LONDON — A large inflatable pig flew above London's Battersea Power Station on Monday in a stunt designed to mark the reissue of British band Pink Floyd's 14 studio albums by record label EMI Music.
The animal, measuring 30 feet long and 15 feet high, was inflated with helium at dawn for the event, held 35 years after the making of the album cover for "Animals" featuring a similar flying pig.
EMI had planned to use the same inflatable pig, which had been kept at a workshop since the original shoot, but two weeks ago it was deemed not to be airworthy and a replica was made.
The artwork on the "Animals" album was a combination of a photograph of the background of Battersea Power Station taken on Dec. 2, 1976, and the pig photographed on Dec. 4.
On Dec. 3 that year, the pig slipped its moorings and floated into the Heathrow airport flight path before being recovered by a farmer in Kent, southeast England.
Howard Bartrop, a photographer who worked on the 1976 shoot, recalled the difficulties involved.
Slideshow: Bands of the ‘70s that just won’t quit (on this page)
"It was quite tricky that day and very cold and of course famously after a day or so we had the problem where he (the pig) floated up away from the building and was spotted by commercial pilots landing into Heathrow," he told Reuters.
"He then floated off towards Kent, followed by a police helicopter, landed in a farm I believe and frightened all the cattle.
"Basically he was retrieved, patched up and put back in the air the next day so we could try and photograph him again."
Under the banner "Why Pink Floyd ... ?," EMI Music is releasing all 14 Pink Floyd studio albums remastered and available digitally. They are also available as one Discovery Box Set.
Also on sale from Monday are special editions of one of the band's most acclaimed albums, "The Dark Side of The Moon," extended to feature unreleased music from Pink Floyd archives.
Pink Floyd, behind seminal albums The Dark Side of the Moon, "Wish You Were Here" and "The Wall," is one of the most successful rock bands of all time, having sold an estimated 200 million albums worldwide.
The group, also famous for its acrimonious split and one-off reunion at charity concert Live 8 in 2005, re-signed to long time record label EMI in January in a five-year deal.
The agreement also brought to an end a legal dispute between the sides over EMI's right to "unbundle" their records and sell individual tracks online.
A rare alternate take on the title track from Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here featuring violinist Stephane Grappelli, previously thought to be gone forever, finally appeared on an Immersion reissue of the 1975 album — and Nick Mason still can’t get over the fact that this version wasn’t used instead.
“I think that was the jewel in that particular crown,” Mason tells Sonic Reality. “It was something that I assumed had been lost forever. I thought we’d recorded over it. Actually what was fantastic was that it still exists.”
Mason says the collaboration grew out of happenstance, with Grappelli working in an adjacent studio. He said the jazz legend simply stopped by to pay his respects, “and someone had the gumption to say: ‘Would you like to play?’”
Unfortunately, Grappelli, who rose to fame with Django Reinhardt in the 1930s-era Quintette du Hot Club de France, died in 1997 — long before his work on “Wish You Were Here” saw wide release. “I can’t imagine why we didn’t use it at the time,” Mason adds. “It’s lovely, I think.”