Credit: Far Out / Album Cover / Loew’s Incorporated
Thu 30 April 2026 20:51, UK
Some legends of rock ‘n’ roll are handed down before the vinyl has even cooled from the press. Pink Floyd, given their position as prog-rock pioneers and all-around giants of the genre, are usually at the centre of these mythical tales, too.
That is certainly the case when considering The Dark Side of the Rainbow, the ultimate prog-rock/classic cinema crossover featuring Pink Floyd and Judy Garland that you never knew you needed. But how did this story ever come to be?
Firstly, the nature of the whimsical world that Syd Barrett first conjured aligns perfectly with weird myths. There are plenty of legends attached to Pink Floyd. When you’ve spent much of your career deliberating moving toward the fantastical and free-spirited, you’re bound to gather a few mysteries as you go. This one addresses another stalwart of popular culture, The Wizard of Oz.
The theory goes that if you begin the classic album, The Dark Side of the Moon, as the MGM lion roars at the beginning of the 1939 film, the album will perfectly sync and the film reflects the sentiments of the songs and vice versa. It’s unknown who actually first synced the album and film together, but we like to think it was a marijuana-induced miracle.
Somehow, this miraculous and anonymous discovery was soon passed around in prog circles like a joint. A few years later, Charles Savage brought the rainbow union to the wider public’s attention.
Credit: Album Cover
In a piece for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette back in 1995, Savage told the world when to press play on the CD and, in effect, provided those outside of a niche underground prog circle with the first taste of The Dark Side of the Rainbow. Immediately, it was clear that this wasn’t some daft pipedream.
There are a number of moments that work effortlessly with one another. Whether it is Dorothy starting to run after the line in ‘Time’ that reads “no one told you where to run”, or when David Gilmour sings the line “home, home again” as part of ‘Breathe’ at the very moment that the fortune teller is advising Dorothy to return to Kansas. They don’t stop there either.
As ‘Brain Damage’ starts on the record, Dorothy meets the Scarecrow and he begins singing ‘If Only I Had A Brain’, dancing along the Yellow Brick Road as Roger Waters sings “got to keep the loonies on the path”. Everything seems to perfectly tessellate both in terms of meaning and rhythm. But the strangest parts are yet to come.
‘The Great Gig in the Sky’ begins to whirl away as the tornado hits Dorothy. What’s more, as she opens up the door to the Technicolor dream of the Munchkinland, the film’s second act, the original LP’s second side begins, and ‘Money’ effortlessly soundtracks the events. The crucial crescendo comes as the final heartbeats of The Dark Side of the Moon ring out and Dorothy puts her ear to the Tin Man’s chest, as though the record has emanated from his all along.
But was ‘Dark Side of the Rainbow’ intentional?
Since these similarities became apparent, the story has spread like wildfire and you’d be hard-pressed to find a Pink Floyd fan who hasn’t at least given it a once over. Many others continue to fuss over various subtle alignments to this very day. But are they spending their time on simply a curious coincidence or uncovering an unofficial soundtrack?
The Dark Side of the Moon‘s engineer, Alan Parsons, has often been asked whether the album was deliberately aligned with the film, something he very much denies. First off, he claims it would be impossible even if they had intended it. “There simply wasn’t mechanics to do it,” he said, “we had no means of playing videotapes in the room at all. I don’t think VHS had come along by ’72, had it?”
Needless to say, Parsons’ protestation hasn’t stopped plenty of theories surfacing about the two documents’ similarities. Even Floyd drummer Nick Mason was asked about The Dark Side of the Rainbow: “It’s absolute nonsense,” replied the drummer. “It has nothing to do with The Wizard of Oz. It was all based on The Sound of Music,” he quipped.
Roger Waters, meanwhile, has claimed it is purely “bullshit”, and David Gilmour added that it is nothing more than the feverish imagination of “some guy with too much time on his hands” – something that the Floyd notably didn’t have when they were recording the classic album in ‘72/73.
The psychology of the freak Floyd phenomenon
So why do so many of these moments feel eerily aligned? Well, to be a humbug, if you take a sober and boring approach, maybe they just don’t. Part of the reason why we see such a clear overlay lies in a psychological phenomenon known as apophenia. If you’re feeling happy on a sunny day, you’re bound to look to the sky and see a cloud resembling a smiling face somewhere. Our natural tendency is to find patterns and meaning, even where none were intentionally placed.
When you combine a highly emotive, loosely narrative film like The Wizard of Oz with the fluid, thematic structure of The Dark Side of the Moon, the brain begins to draw connections almost automatically. Now, suppose there are some genuine accidental oddities, and those automatic connections curdle into something more concrete.
Then, there’s the nature of art to consider. The album’s cyclical pacing, long instrumental passages and universal themes of time, madness and mortality are genuine touchstones of that era of Hollywood. This grand, spacious approach means that the album becomes the perfect canvas for projection. In other words, it’s not that the two works were designed to fit together; it’s just that they’re both open enough for us to make them fit. After all, how many other works of art muse on a longing for home?
Yet, there is a beauty to the connections that people have unearthed that also prove why we engage with art, particularly classic pieces like these two gems: they inspire us and ask us to search for deeper meaning.
Of course, it’s all very well reading about it but we suggest you sit back, relax and have one of the weirdest rock experiences of your life with Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Rainbow. Summon your pals and get some pizzas in.
It’s absolutely genius.
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