Posters

An original first-printing concert poster for a performance by Pink Floyd at the Oakland Coliseum in California on 9-10 May 1977 during their 'In The Flesh' tour in support of their 1977 album 'Animals'. Loosely based on George Orwell's novel 'Animal Farm,' the concept album was a scathing critique of the social conditions of 1970s Britain, describing the different social classes in terms of dogs, pigs or sheep. The album's cover image, conceived by bassist and songwriter Roger Waters and executed by the band's long-time collaborator Storm Thorgerson, showed an inflatable pig floating above London's Battersea Power Station. The giant pig balloon (nicknamed Algie) famously broke free and flew over Heathrow airport, grounding flights, and eventually landing in a field in Kent.

Algie inspired a number of pig themes throughout the spectacular tour, including an inflatable pig that was floated over the audience during each performance, one of myriad inflatables and pyrotechnics. To advertise the band's Oakland performances, presented by legendary promoter Bill Graham, poster artist Randy Tuten imagined the famous flying pig floating above the clouds towards the Golden Gate Bridge. Tuten later said: "This was designed to look like a travel poster from the 1940s-1950s. Like the Floyd were arriving in San Francisco. I was pleased how it came out and it has become a quite famous poster." The poster appears in Paul Grushkin's 'The Art of Rock' plate 4.47. Tuten has signed this poster in silver ink at lower right.

The set list for the tour comprised the whole of 'Animals' in the first set and the whole of 1975 album 'Wish You Were Here' in the second. The show on 9 May included an encore of 'Careful with That Axe Eugene,' which was the last time it was ever performed. At the peak of their popularity, the North American leg of the tour saw the band selling out massive stadiums, eclipsing all scale and attendance records. Waters showed increasingly aggressive behaviour towards the large and disruptive audiences throughout the North American leg, culminating in the infamous incident in which he spat on a noisy fan in the front row at Montreal Olympic Stadium. His growing sense of alienation from the audience would develop into the concept for the iconic 1979 album 'The Wall'.

Condition