Heritage Auctions Magazine Presents: Cover Master — Storm Thorgerson and Hipgnosis
Storm Thorgerson and Hipgnosis designed images synonymous with some of the most famous rock recordings of all time.
By David Tosh
Back in 1969, at the tender age of 16, I was about to experience the otherworldly sounds of a British rock group known as Pink Floyd. It was the age of Woodstock, and I had moved with my parents from the sweltering big city of Houston to the pastoral charms of rural Arkansas.
Despite the laid-back vibe of the country, I still sought out the most unusual sounds I could find, and the album cover for Ummagumma was too intriguing to pass up. At first glance, it seemed normal enough — four long-haired young men in a room in various positions at an open doorway. But on the wall of the room was a framed portrait of the same scene. Without changing the original positions (one man in a chair, the next on the steps outside, further out one looking up, and the farthest member on his back, legs up), the group members had switched with one another. And within the picture was yet another repeated picture, and within it another, so that in the course of the views within views, each member of the band was in each of the four positions. I was floored by this concept, and rushed home with the double vinyl album.
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After absorbing the spacey sounds, I went back to the cover art and discovered it was designed by Hipgnosis — another fascinating concept. I started noticing more Hipgnosis covers, on what usually turned out to be the most cuttingedge rock albums coming out of the United Kingdom at that time.
Hipgnosis was the name of Britain's coolest art collective. It consisted of Cambridge school chums Storm Thorgerson and Audrey "Po" Powell. Storm and Po were also friends with the lads from Pink Floyd, who came from the same area, and Hipgnosis (which combines "hip" with "gnosis," Greek for "learning") began their career by designing the Floyd's second long-player, A Saucerful of Secrets, in 1968. Their list of clients would soon include top acts such as Genesis, Yes, Black Sabbath, Alan Parsons Project, Peter Gabriel, 10cc, UFO , and Paul McCartney and Wings. Their cover for Led Zeppelin's 1973 album Houses of the Holy was among the most controversial, with its images of naked children leading to several bans. The team's approach to design was based largely on photography, and by utilizing many pre-Photoshop tricks (including airbrushing and multiple exposures), their designs were decidedly surreal.
A quirky sense of humor was also a hallmark of their work. Even their method of billing clients — "pay what you think it's worth" — was more in keeping with the free-spirit feeling of the time, rather than the hustle-for-every-buck attitude of corporate America's Madison Avenue ad agencies. And as former film students, Storm and Po tended to use models as actors, with cover designs looking like selected scenes from a movie.
Working With The Floyd
Some of the team's most creative work was produced for Pink Floyd.
Album after album, including solo projects, bore the unmistakable stamp of Hipgnosis, and with the prism design of Floyd's 1973 classic Dark Side of the Moon, practically everyone in the world seemed to have a Hipgnosis cover lurking in their record collection. The concepts continued to amaze and confound, and with Animals and the infamous floating pig, they made international news as well when that giant pig floated off from the photo shoot at Battersea Power Plant, resulting in a frantic search.
The business grew, and more partners and collaborators were added, but by 1983, the partnership was dissolved, and Storm moved on to design covers on his own. As with his earlier Hipgnosis work, his new designs were always a step-ahead of the crowd, and the best and brightest of each new crop of musical acts sought his magic touch. Covers for groups like Mars Volta, Catherine Wheel, Anthrax, Umphrey's McGee, and the Cranberries featured Thorgerson's work. More recently, he designed the cover for Muse's Black Holes and Revelations, which depicts a Martian landscape with four men seated around a table with miniature horses on it.
Thorgerson has continued working with Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmore. For the Floyd's 1987 release, A Momentary Lapse of Reason, Storm created one of his most fascinating — if not exhausting — concepts, utilizing a seaside scenario of 700 hospital beds, stretching as far down the coast as the eye could see. These were all real beds, each one complete with mattresses, blankets and pillows — none of it tricks created in the computer. "Seven hundred, yes, seven hundred, wrought-iron hospital beds separately made up and positioned on the beach," Storm was quoted as saying. "Madness to do it at all, but we had in fact to do it twice 'cause it rained suddenly the first time, dank gray drizzle, and we couldn't see the distant half of the beds."
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Defining A Musical Era
The work of Storm Thorgerson, with Hipgnosis and working alone, is filled with classic album covers, including Deceptive Bends by 10cc; The Madcap Laughs by Syd Barrett; T. Rex's Electric Warrior; Argus by Wishbone Ash; Al Stewart's Time Passages; Wings' Venus and Mars; Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap by AC/DC; I Robot by the Alan Parsons Project; Todd Rundgren's Back to the Bars; Bad Company's Rough Diamonds; Def Leppard's High 'n' Dry; David Gilmore's About Face; Pieces of Eight by Styx; Rainbow's Bent Out of Shape; and Owner of a Lonely Heart by Yes.
Most of Thorgerson's archives have remained with the artist. Other than a handful of beautifully produced art prints of selected album covers and CD reissues of individual albums, there has been little of the actual artwork of Hipgnosis and Storm's solo career in the hands of collectors. That changed when Storm and Powell selected some of their favorite pieces to be auctioned by Heritage Auctions Galleries in June 2009. Additional items are scheduled for future auctions.
Among the items in the first offering is an original handdrawn concept sketch for Pink Floyd's Animals, showing a young boy catching a couple in the act of making love. The concept was rejected by the band, and has never been seen before. Other items include photo collages from the Animals Battersea Station shoot created for the CD reissue; the original photo print for Mike Rutherford's Smallcreep's Day 45 sleeve, utilizing an innovative technique of splattering developer on the print so that the only images of Mike are seen through the splatters ("One of my favorites," Storm said in a recent phone conversation); and several sets of fine art prints, each personally selected and personalized by Storm.
Heritage Auctions consignment director Garry Shrum, who once owned a music shop, has been a longtime fan of Storm and Hipgnosis, and, along with several other dedicated Heritage Auctions staffers, was instrumental in getting Storm to open his archive.
"The first Hipgnosis cover I became aware of was Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon," recalls Shrum. "It was one of our shop's best-selling records ever. There was something about the cover art that worked so well with the music — it made people want to buy the T-shirts, posters, buttons and hats. The art was cool, and it matched the mood of the music so well. Our customers couldn't get enough." And what about the famous poster illustrating Pink Floyd's back catalog, showing a lineup of shapely young women sitting nude, with their backs to the camera, with each back showing an intricately painted Floyd cover? "Oh yes, of course!" Shrum laughs. "That was our best-selling poster of all time!" That image was included in a six-print set offered at Heritage Auctions' June auction, realizing more than $2,000.
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'An Important Figure In Rock'
Another groundbreaking album cover was Led Zeppelin's In Through the Out Door.
"When that album came out, it was released with six different covers" recalls Shrum. "The album came wrapped in a plain brown wrapper, so it was hard to tell which version you got. Finally, I realized that on the top of the spine edge, there were a set of letters — A through F — so you could tell which cover you were getting."
The cover was set inside a barroom, with a character identified as "John" at the bar with six other people nearby. Each cover was set up to show the view from the eyes of one of those six. In addition, the back cover showed another scene in the bar, this time showing you whose eyes you were looking through on the front. Embellished on the front was a design that resembled a large paint stroke over "John." The whole thing was pretty mind-boggling, and fans were frantic to obtain a complete set. "Most of our customers didn't really notice until we put up all 12 front and back covers on display," Shrum says. "And then, everyone wanted them. Storm's covers had that effect on people. Whenever we would put up promo posters of new releases, whether it was Pink Floyd, Genesis, Yes, Black Sabbath, or newer bands like the Cranberries or Mars Volta, our customers wanted to buy those posters, because the art was so fantastically different."
Storm Thorgerson is officially retired, but interest in his art continues. Two recent books on his incredible designs are available: For the Love of Vinyl: The Album Art of Hipgnosis (PictureBox, $45 hardcover) and the limited-edition Taken by Storm (Vision On, $29.95 paperback). But as nice as these two volumes are, nothing compares to seeing the original material used to create those striking images, or the impact of the beautifully produced fine art prints included in the Heritage Auctions sale.
"We're honored to be able to offer this unique collection," says Doug Norwine, director of Heritage Auctions' music and entertainment department, "and we hope for this to be the beginning of a long relationship with such an important figure in the world of rock."
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Heritage Auctions Magazine Summer/Fall 2009 Copyright ©2009 by Heritage Auctions, Inc.
