Download Pink Floyd’s 1975 Comic Book Program for The Dark Side of the Moon Tour

For all their seri­ous brood­ing and bit­ing digs at the estab­lish­ment, the mem­bers of Pink Floyd were not above hav­ing a lit­tle fun with their image. Take this 1975 com­ic book, cre­at­ed by their record cov­er design­er Storm Thorgerson’s com­pa­ny Hipg­no­sis for the Dark Side of the Moon tour. A “Super, All-Action Offi­cial Music Pro­gramme for Boys and Girls,” the 15-page oddity—pitched, writes Dan­ger­ous Minds, “some­where halfway between ‘pro­fes­sion­al pro­mo­tion­al item’ and ‘schoolboy’s note­book scribbling’”—includes sev­er­al short com­ic sto­ries: Roger (“Rog”) Waters is an “ace goal-scor­er” for the “Grantch­ester Rovers” foot­ball club. Floyd drum­mer Nick Mason becomes “Cap­tain Mason, R.N.,” a “coura­geous and smart” WWII naval hero, and David Gilmour gets cast as stunt cyclist “Dave Der­ring.” The juici­est part goes to key­boardist Richard Wright, whose sala­cious exploits as high roller “Rich Right” com­plete the pro­to-Heavy Met­al vibe of the whole thing.

Per­haps most fun is a sil­ly ques­tion­naire called “Life Lines” that asks each band mem­ber about such triv­ia as age, weight, height, “philo­soph­i­cal beliefs,” “sex­u­al pro­cliv­i­ties,” “polit­i­cal lean­ings,” and “musi­cal hates.” Most of the answers are of the flip­pant, smar­tass vari­ety, but I think they’re all sin­cere when they name their favorite movies: Beyond the Val­ley of the Dolls, The Sev­enth Seal, Cool Hand Luke, and El Topo. I’ll let you fig­ure out who chose which one. (Click the image above, then click again, to enlarge.) The penul­ti­mate page includes the lyrics to three new songs the band was work­ing on at the time and play­ing live dur­ing the Dark Side of the Moon Tour: “Shine on You Crazy Dia­mond,” and two unre­leased tracks, “Rav­ing and Drool­ing” and “Got­ta Be Crazy”—which lat­er turned into “Sheep” and “Dogs,” respec­tive­ly, on the Ani­mals album.

The com­ic takes the goofi­ness of Beat­le­ma­nia-like merch to a much far­ther out place—somewhere “beyond the 3rd Bar­do.” One mem­ber of the Inter­na­tion­al Roger Waters Fan­club, who kept his pro­gram com­ic book for decades after see­ing the Dark Side show in San Fran­cis­co, writes “I was so wast­ed on acid at the show, I don’t know how I held on to any­thing.” Hipg­no­sis, and Floyd, sure­ly knew their audi­ence. You can down­load the whole thing here, in high res­o­lu­tion images. See much more Pink Floyd tour mem­o­ra­bil­ia at the fan­site Pinfloydz.com.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Doc­u­men­taries on the Mak­ing of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here

Pink Floyd Plays With Their Brand New Singer & Gui­tarist David Gilmour on French TV (1968)

Dark Side of the Rain­bow: Pink Floyd Meets The Wiz­ard of Oz in One of the Ear­li­est Mash-Ups

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness