1972 in British music

This is a summary of 1972 in music in the United Kingdom, including the official charts from that year.

• 20 January – The premiere of Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon at the Dome, Brighton, is halted by technical difficulties. The 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 recognise Richards and would not have booted him off the stage if he had known who he was.
• 9 February – Paul McCartney's new band, Wings, make their live debut at the University of Nottingham. It is McCartney's first public concert since the Beatles' 1966 US tour.
• 13 February – Led Zeppelin's concert in Singapore is cancelled when government officials will not let them off the aeroplane because of their long hair.
• 19 February – Paul McCartney's single "Give Ireland Back to the Irish" (which was inspired by the "Bloody Sunday" massacre in Ireland on 30 January 1972) is banned by the BBC.
• 25 March – The 17th Eurovision Song Contest is held in the Usher Hall, Edinburgh, Scotland. The only time (as of 2021) Scotland has hosted the contest.
• 16 April – Electric Light Orchestra make their live debut at the Fox and Greyhound pub in Park Lane, Croydon, England.
• 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 hospitalised, having collapsed on stage after the incident.
• 1 June – premiere of Harrison Birtwistle's The Triumph of Time in London.^[1]
• 12 July – first performance of Peter Maxwell Davies's opera Taverner at the Royal Opera House.^[1]
• 7 September – The UK premiere of Carré for four orchestras and four choirs by Karlheinz Stockhausen takes place at the Proms.
• 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]

^[5]

A list of the top twenty best-selling albums of 1972 was published in the issue of Record Mirror dated 13 January 1973, and a top fifty was 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.^[6]

Notes:

• Hugh Wood – Violin concerto no 1^[7]

• John Addison – Sleuth directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, starring Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine.^[8]
• Ron Goodwin – Frenzy directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
• David Munrow – Henry VIII and His Six Wives.
• Eric Rogers – Carry On Matron.

• Herbert Chappell
  • Clouds of Witness
  • The Shadow of the Tower

• John Barry – Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

• 17 January – Aqualung, singer-songwriter
• 27 January – Mark Owen, singer (Take That)
• 20 February – Neil Primrose, drummer (Travis)
• 29 February – Steve Hart, singer (Worlds Apart)
• 4 March – Alison Wheeler, singer (The Beautiful South)
• 16 March – Andy Dunlop, lead guitarist, banjoist (Travis)
• 20 March
  • Alex Kapranos, singer and guitarist (Franz Ferdinand)
  • Shelly Poole, singer (Alisha's Attic)
• 29 March – Monty Adkins, composer, performer and lecturer in electroacoustic music.
• March – Natasha Barrett, composer of electroacoustic music
• 27 April – Rob Coombes, keyboardist (Supergrass)
• 15 May – Conrad Keely, English-American singer-songwriter and guitarist (...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead)
• 26 May – Alan White, drummer (Oasis)
• 14 June – Dominic Brown, English guitarist and songwriter
• 17 June – Rikrok, British-Jamaican singer
• 6 July – Mark Gasser, English pianist and educator
• 11 July – Cormac Battle, English-Irish singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (Kerbdog and Wilt)
• 6 August – Geri Halliwell, singer (Spice Girls)
• 8 August – Bitty McLean, reggae singer
• 15 August – Mikey Graham, Irish singer (Boyzone)
• 6 September – Tony Dowding, singer (Bad Boys Inc)
• 13 September – Matt Everitt, drummer (Menswear)
• 20 September – Aaron Poole, singer (Worlds Apart)
• 21 September – Liam Gallagher, singer (Oasis)
• 14 November – Dougie Payne, bassist (Travis)
• 23 November – Rick Witter, singer (Shed Seven)
• 3 December – Dan Bowyer, singer (Worlds Apart)
• 10 December – Brian Molko, singer (Placebo)
• 11 December – Easther Bennett, singer (Eternal)
• 13 December – Niki Evans, actress and singer

• 20 February – Herbert Menges, conductor and composer, 69^[9]
• 21 March – David McCallum Sr., violinist and the father of David McCallum, 74
• 28 September – Rory Storm, singer, 33 (post-operative complications).^[10]
• 19 October – David Hughes, opera singer, 47 (heart failure)^[11]
• 28 November – Havergal Brian, composer, 96^[12]
• date unknown
  • Jimmy MacBeath, folk singer, 77/78
  • Ivor McMahon, violinist, 47/48

• 1972 in British radio
• 1972 in British television
• 1972 in the United Kingdom
• List of British films of 1972