In the summer of 1974, 21-year-old photographer Jill Furmanovsky received a commission from Storm Thorgerson of Hipgnosis to spend six weeks on the road with Pink Floyd to document their winter '74 Dark Side Of The Moon tour for a potential coffee table art book, with words to be supplied by Nick Sedgwick, a friend of Roger Waters.
Sadly, as Furmanovsky reveals in a new interview with The Telegraph, the band considered the resulting photos “too revealing” and the idea was permanently shelved.
“They were indifferent to it,” the 71-year-old photographer admits. “The thing about Floyd is they didn’t have record company people backstage. They didn’t have support bands. They were in a kind of – as [drummer] Nick [Mason] has said to me – a bubble. They had their own sort of weather patterns, and their gigs were booked according to sports facilities. A good squash court, or golf course, and cricket in the summer. That was pre- having video recorders. So if Match of the Day was on and the concert overran, they’d probably speed up the last song to make sure they got to watch it!
