This is a summary of 1972 in music in the United Kingdom, including the official charts from that year.
Events
20 January – The premiere of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon at The Dome, Brighton, is halted by technical difficulties. Dark Side of the Moon would be played in its entirety the following night, but it would be a full year before the album was released.
21 January - Keith Richards jumps on stage to jam with Chuck Berry at the Hollywood Palladium, but is ordered off for playing too loud. Berry later claims that he did not recognize Keith and would not have booted him if he did.
13 February – Led Zeppelin's concert in Singapore is cancelled when government officials will not let them off the airplane because of their long hair.
2 May – Stone the Crows lead guitarist Les Harvey is electrocuted on stage during a show in Swansea, Wales, by touching a poorly connected microphone. Harvey died in a hospital a few hours later. The band's lead singer, Maggie Bell, Harvey's longtime girlfriend, was also hospitalized, having collapsed on stage after the incident.
8 October - David Hughes is taken ill while singing the role of Pinkerton in Madam Butterfly in London. He completes the performance but dies shortly afterwards of heart failure.[2]
The list of the top fifty best-selling albums of 1972 were published in Record Mirror at the end of the year, and later reproduced in the first edition of the BPI Year Book in 1976. However, in 2007 the Official Charts Company published album chart histories for each year from 1956 to 1977, researched by historian Sharon Mawer, and included an updated list of the top ten best-selling albums for each year based on the new research. The updated top ten for 1972 is shown in the table below.[5]