Why 'Any Colour You Like' Became a 15-Minute Jam on Pink Floyd's 1974 French Tour

The track “Any Colour You Like” was always a bit of a cheat code for Pink Floyd live. On Dark Side of the Moon, it’s a tight three-minute instrumental built around a simple two-chord vamp and a bubbling synth sequence – basically a palette of colors waiting to be smeared. Its structure was so open that the band used it as a springboard for collective improvisation, especially once they got comfortable on tour.

The 1974 French tour shows, particularly the June dates in Paris and Lyon, turned the piece into something else entirely. Instead of the album version’s neat fade-out, the band stretched the central groove sometimes past 15 minutes. David Gilmour’s solos got longer and more abstract, Richard Wright would lock into ambient synth pads, and Nick Mason would pull the beat apart and reassemble it. Roger Waters even contributed atmospheric bass slides and vocal noises. No two performances were the same. Bootlegs from that run prove the venue changed the jam – the echo in the Palais des Sports made everything sound cavernous, so the band leaned into space. It’s the kind of live expansion that made Dark Side feel less like a fixed record and more like a living organism.