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Fifty years ago this month I went up to The University of Nottingham to study Mining Engineering. This week I returned and met some of my best friends for a re-union and tour of the University and the City sharing some memories. Sadly our hall of residence (Wortley Hall) is no more but we had an evocative return to the site.

Dark Side of the Moon, the classic Pink Floyd album, was also released fifty years ago, March 1973, and we enjoy it as much now as we did back then at Nottingham. The music contains lyrical themes touching conflict, greed, the passage of time, death and insanity, and every track a masterpiece. The last theme was inspired by the deteriorating mental health of founder member, Syd Barrett, who had already left the band by then, which continued into their next album with Wish You Were Here and Shine on You Crazy Diamond.

If the music and lyrics were to become iconic, the images were also ground breaking either in their raw form or covered and copied continuously. The album sleeve was designed by Hipgnosis, a partnership of Cambridge friends, Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell, together with George Hardie. The designers were employed by Pink Floyd, so were allowed more freedom, despite the recording company EMI, being against their projects.

The external theme is that of white light being split by a prism into the spectrum colours. Interestingly, there were only six colours with indigo missing. Thorgerson says the idea was inspired by a print from a 1963 physics text book. The theme continued through the gatefold cover re-emerging on the back cover with the coloured light returning to white. Inside the original were two posters of the Pyramids at Giza, one in infra-red and one a collage of images , interspersed with the letters in the Pink Floyd name.

So…much to celebrate about 1973