The Moon Landing Inspired Pink Floyd’s Most Overlooked Song
A bluesy, atmospheric piece that the band improvised live on the air during the Apollo 11 mission deserves to be more than a footnote of musical history.
Editor’s Note: This article is part of a series reflecting on the Apollo 11 mission, 50 years later.
For seven and a half minutes on the night of July 20, 1969, Pink Floyd took thousands of BBC viewers to the moon. Of course, two men were already there: Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, the Apollo 11 astronauts who became the first human beings to set foot on the lunar surface. However, the members of Pink Floyd—David Gilmour, Roger Waters, Nick Mason, and Richard Wright—weren’t using science, calculus, and technology to transport people through space on that fateful evening. They were using music, specifically an improvised and largely forgotten song called “Moonhead.”
The piece isn’t ranked with Pink Floyd classics such as “Wish
