For Hipgnosis, making album covers was about art and mystery
British progressive rock legends Pink Floyd may be known for masterpieces like ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ and ‘The Wall’, but they were also responsible for launching some of the most distinctive, popular and influential album artwork creators in the mid-20th century . century: Hipgnosis.
Between 1968 and 1983 – at a time when vinyl was king and 12″ by 12″ artwork was an important part of packaging – the British art design group, co-founded by visual artists Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey “Po” Powell, created more more over 250 album covers for rock superstars ranging from Led Zeppelin and Paul McCartney to 10cc and the Alan Parsons Project.
The cover of Led Zeppelin’s 1973 classic ‘Houses of the Holy’? Hipgnosis. Paul McCartney and Wings’ brilliant ‘Band on the Run’ artwork? Hipgnosis. The illustrated magnum opus that is 10cc’s “The Original Soundtrack”? You guessed it.
Hipgnosis grew out of Pink Floyd’s numerous counterculture experiences with Thorgerson and Powell during their years in art school.
“I’ve known them since I was 15,” said Powell, 76, during a recent phone interview from New York, where he helped promote a new documentary from acclaimed Dutch photographer and director Anton Corbijn called “Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis)”, currently showing at Toronto’s Carlton Cinema.
It was an experimental time for Pink Floyd, when founding guitarist and vocalist Syd Barrett was all but out of the band, and guitarist and vocalist David Gilmour was making his way: Gilmour’s 1968 debut, “A Saucerful of Secrets,” was Hipgnosis first commissioned album cover.
It was also a scene where experimentation with drugs such as LSD was common, though Powell insists Thorgerson and himself’s ingestion of chemicals was short-lived.
“I don’t think for one second that Hipgnosis couldn’t have done what we did without LSD,” Powell said. “I think that would be too pretentious and pretentious. But what LSD did – the journeys Storm and I took together – was just opening your mind to alternatives and to a different way of looking at things. I’m not promoting LSD. I think it is a very dangerous drug and, if used under the wrong circumstances, can be extremely harmful.”
Hipgnosis was indeed different: graphic designer Thorgerson – who died of cancer in 2013 at the age of 69 – and photographer Powell were embraced for their out-of-the-box thinking, especially by the artists to whom they sold their concepts.
Example: The Pink Floyd album cover for ‘Atom Heart Mother’ from the 1970s, a photo of a cow in a barnyard with no artist name or title anywhere on the artwork (subsequent editions, especially when CDs came along, offered both) .
“When we started doing album covers, the first thing we said was no pictures of the band on the front cover; no titles or credits; no names. Let’s go lateral and think completely differently,” Powell said.
“And a lot of the graphics that Hipgnosis designed weren’t necessarily designed for the band. We’d design something and say, ‘This is a great image, who can we sell it to now?’ Led Zeppelin might reject it, but then 10cc could buy it.
The designers’ way of doing business was often the bane of record company marketing departments because Hipgnosis’ goals were the opposite of selling albums.
Thorgerson and Powell were more interested in good art.
“Our mindset was that we wouldn’t be commercially minded,” Powell said. “We’re not going to design things like it’s for a product and we’re not going to be influenced by record labels. And we’ve never worked with record companies; we always worked for the artist.”
There were other provocative covers that added mystique: original shipments of Pink Floyd’s 1975 gem “Wish You Were Here” were shrink wrapped in black – you had to buy the album to see the cover – while Led Zeppelin’s “In Through the Out” 1979’s Door” carried six different covers, all wrapped in brown paper bags.
Powell said an air of mystery was always part of the equation. He used the cover of Zeppelin’s 1976 ‘Presence’ as an example: a family of four around a table with boats in the background and a monolith-like object in front of it.
“What’s a black object on a breakfast table with a family at a boat show got to do with anything?” Powell asked rhetorically. “Now I’m about the mystery and the story… and Storm and I would never explain that: we would only discuss it with the artist. We never spoke to the press about what it all meant.
“And a lot of the bands we worked for — I don’t care if it was 10cc or Zeppelin or Pink Floyd — embraced that secrecy. It was kind of like this private society: they didn’t want to give any of it away. If someone listened to ‘Wish You Were Here’, the message was: ‘Work it out yourself.’”
That cover shows two men shaking hands, one of them on fire.
“It’s two businessmen and one gets burned,” Powell said. “It is insincerity and the absence of caring. We weren’t going to explain that, and neither was Pink Floyd. But the person who bought the record and looked at the lyrics hoped he would identify with the images we made.”
The artist duo’s genius and tendency to work directly with artists gave them unlimited budgets – covers cost anywhere from £50,000 to £100,000 ($85,000 to $170,000 Canadian today) – and kept them in demand.
“When Hipgnosis was at its peak and during the album cover salad days, we were so busy,” said Powell. “I was abroad 200 days a year to shoot; we were working non-stop and the excitement of it all was overwhelming. We worked very, very hard for the first 10 years… 14 hours a day, seven days a week. It was all consuming and obsessive. It wasn’t about success; it was the excitement of doing it.
Thorgerson and Powell were by no means an island: a few years after Hipgnosis formed, Peter Christopherson, founding member of the industrial band Throbbing Gristle, became a full-time partner and was responsible for some of the first promo shots of punk icons the Sex Pistols. . Hipgnosis also employed a team of artists, illustrators and photographers.
The team certainly made an impression: the most famous is the cover of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon”.
“That’s the only album I can say where the album clearly reflected what was in it and definitely helped it sell,” said Powell. “That’s why it still sells: the music and the association between the two that still applies 50 years later.
“I find it very difficult to walk down a street in any city and not see a ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ T-shirt or jacket: it’s all very flattering to me. This has stood the test of time and it’s great. I think it’s inconceivable that you could have ‘Dark Side’ without the prism.”
With Hipgnosis’ work this summer in four different museums, as well as “The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Mortal Remains” in Toronto, Powell sees the confirmation of Hipgnosis’ work as “fine art”.
“I am incredibly privileged and deeply moved by the interest in it. That is recognition for me. I wish Storm was here to see it.
That endorsement includes the brilliant documentary “Squaring the Circle,” executive produced by Oscar-winning actor Colin Firth and Canadian Merck Mercuriadis, whom Thorgerson considered a close friend.
“All Anton Corbijn did with the film is tell a very truthful and honest story about how Hipgnosis worked and how we came up with some of the ideas,” said Powell. “I find it enlightening, even for myself. I think the movie explains Hipgnosis very clearly and very honestly.”
The hour and 40 minute documentary features rare footage, candid interviews with Pink Floyd’s Dave Gilmour, Roger Waters and Nick Mason; Robert Plant and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin; Paul McCartney, Peter Gabriel, 10cc’s Graham Gouldman and more.
Ultimately, business differences led to the breakup of Hipgnosis. Thorgerson and Powell did not speak to each other for twelve years.
“He was tough,” Powell said. “He was grumpy. He was stubborn.”
However, what the film fails to show is an eventual reconciliation between the two.
“In the last five years of Storm’s life, as he was dying of cancer and a stroke, he and I were as close as we could be,” Powell said.
“We never worked together again, but we went for lunch once a month or whenever we could, and nothing had changed. The humor – he had such great humor. His deadpan humor gave me convulsions and that’s one of the things that tied us together because he was so cerebrally smart and so smart you couldn’t help but love him.
“On the other hand, he could flip a sixpence and I’d throw a Hasselblad across the studio because he frustrated me so much. But as I said in the movie, he was my brother. I loved him like a brother and I miss him terribly.”
