Dark Side of the Moon Tour
| Tour by Pink Floyd | |
| Associated album | The Dark Side of the Moon |
|---|---|
| Start date | 17 January 1972 |
| End date | 29 June 1973 |
| Legs | 10 |
| No. of shows | 132 (137 scheduled) |
| Pink Floyd concert chronology | |
The Dark Side of the Moon Tour was a concert tour by British rock band Pink Floyd in 1972 and 1973 in support of their album The Dark Side of the Moon. There were two separate legs promoting Dark Side of the Moon, one in 1972 before the album's release and another in 1973 after its release.
Playing 93 shows in 1972, the most until 1994, Pink Floyd debuted the live performance before its release not of a song but a whole album. The original title was Eclipse, then Dark Side of the Moon – A Piece for Assorted Lunatics, the name under which it made its press debut in February 1972 at London's Rainbow Theatre. The title changed for the first part of the US tour to Eclipse (A Piece for Assorted Lunatics) during April and May before reverting to Dark Side of the Moon – A Piece for Assorted Lunatics in September for the second part of the US tour and finally released in 1973 under the title of The Dark Side of the Moon.
Remarkably, at its first full live performance at Guildhall, Portsmouth, England on 21 January 1972, most of the album was in the form it would be when released 14 months later. The significant differences include:
"On the Run", whose working title was "The Travel Sequence", was a guitar and drum jam and would remain so for the rest of the year's performances.
"Time" was played at a slower speed and the first half of the verses were sung by Gilmour and Wright together. The line "Lying supine in the sunshine" was sung instead of "Tired of lying in the sunshine", even in shows after the album's release (as evidenced on the live companion they released with the album in 2011).
"The Great Gig in the Sky", whose working title was "Religion" or "The Mortality Sequence", consisted at the debut in January of synthesized organ and various tapes of "preachers" either preaching or reading from such passages as from Chapter 5, Verse 13 of Ephesians, a book of the Bible, or reciting The Lord's Prayer. Starting in September, the music of the song as per the album was performed, without vocals. A portion of the song contained the aforementioned "preacher" tape recording of Ephesians, at much lower volume, and it was performed this way for the rest of the year.
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