Pink Floyd

Pink Floyd went down in history not only for their music, but also for turning their album covers into an essential part of their own mythology. Enigmatic, surreal images, often lacking even the band's name and the album title, which ended up becoming as recognizable as the songs themselves. Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell, through the Hipgnosis studio, played a decisive role, crafting some of the band's most celebrated covers, from the prism of “The Dark Side Of The Moon” to the burning man of “Wish You Were Here“.
Few images, however, have carried the iconic power of the cover of “Animals“: the monumental silhouette of Battersea Power Station under a leaden sky, with a pig floating between two of its four chimneys. Now, nearly fifty years after the album's release, that legendary site is about to strengthen its bond with music even further: inside the former London power station, a new concert venue has been built, the Apple Music Hall.

The power station on the banks of the Thames

When Pink Floyd began working on the cover of “Animals”, released in January 1977, they had already been collaborating with Hipgnosis for several years. Thorgerson had originally envisioned an image tied to the idea of man reverting to animal: a child catching his parents making love, unable to tell whether what he was witnessing was an act of affection or something violent. Roger Waters, however, had something entirely different in mind. He lived not far from Battersea Power Station and knew that huge industrial building overlooking the Thames well. It was he who suggested photographing it with a pig flying between the chimneys. Thorgerson initially thought the idea was too simple and lacked mystery, but in the end it was Waters's vision that prevailed.

The choice of location contributed enormously to the power of the image. Battersea Power Station was one of the great symbols of industrial London: built in two phases between the 1930s and the 1950s, with its brick structure and four gigantic white chimneys, it had for decades been one of the capital's most important thermoelectric plants. In 1976 it was still operational, although its first section had already ceased activity. Its monumental yet unsettling appearance fit perfectly with the core ideas of “Animals”, an album dominated by a bleak vision of British society. Waters had built the lyrics around three animal figures – dogs, pigs and sheep – used to represent different social groups and behaviours, with an obvious nod to the allegorical tradition of George Orwell's “Animal Farm”.

The day the pig really flew

Turning the idea into a photograph proved far trickier than expected. For the shoot, a huge helium-filled inflatable pig was built, roughly twelve metres long, destined to become famous under the name Algie. Filming at Battersea Power Station took several days. During one of the sessions, the pig broke free from the cables holding it down and genuinely took flight over London. Its presence in the airspace triggered alarm among the authorities and disrupted air traffic, while Algie carried on undisturbed with its journey through the English sky. It eventually landed in a field in Kent, frightening — according to one of the most famous versions of the story — the cows grazing there.

The incident unintentionally handed Pink Floyd a formidable piece of publicity and turned the making of the cover into an almost legendary tale. But one problem remained: getting the right photograph. When it finally became possible to properly photograph the pig in front of the power station, the sky was too clear for the mood the band wanted to associate with the record. The solution came at the compositing stage: the image of Algie was superimposed onto an earlier photograph of Battersea Power Station, taken when clouds made the landscape far darker and more menacing. The famous cover of "Animals", then, doesn't document a single moment, but was born from the merging of different photographs.
The result immediately entered Pink Floyd's iconography. Algie outlived the cover and became one of the band's visual symbols, reappearing in concerts and stage sets in the following years and even accompanying the band members' later solo careers.

From power station to concert venue

Meanwhile, Battersea Power Station would go through its own troubled history. Power production ceased for good in 1983, and for decades the huge building sat unused, as various redevelopment projects came and went without ever being completed. The station, by then inseparably linked to the Pink Floyd cover as well, had in the meantime become one of London's most recognisable industrial buildings.
After a massive regeneration project, Battersea has been transformed into a new residential and commercial district, while preserving the exterior architecture that made it famous. And now music will be able to move directly inside the building immortalised by Pink Floyd. Apple has announced the opening of the Apple Music Hall, a new 600-capacity venue built inside Battersea Power Station and designed to host concerts on a relatively intimate scale, while offering production capabilities fit for major events. The space features a stage roughly 11.5 metres wide, which can also be configured for "in the round" performances, along with a 48-speaker spatial audio system. It also houses professional studios for recording and multitrack mixing, plus infrastructure set up for at least 16 cameras, meaning concerts can be recorded and livestreamed worldwide. The project has preserved and referenced several of the power station's architectural features, from its historic bricks to its arches and bronze balconies.

So a building that in 1977 became a cornerstone of rock iconography is preparing, almost half a century later, to genuinely become a live music venue. And above its four blackened chimneys, at least in the collective imagination, the flying pig from "Animals" will inevitably continue to hover.

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23/09/2026