Hipgnosis is The Beatles of album cover art — nobody has ever done it better than the British design firm founded by Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell. Their first cover was Pink Floyd’s 1968 album A Saucerful of Secrets and their last was Led Zeppelin’s Coda, released in 1982. There’s quite a bit of poetry in that. In their fifteen years together the firm produced many of the most iconic covers in music history.
PINK FLOYD - ATOM HEART MOTHER 1970
QUATERMASS - QUATERMASS 1970
TOE FAT - TOE FAT 1970
Imagine record sleeves without the advent of Hipgnosis, the photo-design company responsible for Pink Floyd‘s mysterious black prism, Led Zeppelin‘s flaxen-haired nudist children, AC/DC‘s censored everyday villains, Black Sabbath‘s copulating escalator robots and Peter Gabriel‘s melted grilled-cheese face.
HOLLIES - DISTANT LIGHT 1971
THE NICE - ELEGY 1971
WISHBONE ASH - ARGUS 1972
Although the psychedelic era produced beautifully filigreed LP sleeves like Love’s Forever Changes and, of course, Sgt. Pepper’s, album covers largely were portraits of the bands and artists. Hipgnosis – cofounded by artists Aubrey “Po” Powell and Storm Thorgerson in 1967 – flipped the script on rock art.
RENAISSANCE - PROLOGUE 1972
PINK FLOYD - THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON 1973
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A new book, Vinyl . Album . Cover . Art: The Complete Hipgnosis Catalogue – due out May 16th – will celebrate the company’s 50th anniversary. It collects the 373 sleeves Powell, Thorgerson and their compatriots made together between ’67 and 1982 with commentary by Powell and Thorgerson, among others, and a foreword by Peter Gabriel.
LED ZEPPELIN - HOUSES OF THE HOLY 1973
VARIOUS ARTISTS - MUSIC FOR FREE CREEK 1973
GENESIS - THE LAMB LIES DOWN ON BROADWAY 1974
“You can see the development of Hipgnosis, and how we got more sophisticated, more sleek and clever at photography, graphics, lettering and text,” Powell tells Rolling Stone. “We didn’t have Photoshop. Everything had to be shot on film and done by hand. And average artwork could take three to six weeks, whereas you could do some of these album covers in an afternoon now.”
NAZARETH - RAMPANT 1974
BAD COMPANY - STRAIGHT SHOOTER 1975
10CC - HOW DARE YOU! 1976
BLACK SABBATH - TECHNICAL ECSTASY 1976
As Powell looks back on the history that he made with Thorgerson, who died of cancer in 2013, he’s most proud of the creativity they shared. “We always tried to think laterally and not go for the obvious,” he says. “When we saw Sgt. Pepper’s, we went, ‘Oh, my gosh, there’s another way of doing this.
GENESIS - A TRICK OF THE TAIL 1976
THE ALAN PARSONS PROJECT - TALES OF MYSTERY AND IMAGINATION 1976
"We were both fresh out of art school, and we said, We can do this, but let’s think differently. By 1973, when we did Dark Side of the Moon, Houses of the Holy and Band on the Run, we had discovered our métier, and we had the great privilege of being trusted by the bands we worked for. It was amazing.”
YES - GOING FOR THE ONE 1977
STYX - PIECES OF EIGHT 1978
He recently took some time out from working on an exhibition at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum celebrating Pink Floyd, for whom he is the creative director, and picked 15 covers he felt were turning points for the company. Here, he tells the story of Hipgnosis – which, he points out, is still a functioning company, making designs and films – through some of its most brilliant album sleeves.
PETER GABRIEL - PETER GABRIEL 1978
STRAWBS - DEAD LINES 1978
PETER GABRIEL - PETER GABRIEL 1980
Covers like this don’t happen anymore. The golden age of album covers is gone. We had the best 15 years of it. The money was there. We were so privileged to be able to go and do a picture like that.
BY RORY GROW 20 MAY 2017.
