How Mike Leonard's Liquid Light Shows Worked at Pink Floyd's UFO Club Gigs

The short answer: the early lighting designer was Mike Leonard, not Joe Gannon. Leonard was an architect and inventor who built a custom rig for the UFO Club. He sandwiched colored oils, water, and alcohol between glass slides, then placed them on an overhead projector. Heating the slides made the liquids swirl, ripple, and blend unpredictably – a cheap but mesmerizing effect that became the band’s visual signature.

These projections weren’t tied to specific songs in a fixed cue sheet. The Floyd’s sets at UFO were built around long, improvisational jams – particularly “Interstellar Overdrive” (often stretching 15 minutes) and “Astronomy Domine.” Leonard’s lights would evolve with the dynamics of the music, syncing to peaks and valleys almost by accident, which made every performance a one-off. By mid-1967 the band had moved on to more elaborate setups, but the UFO nights cemented the idea that light and sound could melt into one experience.