{"id":22388,"date":"2022-02-03T05:30:26","date_gmt":"2022-02-03T10:30:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=22388"},"modified":"2022-01-31T14:13:10","modified_gmt":"2022-01-31T19:13:10","slug":"the-gem-of-the-idea-hipgnosis-aubrey-powell-looks-back-at-his-iconic-album-designs-part-three","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2022\/02\/03\/the-gem-of-the-idea-hipgnosis-aubrey-powell-looks-back-at-his-iconic-album-designs-part-three\/","title":{"rendered":"The Gem of the Idea: Hipgnosis\u2019 Aubrey Powell Looks Back at His Iconic Album Designs (Part Three)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part Two<\/a>…<\/i><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>That happened when Powell was asked to design a cover for XTC\u2019s 1978 LP, Go 2<\/i>. \u201cAndy Partridge came to Hipgnosis\u2019 studio,\u201d he recalls. \u201cWe showed him a bunch of things that we designed for them, and he didn’t like any<\/i> of them.\u201d At one point, Partridge cast his gaze across the room, spying another design idea of Thorgerson\u2019s. \u201cIt was a typewritten sheet that said, \u2018This is a RECORD COVER,\u2019 and it described all the things about the record cover,\u201d Powell explains.<\/p>\n

The XTC singer and songwriter inquired for whom that design was intended. Powell says that Storm replied, \u201cWell, it’s just an idea. We’ll sell it to anybody.\u201d Partridge responded, \u201cI love it. I’ll have it.\u201d The finished design includes the band\u2019s name and the album title only once amid the some 500-plus words that fill the 12×12 space.<\/p>\n

In fact, it\u2019s a mark of Hipgnosis\u2019 stature in the music world that their designs often appeared without any kind of logos, band names or titles superimposed over them. One has to look closely at the Presence<\/i> LP cover to find the band name and album title, subtly embossed near the top right-hand corner. And on many other classic covers \u2013 Pink Floyd\u2019s Atom Heart Mother<\/i>, starring Lulubelle III the cow, for example \u2013 there\u2019s no lettering at all.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember the record company completely freaking out at me about that one,\u201d Powell laughs. \u201cI said, \u2018’Well, that’s what the band wants, and that’s what the band gets!\u2019\u201d And he notes that the bizarre cover photo worked in the band\u2019s favor. \u201cBecause in the record stores [among] those huge towers of records with a million albums, everybody saw a picture of a cow,\u201d he points out. \u201cIt looked so different that they were thinking, \u2018What’s that? Who<\/i> is that?\u2019 It worked as an alternative to taking the commercial route.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hipgnosis ceased operations right around the time of (and largely because of) the dawn of the CD era and twilight of the vinyl record. Powell remembers the day. \u201cI remember Storm and [Hipgnosis\u2019 third partner] Peter Christopherson turned up at my house one afternoon in about 1982 with a bunch of flowers. He said, \u2018We want to stop doing album covers. There’s nothing in it for us anymore when we’re working in a format that’s 5 inches by 5 inches. The end is nigh; Let’s get out.\u2019\u201d Powell was initially against the idea. \u201cWe were so successful by that time,\u201d he recalls.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>But the Hipgnosis principals were savvy enough to make a smart pivot. \u201cStorm said, \u2018We need to get onto the MTV train and start making films.\u2019 And he was quite correct.\u201d Within a year, Powell and Thorgerson were deeply immersed in music videos, working for many of the same clients who had chosen them to create album art: \u201cThe Paul McCartneys, the Robert Plants, the Paul Youngs,\u201d Powell says. \u201cConsequently, we had a very successful company called Greenback Films.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even though he and Thorgerson made their mark using old-school technology, today Powell has long since totally embraced the digital medium. And in his current role overseeing the visual elements of Pink Floyd reissues and archival releases, he uses the tools that are at his disposal.<\/p>\n

The new release of Pink Floyd\u2019s A Momentary Lapse of Reason<\/i> is revisionist in a number of ways. It removes the drum parts played by session musicians \u2013 Carmine Appice, Jim Keltner and others \u2013 replacing them with new parts played by Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason, the only musician to appear on every single one of the band\u2019s releases. And many of the session keyboardists\u2019 parts have been replaced by recordings of Richard Wright. The result is a record that sounds much less \u201c1980s\u201d and more a piece with the rest of the band\u2019s body of work.<\/p>\n

And for this new version, Powell took the opportunity to revisit his haunting cover art, featuring countless hospital beds arranged on a British seashore. He considers the project a privilege. \u201cHaving the opportunity to work on Pink Floyd re-releases \u2013 or any other band’s re-releases \u2013 allows me to indulge myself in two ways,\u201d he says. \u201cOne is to make the quality of the pictures better than they were before, and another is to add additional information \u2013 unused photographs, unused graphics, new rediscovered things in the archives \u2013 to make them far more interesting than they were when they were first released.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a tall order indeed. Because if there\u2019s one characteristic that unifies all of the hundreds of Hipgnosis album covers, it\u2019s that they\u2019re never less than interesting. \u201cThe gem of the idea behind the design is the most important thing,\u201d says Aubrey Powell. \u201cHow you get there is [to] use the best people and the best tools you can.\u201d<\/p>\n

Come back for more from the in-depth interview…<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part Two… That happened when Powell was asked to design a cover for XTC\u2019s 1978 LP, Go 2. \u201cAndy Partridge came to Hipgnosis\u2019 studio,\u201d he recalls. \u201cWe showed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22399,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,62],"tags":[4762,4764,4763],"class_list":["post-22388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-rawk","tag-aubrey-powell","tag-hipgnosis","tag-storm-thorgerson","cat-41-id","cat-62-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22388"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22403,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22388\/revisions\/22403"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}