The Stones vs. Floyd: psychedelic album art and light show rivalry in the late '60s

The rivalry between the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd in the late 1960s wasn’t about who sold more records—it was about who could push the psychedelic visual experience further. The Stones, fresh off their chart dominance, scrambled to release Their Satanic Majesties Request in 1967 as a direct answer to Sgt. Pepper and the London psychedelic scene that Floyd had already been leading with their liquid light shows at the UFO Club.

The real competition showed up in the album covers. The Stones used a lenticular 3D photo for Satanic Majesties that cost a fortune to produce and required a special pressing process. The cover featured the band dressed in druid robes, floating in a Day-Glo landscape, but it was a one-off gimmick. Floyd, meanwhile, worked with Storm Thorgerson and Hipgnosis to create the gatefold for A Saucerful of Secrets (1968)—a surreal prism-and-blob collage that felt more organic and less desperate. The Stones dropped the psychedelic look entirely within a year, while Floyd kept evolving their visual language through Atom Heart Mother and Dark Side of the Moon.

The fight over light shows was similar. The Stones hired the band’s own lighting designer for their 1967 tours, but their shows were still built around Mick Jagger’s strut.