Pink Floyd took 3 minutes to decide artwork for "The Dark Side of the Moon"

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The band members spent three minutes deciding on the front cover. Designer Storm Thorgerson brought seven designs into the Abbey Road studio where they were still recording. “The band trooped in, swept their gaze across the designs, looked at each other, nodded, and said ‘That one,’ pointing at the prism. Took all of three minutes,” Thorgerson recalled in liner notes for the 2011 deluxe box. In an 2003 interview, the designer elaborated, “No amount of cajoling would get them to consider any other contender, nor endure further explanation of the prism, or how exactly it might look. ‘That’s it,’ they said in unison, ‘we’ve got to get back to real work,’ and returned forthwith to the studio upstairs.”

One of the rejected designs involved a then-popular Marvel comic book superhero. Imagine how differently we’d think of the album if the Floyd members had expressed any interest in one of Thorgersen’s alternative ideas, to have the cover feature… the Silver Surfer!

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