“They were sporty types which was a surprise to me. I thought they’d be spliffing away.” Photographer Jill Furmanovsky on the “too revealing” Dark Side Of The Moon tour photo book which Pink Floyd buried
· louderBy Paul Brannigan
( Classic Rock )
published 3 October 2024
In winter 1974, photographer Jill Furmanovsky spent six weeks on the road with Pink Floyd, documenting shows on the Dark Side Of The Moon tour. Most of the photos she took have never been seen
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!
“They were sporty types which was a surprise to me,” she adds. “I thought they’d be spliffing away. But I didn’t see any of that. They were forever off playing some sport, or playing backgammon.”
Sadly, the world has been denied the privilege of seeing the Southern Rhodesian photographer's images of Roger Waters and David Gilmour locked in combat over a backgammon board, for the mooted book was never given the green light for publication.
“The book apparently was too revealing, and it got shelved,” Furmanovsky explains. “So the pictures ended up as press pictures, and others just went into a cupboard for a long time.”
You can see some of the images which Furmanovsky shot on the tour on her website.
In an essay accompanying the photos, she writes, “There was a feeling of breaking boundaries at that time, not just for Pink Floyd with their Dark Side show, but also for me. After the tour, I felt as though I had broken through the barrier of youth and shyness to become a professional photographer, and that meant the world to me.”
Nick Sedgwick's memoir In The Pink (Not A Hunting Memoir) was eventually published in a strictly limited run in 2017, minus Furmanovsky's tour photos.
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Paul Brannigan
Contributing Editor, Louder
A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne's private jet, played Angus Young's Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.
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