itself to. If you want to be wrapped in sound but not smothered by it, this is the act to spend an evening with: the world’s most self-contained group»

«Talent on Stage», 13 May 1972, Cash Box

«This time around, the English group brought along their own light show as well as a couple of effects to add some visual flash to their otherwise static stage demeanor. Sheets of flame sprang from buckets atop three amplifiers halfway thru the set, and at the end, fire licked the edges of a giant gong as Pink Floyd fluidly "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun". "Echoes", a more purely electronic piece, and "Eclipse" described as "a piece for assorted lunatics" were also outstanding»

«Same old stills still dull», Chicago Tribune, 1st May 1972

«Een opstijgend vliegtuig sirkelt door het olimpies stadion: rode zwaailichten; het geluid zwelt aan en dan plotseling begint de Flovd te spelen; alle lichten gaan aan; rood, blauw, groen, wit: in ddn klap van volledige duisternis naar een zee van licht: de spots rijzen omhoog: een onwezenlijk gevoel maakt zich van je meester: een ge-weldige uitvoering van Atom Heart Mother. Echoes en meer Met ieder nummer brengt de groep weer iets verbazends: hinnikende paarden, gierende orkanen: oseanen van vuur en rook, waarin het podium ver-dwijnt: een bewolkte hemel sluit zich als een dak over het stadion: de sterren en de maan, het hoort er allemaal bij: je bent blij dat je het meekunt maken. De perfekt getimede show verloopt vlekkeloos. Een orgie van geluid gilt via het verbeterde kwadrofoniese sies-teem van links naar rechts door het stadion: geluid is over al om je heen. Als A Saucerful of Secrets eindigt schieten vuurpijlen naar de hemel en zetten alles in een rose gloed. De muziek en 't vuur op het podium doven tegelijkertijd uit. Duisternis en verlatenheid sluiten zich weer om je heen. Pink Floyd heeft het 'm weer geleverd»

«Pink Floyd - Paarde, Orkanen & Vu urpijlen», Aloha, 16 June 1972

Paul McGowan (Audience memebr):

«The last day of the festival was to be the most exciting. No bands played the entire day, as crews dismantled the two stages, then erected a single, bigger stage—and rewired the sound system for what would later become known as Quadraphonic sound, an early version of what today we call surround sound. The act everyone had waited for was on tap for 8 p.m., just as it was getting dark: Pink Floyd.

I was keyed up as well, cleaning the tape-recorder heads, making sure everything was in place for that evening, the most important recording I had ever made. Pink Floyd was, by far, the biggest act in the show, and was already an ascending phenomena. Today they can boast of 16 gold albums, 13 platinum, and 10 multi-platinum. Their seminal works, The Wall and The Dark Side of the Moon, are two of the best-selling albums in the history of music. Dark Side, the album they were about to debut at the concert in Germany, would be on the Billboard Top 200 Albums Chart for a record 736 weeks. (It finally dropped off the charts 14 years later, in 1988.) As night fell, I could feel the crowd’s excitement. Roadies and stagehands scurried over the newly constructed wooden platform that would soon host Pink Floyd. I was ready, as was my crew. Then the concert’s two promoters, Marcel and Marek, accompanied by a silent, heavyweight guy, meekly approached the van to let me know that I would not be recording the Floyd, despite the fact we had a written contract to the contrary. All my angry outbursts, and my jumping up and down in frustration were to no avail. Pink Floyd wanted nothing to do with the recording and that was that. To make sure I didn’t attempt to make a pirate recording, they posted a muscular roadie just outside the van. Terri and I were crushed. Recording Pink Floyd had been one of the primary motivations for agreeing to the job in the first place. Depressed and upset, we dragged our tails out into the crowd, where the promoters had set up a reserved area for us to enjoy the show, just slightly above the noisy, muddy throngs. The lights dimmed, and all went surprisingly quiet—only an anxious buzz rippled through the crowd. Then Pink Floyd walked onstage. It was May 22, 1972, and they played a precursor of the music that would soon become their newest album—Dark Side of the Moon—for concert goers in full surround sound. To this day, it remains one of the more remarkable concerts I have ever seen or heard. Unlike any other concert, the band didn’t speak a word. They just played the entire album without breaks—one long, linked song, with both rehearsed and spontaneous riffs blowing through the audience as if we were all traveling together through space. During the music, not one member of the crowd acted poorly. The music, the surround sound, the warm May summer night, the slight breeze fluttering the many flags—all combined to make magic happen, as only music can do. To this day, I am thankful that Pink Floyd’s management stopped me from recording the concert. Had I been stuck inside that cramped van, listening through monitor speakers to a pale facsimile of the music, I’d have missed one of the greatest musical events in the history of rock»

«Ninety-Nine Percent True», Paul McGowan, 2018

Roger Waters: 

«We’re probably going to put it out in September but we’re having a bit of trouble recording it because we’ve got t cut ten minutes out of it for the album. It’s going to be incredible once it’s sorted out, though »

« Obscured by Clouds - Pink Floyd kicks a two-year slump », Circus, September 1972.