When Pink Floyd proved pigs can fly

Roger Waters performs the Dark Side of the Moon and other Pink Floyd Classics at the North Harbour Stadium, Auckland. Photo / Richard Robinson

Pink Floyd's Animals sleeve was a 1970s icon.

Progressive rock in the seventies brought an overblown grandeur to sleeve design, involving elaborate gatefold covers featuring abstruse concepts and impossible scenes. Few were better at it than Pink Floyd, whose prism for Dark Side of the Moon (1973) remains one of the most iconic images in rock history. It was the work of Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell, friends of the band who were still students when they created the dazzling psychedelic cover for the band's Saucerful of Secrets in 1968.

They formed Hipgnosis and became the most influential album design company of the era. Their sleeve for Wish You Were Here in 1975 boasted particularly elaborate packaging, with a striking burning handshake image hidden inside a black shrink wrap. But Floyd and Hipgnosis almost overreached themselves with their most ambitious sleeve ever.

Animals was Pink Floyd's 10th studio album, conceived by chief lyricist Roger Waters as a savage critique of capitalist society. Inspired by George Orwell's Animal Farm, it divided the human race into three animal species: tyrannical pigs, aggressive dogs and mindless sheep. It is not clear where Waters thought he fitted in, though it was notably the album where he really started to fall out with his bandmates. The cover is a thing of beauty, though: a striking gatefold photo of a giant pink pig floating between two stacks of London's Battersea Power Station.

The original Hipgnosis idea was to depict a small child entering his parents' bedroom to find them "copulating like animals". Waters was thankfully unimpressed and came up with his own concept. The bassist and songwriter lived near Battersea Power Station, built in the thirties, which was being decommissioned.

Waters conceived a visual pun for the impossible metaphor of "pigs will fly", juxtaposing a giant airborne pig above a decaying industrial structure, symbolic of the dark triumph of capitalism. Or something like that.

The easiest way to achieve this would have been a photo montage, with the pig shot separately. Indeed, this is what Hipgnosis proposed. But it was Pink Floyd in the seventies and they wanted the whole thing staged for real. They commissioned a 12m inflatable porcine (designed by Australian artist Jeffrey Shaw) from Ballon Fabrik, the German firm that had constructed the Zeppelin airships. On December 2, 1976, Powell arranged 14 photographers at various vantage points. There was also an eight-man film crew, a helicopter and a marksman to shoot down the inflatable in case anything went wrong. There was a beautiful, moody sky and perfect photographic conditions. However, the pig stubbornly refused to inflate.

The crew reconvened the next day. This time the pig inflated and rose rapidly, when a gust of wind twisted the dirigible and the mooring cable snapped. Unfortunately, Pink Floyd's manager had neglected to rebook the sharpshooter. The pig continued its ascent unimpeded and was out of sight within five minutes. Flights were halted when pilots reported an airborne pig over Heathrow. Two RAF jets were scrambled to track it down but lost the pig at 9000m. Warnings were issued on TV and radio. At 9pm, a farmer in Kent called to complain that a giant pig had landed on his property and was scaring his cattle.

Pink Floyd's road crew retrieved the deflated pig and repaired a puncture, and a smaller crew reconvened for day three, with the marksman on standby.

This time everything went according to plan. But when viewing the shots, the band preferred the ominous sky from day one, with no pig in sight. So Hipgnosis ended up superimposing the pig on to the picture, as they had originally suggested.

Dissatisfied with the album and subsequent world tour, Pink Floyd recovered to make The Wall in 1979, a final seventies classic, before the dissolution of The Final Cut in 1983. The cover image remains one of the most celebrated in rock history and helped make Battersea Power Station a famous landmark around the world. During Danny Boyle's Isles of Wonder film for the opening ceremonies of the 2012 Olympics, a pig flew proudly over Battersea once again.