The Dark Side of the Moon Tour was a concert tour by British rock band Pink Floyd in 1972 and 1973 in support of their album The Dark Side of the Moon, covering the UK, US, Europe and Japan. There were two separate legs promoting the album, one in 1972 before the album's release and another in 1973 afterwards, together covering 128 shows.
Dark Side of the Moon was performed differently to the finished album, and evolved over the year. Although Pink Floyd had previously rehearsed material before recording it, taking it on tour first allowed the piece to be improved and strengthened. They also knew that their audience were happy to sit patiently and listen to the group, which gave them the confidence to play over 40 minutes of new material they had not heard. "On the Run", whose working title was "The Travel Sequence", was at first a guitar and keyboard jam and would remain so for the rest of the year's performances. "Time" was played at a slower speed, and the line "Lying supine in the sunshine" was sung instead of "Tired of lying in the sunshine". "The Great Gig in the Sky", whose working title was "Religion" or "The Mortality Sequence", originally consisted of an organ solo and various tapes of "preachers" either preaching or reading from such passages as from Chapter 5, Verse 13 of Ephesians, a book of the Bible, or reciting the Lord's Prayer, including soundbites from broadcaster Malcolm Muggeridge. Initially, the suite ended with "Brain Damage". Roger Waters felt there needed to be a suitable ending, and wrote "Eclipse" as a suitable finale. It made its debut at a gig at De Montfort Hall, Leicester on 10 February.
The first London performance, and the first to the press was on 17 February 1972 at the Rainbow Theatre, where the band played for four consecutive nights, following which the group took a break from touring to work on the soundtrack album Obscured By Clouds. A bootleg recording of the concerts was released and sold 100,000 copies, annoying the band as it was still a work in progress. The tour then moved to Japan for five shows, and then to the US and Europe. The group headlined the British Rock Meeting festival at Germersheim, West Germany on 21 May and the Amsterdam Rock Circus at the Olympic Stadium, playing "Atom Heart Mother" instead of Dark Side of the Moon.
